Monthly Archives: June 2007

Yesterday, I wrote about senior pranks, how I feel about them, and two that we endured this week. There’s more to this story.

I’ve been around the block a couple of time with senior classes. Both as a teacher who advised seniors and as a high school principal of five years. 99% of the time I still opt to think the best of our students. If I didn’t I’d be less of a leader.

When our students came to me and said, “we want to do a senior prank, but we know how you feel about them, and we want it to be harmless”, I listened. Students said, “we want to wear bathing suits to school tomorrow and at 12:15 all get up and go jump in the pool. We’ve asked the PE teacher to lifeguard. We promise there won’t be any other pranks.” I explained that several of their classmates had significant hurdles to graduation and that those students had to be in class. They listened, we agreed, my dean of students (who’s been around the block a few more times than me) said you’re nuts, there will still be more pranks and now you’ve agreed to this disruption.

He was right about more pranks and in fact, one of the students who met with me about the harmless prank was one who later disappointed me. My teachers were upset because they hear me harping about higher expectations and getting ready for the Regents. I believed it was a relatively benign way for students to feel they’d left their mark and rebelled a bit. I lost face with my teachers.

For all but five or six of our students, it was a good agreement. I work to promote a positive climate where our students feel valued and celebrated. My teachers and staff are definitely not feeling valued and celebrated this week and that’s my responsibility too.

In addition, early in May, students came to me and asked if we could have a senior picnic on Monday, after school, with all of their teachers invited. They’re planning, cooking, and paying for it. Without pranks or problems on this weekend’s senior trip, I agreed to it. I’m looking forward to it. I’m hoping there are no additional pranks and no problems on the trip. Because we know who pulled this week’s pranks and because they are receiving consequences, we will continue with our plans for the picnic.

But I’m left wondering what I’ll find at school next. I totally agree with David and other G-town readers, seniors could be thinking about something creative and funny that will make us miss them.

I hate senior pranks. Because I take personal responsibility for everything that happens in our school, I also take senior pranks personally. And as a person who’s dedicated the last seventeen years of my life to making schools better for kids, I find senior pranks to be disrespectful and ungrateful, selfish acts.

The single thing about senior pranks that ticks me off to no end is that it’s almost always a prank that results in additional work for our hard working cleaning and custodial crew. This infuriates me– that the women and men who tirelessly and quietly clean up after us day in and day out should be “thanked” in this way.

When I arrived at school earlier this week, Carol and Maggie had been working since 6:00 am to clean up the gunk that was on an entire hallway of lockers. It took them two hours to clean every locker. Who did those students prank? Just Carol and Maggie and they don’t deserve it.

Yesterday a military smoke bomb was set off in the girls’ lav near my front entrance. The school was evacuated, Regents reviews were disrupted, police were sent to the school. And the smoke was incredibly strong so I worried about every student and staff member who filed by with asthma or allergies. The police reacted strongly because in today’s climate they have to consider that something like this could be a diversion for worse behavior elsewhere in the school.

In my next post, I’ll write about how we handled both incidents and how they were resolved.