My children are through school long ago. Now their children, my grandchildren are in the hands of two Principals, three grandies in a school in one state and one grandie in a school in another state.
I have to trust these Principals and having been a Principal myself I guess I am super sensitive to how the schools look after my grandies academically and as whole persons, particularly their wellbeing.
I have an older grandie now in young adulthood. He struggled at school with some form of difference in how he processed information delivered to him. I was by his side constantly assisting where I could and when he would let me, without pressure from me. His school must have felt at times that I was a bit of a thorn in their side but all I wanted was for him to have optimum opportunities. In the main the school utilised me as home backup. There were many occasions when I looked at the written output in various subjects and had a sinking feeling that the school was not supervising the output closely enough. This became very evident in the final high school graduating year as my grandee and I worked hard in a tutoring situation in maths. I used to be appalled at what he was allowed to present in his maths file and it suggested to me that a teacher had decided that at this age the student should accept full responsibility for their learning. That is all very well for a competent, confident student, but not for one who had the information-processing problems of my grandee. Anyhow there was a happy ending to the maths when the teacher, having marked my grandees final input in year 12, rang me and said that I could sit down with a congratulatory drink as the lad had passed his maths.
In his all-boys school there was a bit of an attitude that boys needed to act like men. When a child is in year 4 he is still boy and not a man. My grandee suffered some fairly concentrated bullying because he was not a quick learner and I felt the school let the bullies get away with it. The ultimate irony was when one of the bullies received a citizenship award. At one stage he was harassed by another student to the point where he pushed the other student away. Being fairly tall by this time his hand contacted the other student's face. I was summoned to the school to meet with the Deputy Principal who rather aggressively told me should there be another event like this my grandee would probably have to leave the school. I held my cool, while seething underneath, and explained that this was the only occasion my grandie had done anything like this in his now several years at the school. The Deputy was smart enough to see where I was at and conceded my point.
Enough with the anecdotes but you can see how much one has to trust a Principal when one hands over one's loved ones. The Principal of my grandie's large K-12 school was too far removed from my grandson's plight and in my view had not set up satisfactory feedback contacts to those who he had delegated to look after my loved one. I believe that every Principal, no matter how large the school, should let his staff know that he needs to be briefed about students who are struggling in whatever way and that it should not be let go until it becomes a serious issue.
As Principals we do not own our students in the sense that the parent does and we must always respect this and act accordingly. We have such a massive trust placed in us and part of our brief is to live up to this honour that has been bestowed upon us as the leaders of school communities.
May the Force be with you!
GD
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