Top ten signs your administrators have lost touch

10. Administrators won't meet teachers' eyes when teachers try to speak to them. If an administrator won't stop reading his or her email long enough to devote his or her attention to the staff members when they approach, 'at in 'and and very 'umble, guv'nah, then that administrator will have no idea what is going on in the school.

9. They insist on having policies that look good in the eyes of the public, but they equally resist enforcing those policies because it will make the students unhappy. They nonetheless insist on having the policies. They even announce every day on the intercom that the staff are to enforce these policies.

8. They are unconcerned in the extreme that this makes the staff feel like David Hedison in The Fly:

All together now: "HELP! MEEEEEE! HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEE!"



And we're just waiting for Vincent Price to put us out of our misery.


7. They then wonder why they spend all their time putting out fires instead of taking a step back and seeing that the damn forest is tinder-dry, and that they are the rain gods. The administration sets the tone for the building, whether lax or regimented or chaotic or peaceful.

6. They withhold information from the classroom teachers regarding students in their own classes. Teachers spend far more time with individual students than do administrators, but often-- illegally-- administrators leave teachers in a cloud of ignorance.

5. They make "deals" with certain students but fry other students for the slightest infraction. Those students who are thus blessed can ruin a school fast.

4. They stand huddled in little groups when in the hallways, like a defensive phalanx-- but without Eric Bana or Brad Pitt, more's the pity. Their backs face outward to fend off any approach of Others.

3. They do not consider asking for teacher input in the creation of programs or policies; or, worse, they create a group of sycophants to rubber stamp decision to give the appearance of teacher consultation. Further, they do not consider the impact of their programs of policies on how teachers get their jobs accomplished.

2. They expect their faculty to do things they would never consider doing themselves.

1. Their doors are never open. They disappear behind the pine for untold hours, heedless to the consequences. And since they've got their own buffet in the conference room and their own bathrooms, who knows if they'll ever come out?