Tag Archives: middle school

Office referrals

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I’ve repeatedly said what a privilege it was to start my teaching career where I did. I was surrounded by new and truly great teachers whom I got to grow up with. Some of them are still my closest friends today, and many of them are principals. Even the ones who didn’t go the route of administration, are still great teacher leaders today.

One benefit of entering the profession in this incredible environment is that we had a culture of sharing and cooperation, and it was common to see another teacher or the principal or vice principal visit classrooms. If the VP walked into your room, you didn’t stop teaching, you kept going until a good stopping point. In fact, the VP might even contribute to the lesson.

Another aspect of this is that we barely ever sent anyone to the office. In 9 years at a middle school I can only remember sending 2 students to the office, there might have been more, but like I mentioned in my post, “The 4 ‘D’s leading to office discipline”, I could count my office referrals on one hand. But the point I want to make here was also mentioned in that post but not explicitly discussed.

When you get into administration of a school, one of the most shocking things you’ll encounter is that some teachers use the administration as part of their classroom management strategy. Coming from the environment I did, teachers managed their classroom and something ‘really serious’ had to happen before a student was sent to the office. Other than that, we figured things out.

My first assignment as VP was filled with office referrals that shocked me. I can’t tell you how many times I thought to myself, ‘That’s it? That’s all this kid did? And that’s why he’s in my office?’ This was my biggest adjustment, a huge realization of how amazing my first 9 years were at Como Lake Middle School. We had a culture of learning and caring that was significantly above the norm, and so ‘normal’ felt insufficient.

I currently work at schools where I find that not only are office referrals appropriate, but I’ll often get a ‘heads-up’ of a potential issue, and then that issue could still get handled without me. But my first VP job was a shocker. The adjustment I had to make was to not make unhealthy comparisons to my previous experience. Yes, this issue would have been handled differently at Como Lake, but things are different here.

It was a hard transition, to be supportive and not judgmental. Like I said before, “In my eyes, sending a kid to the office was essentially telling the kid, “I cant manage you,” which takes away any leverage I may have the next time this student has any challenging behaviour.”

Now, the complaints I deal with for my online school are often ones where parents are already involved, making the situation a bit more complicated before they get to me. Or at Inquiry Hub, kids are sent to me to solve good problems… they want to do a project that needs special permission or considerations. I love solving problems where my biggest challenge is, how do I get to ‘Yes’? How do I solve this problem so that our students can benefit? These are by far my favourite office referrals… rather than doling out consequences for inappropriate behaviour.

Something really special

I sometimes forget how lucky I was at the start of my teaching career. I worked with some amazing leaders and educators, and we created very special learning experiences for our students. When I meet former students from those teaching years, they often share a few different comments such as:

  • Middle school was my favourite time in school.
  • You guys made school so much fun.
  • You taught us life skills I still think about.
  • We could tell you all loved teaching and loved working together.
  • It was such a special school!

Today my wife and I (we both taught at the school back then) met up with a former student visiting from Ottawa. She had invited friends and former teachers to meet at a local park. This student is pregnant with her first child and she talked about wanting to find a future school for her newborn that was as special as Como Lake Middle was to her.

She said, ‘For years I thought every middle school was as fantastic as our school’, and that it was comments on our Facebook pages about how special our experience was (from other former students) that made her realize, ‘Wait, that isn’t normal for every middle school?’ She said she thought that’s just what middle school was before talking to her husband and others that didn’t have such an amazing experience.

She brought up a specific lesson I’d shared in a leadership class, and like others she mentioned how much fun the teachers had together. She brought up an experience in PE class where the Vice Principal highlighted her effort in PE, even though she was, as she described it, ‘in the middle of the pack athletically’. And she mentioned a teacher visiting her class on the first day and teasing her teacher in such a fun way that everyone had a good laugh (including her teacher being teased).

I need to spend more time reflecting, fondly reminiscing, and appreciating those years, and the connections to students from those years. They really were something special.