What is the day-to-day experience of someone working in education?

Hi Johnattan,

I was a Dean of Students at a high school that I helped create in Chicago, IL for the past 4 years. Similar to nskellogg, I was also a teacher for three years prior to that. I can tell you about my day as an administrator. I think a Principal's day could be similar - we would often sit in the same meetings.

*An important thing to note, is that days are not always "regular" in a school. Often times it is important to react to certain situations if a student or teacher needs specific extra support. And at different times of the year days can be more or less busy. For example, I worked hard in the summer to create student schedules, order educational materials, and help plan the school budget. Report Card Pick Up time is very busy at the end of each quarter, every time we gave an interim or state or national test, I was swamped with work. Depending on the year, we were also busy hiring new teachers (this was because we were a growing school - if you run a strong, mature school, hopefully you will be able to keep your teachers year after year).

5:30 am - Wake Up

6:30 am - Arrive at my school

6:30 - 7:00 am - Catch up on important emails from parents, teachers, students, etc.

7:00 - 7:30 am - A student may show up in my office with a question about community service, enrichment, or academics. I do my best to help them. If no students show, I am usually still replying to emails.

7:30 - 8:00 am - Advisory: I loved working with a small group of students each year. This was similar to home room. I made sure they ha the correct uniform, finished their homework, were working hard to get to college, and I knew fairly well what was happening with their families in addition to their academics.

8:00 - 9:00 am - Data: I ran data all the time to check the attendance, grades, GPA, service hours, discipline metrics, enrichment hours, college acceptances, scholarships, and testing scores of our students. Based on the time of year and the data I created plans for struggling students, wrote recommendations for student awards, called parents about their student's performance, scheduled meeting with teachers about their data.

9:00 - 9:30 am - Classroom Observations: Go from room to room (10 minutes per room) to ensure the active learning is taking place and teachers are teaching well. (If the teacher wanted specific feedback, I may stay for a whole 50 minutes in that one classroom).

9:30 - 10:30 am - Teacher Meeting Example - Meet with Science teachers about their data, planning, and goals for their students. Check if they have any specific students who are struggling and come up with a plan to support the student.

10:30 - 11:30 am - Meet with Dean of Operations about budget, homecoming, graduation, recruiting, or other important event coming soon.

11:30 - 12:30 pm - Go to lunch with students. Track down certain students I need to chat with. Show a quick engaging video to students (once a week) and make important announcements at lunch.

12:30 - 1:00 pm - Meet with a specific teacher over lunch to talk about a specific lesson or class he/she taught. Come up with improvement plans or give them strong feedback.

1:00 - 3:00 pm - Administrative Meeting: We had long meetings with our Principal, Dean of Operations, and Dean of Discipline once a week. Each leader talked about his or her goals for the week, month, etc. This was weekly. If I was not in an admin meeting, I would be meeting with other teachers, leaders, outside organizations, curriculum specialists, etc.

3:00 - 4:00 pm - Walk the halls to ensure students are getting to enrichment programs, sports, tutoring, homework detentions, etc. Meet with students in my office if they have questions or needs.

4:00 - 7:00 pm - This is often a time when parents would come to meet with us if they needed. Or sometimes I would go to see a sports event for the students. Sometimes I might be in my office working on emails, meeting another teacher, scheduling a new meeting, working on more data, or preparing for the next big event.

***I often left at 7:00 pm or later, because I am a work-a-holic and a perfectionist. I was also a young leader and felt that I had a lot to prove. I also had a lot to learn, and learning takes time.

Hope this was a little bit helpful. The strange thing, is that every day is different in an administrator's life, and that is what keeps it exciting and unique.

I have been a school administrator for eleven years, but before that I was a teacher for seventeen years. When you go into administration you give up a lot of your personal space and decision making. When you are a school administrator, there are many more people to please. All of whom, believe that they are certain about what is best for your school. Personally I have always loved serving the school community, that is students, teachers, parents and found that the stress comes from external sources like Superintendents, city mandates, state mandates, etc. You, as the Principal become a symbol of the whole school. The school's failure is your fault, but its success is everyone's - - - as it should be. So, don't move too quickly into administration. In recent years we have seen many twenty, thirty years old go in then out of administration for lack of knowledge and maturity for what the job entails. You need to maintain a vision for academic and social success while wearing a thick skin. Now, on the other hand, when you are able to achieve success, it is a great feeling and all the hard work is worth it. Everyday brings its trials and smiles! You have to love the students and keep them as your focal point.

Hi, I was a primary school teacher and secondary school tutor for 4 years. I also taught adult ESL. As a teacher you have to be creative to think of new ways to teach different things, and also in different styles as the way you reach one student may be different from the next. You have to make it educational yet not boring, and could be a challenge at times. You have to prepare lessons ahead of time and be flexible and think on your feet if things don't go the way you think ie. say your lesson is based on pop culture and is around a television show that you think that the whole class should know. There may be some new citizens or just some students who are not into that show. You would then have to modify on the fly. But then you would probably know your students, and would have a modification in place. It was just an example but I think you get the idea.