Administrator for a Day...or 5

My dream has come true - I have been able to be an administrator for the past week. I was sent to Scandinavian Middle School on Monday for the first day of school, where I apparently was at the right place at the right time to meet the other Guidance Learning Counselor for the school, Ms. Armo - who is Armenian! Long story short, I have been subbing for the other GLC who has been absent this week - so I have been handling schedules for students, disciplinary issues, and just overall student questions and issues from an Admin perspective. It has been an absolute blast.

I have had the distinct honor of being able to do something special or "Above and Beyond" for a kid each day that I have been at Scan so far - it has been very fulfilling and rewarding. I feel very blessed. And the kids are absolutely awesome - a pleasure to work with and spend extra time to make positive things happen for them.

Some Highlights:
Monday - Working with Ms. Armo, we went through about 100-130 students who needed new schedules altogether or minor schedule updates/changes. By about lunch, we had finished the backlog and were able to spend the time after lunch (outside duty) fixing schedule mistakes that Advisor teachers sent in.

Tuesday - Dress Code Violation. Apparently absolutely ZERO red, not even some lines of red, are allowed on any item brought to school by a student. On this day, a very quiet kid with flat affect arrived, written up for having literally 4 or 5 lines of red in a picture on his t-shirt. The procedure is to call home, issue a warning, write it up in the computer log and place the write up in the student's folder. After calling home and making the student change shirts, I felt compelled to look up his test scores. He had scored Proficient in Language Arts and Advanced in Math. ADVANCED! I spoke with Ms. Armo that I felt strongly that such a kid should be given a chance and we shouldn't nit pick and drive him away from school any more than his demeanor suggested he was withdrawn. Ms. Armo (who is awesome, by the way), told me it was my call. She said I handled the situation and could see it through how I saw fit. SHE IS AWESOME! So, we decided he had earned one freebie - we tossed out the write-up and didn't record it in the computer. It is a small thing, but I felt really good about it. He came back to the office later to turn in his hat and while there, Ms. Armo told him that I had advocated for him. I walked him back to class and talked about his interests - I have decided he must go to UCLA for undergrad and then to med school. He said "ya" with an impish smile - we'll see!

Wednesday - A child who had scored Advanced and Proficient in Mathematics since whenever they first start testing, suddenly had scored only Basic on his tests last year in 7th grade. Wouldn't be a huge issue, except he really wanted to be in Algebra - but without passing the Math test, the policy is no go. Well, I called him into the office and asked him to explain what the problem was - what had happened the previous year. Without getting into details, he explained his family situation. The kid has been through a bit! But he was such a nice, well-mannered, kind and positive kid. So, I decided I could go to bat for him - with Ms. Armo's permission, I explained the situation to the Algebra teacher (who is also AWESOME!!!!!) and she agreed without hesitation to let him into the class! He was BEYOND excited - and now every time he sees me on campus, he thanks me again. To me, a very minor thing to make that change - to him, it could change his entire future academic career for the better. I know he will succeed with such passion and zeal to make it happen!

Thursday - Today was "fix all the one or two class mistakes we made the first couple days in our rush" Day. Tomorrow will be "Level off all the classes so you don't have 10 kids in one English class but 60 in another" Day. Without digressing to tomorrow, the highlight for today was making the day of two students who wanted to be in a specific period of PE because their younger sibling was there and they wanted to make sure they were not getting into trouble. Wow! Now that is being mature and responsible beyond your years. Unfortunately, nothing in scheduling is ever easy, as I have learned this week. So instead of being able to just make one class swap, it required fitting the pieces of an overburdened puzzle of classes into the ultimate final work of art of a functioning student schedule. We did it - 35 minutes later! It was rewarding to hear the students thank me and be surprised that I actually took the extra time to do it rather than just say "it can't be done."

Small Victories. Stay tuned to find out what happens tomorrow, on my final day at Scandinavian Middle School.