Careful steps on a broken bridge

As I have gone through the course content and engaged with it with both mind and heart, I have come to think about administration as the need to take careful steps on a broken bridge. On one side of the bridge are us teachers. On the other side you will see the students. We as administrators need to help those two sides come together by taking careful steps on a broken bridge. The bridge is our educational system.

As I have interacted with and pretended to be a variety of different roles I’ve learned what it might be like to take a step across the bridge in different shoes. The different areas of the school look at the school with totally different perspectives. One big challenge for me will be understanding those different areas.

When I was a child I played a video game on my Atari called Pitfall. In it, the little character jumps over pits and encounters snakes, etc. As an administrator, I will need to learn to deftly walk through those situations with grace and agility so as to avoid falling into the pit of despair, anger, or desperation. It is only by remaining connected to the central core vision that drives me forward. To continue the analogy, the vision is much like the rope on which I swing to avoid the pits. I will implement the strategies learned so as to stay on the rope and not fall or succumb to any of the dangerous enemies the game provides. Then, and only then, can I reach the bridge to help connect teachers and students.

This course has been like a training program for how to walk across the bridge carefully. The course has shown me and had me act like a variety of perspectives. By doing so, I have learned to take into account issues of vision, management, student learning, and sound principles. By focusing on these four categories of school, I will inherently manage the school with laser focus. I will implement technological tools to model collaboration with my faculty and staff, and together we will repair the bridge.