It Makes a Good School...Great!

One of the issues I tackle almost every week is faculty cohesiveness. "Working together" is my first order of business most weeks. When you are working sans break hour after hour in a small space with many loud children, the whole name of the game is being sure of your co-workers. And that surety comes from certain personality traits that actually determine whether someone is going to fit in or trip up the day. It is remarkable to me how often grown women opt to trip up the day for everyone around them.

Energy is probably the first and most important personality trait of a successful teacher. When a teacher comes to work exhausted day after day; comes to work preoccupied with too many worldly troubles; comes to work clueless about routines, projects, the order of the day; comes to work ill, angry, or caught up with everything but the job, the job rolls over onto the laps of the other teachers, and everyone takes a hit while Miss Pitiful Pearl is paid to do nothing.

When a teacher is reticent to step forward to take the group for story time, for class, to get kids in line, to manage the bathroom, take role, lead prayer, set a table or offer assistance to a teacher struggling with a project...that reticent teacher is doomed.

When a teacher believes that his or her job is other than pitching in and helping, she's taking up space that might as well be taken out to the dumpster.

My favorite is the teacher who comes to "work," only said lightly, in order to "have her lunch" and then spends the rest of "her" afternoon begging for attention and pity from everyone around because her lot in life is untenable to her...out, out, out damned spot! Go home; look in the mirror and thank God you're alive. Get a grip; and put down the hand mirror.

As a school, we don't have time to cater to the incredible selfishness of the narcissist. We have time for one thing only - to work as a team for the sake of the children whose parents are paying tuition. Our job is to teach, not to cater to spoiled.

A brilliant, illuminating and strong teacher, and we have five, is someone who comes in knowing what they intend to do for the day. Someone who is prepared; knows her audience; knows her work partners and what she can expect from them; knows the task and what to expect from the children.

The children don't expect anything, so a great teacher will have something for each and every child...sometimes in a group and sometimes individually, and that can't be done by teachers holding a hand mirror in one hand and a handkerchief or a cell phone in the other.

A great teacher has a rapport with every child, knows every child's name, personality and needs, so when there is an art project, or a song, or a lesson, or even a coloring project, that great teacher knows what to say to a child to get the best work from him, and it compliments every other teacher.

Teachers who don't speak to the children should be escorted out the door NOW. Mostly, teachers who don't speak to children probably aren't speaking to the other teachers either. That's because they hold themselves in such high regard, that condescending to speak to a child, much less another employee, is beyond some special selfish plan they have created for his or her self. It's part of the Narcissus Plan, and that plan only exists off the property.

OK, now that I vented, I feel better.

It's going to be a great winter season, Miss Judy has learned some really valuable lessons, and all seems right with the world.