I don’t know how anyone reads the fine print on a pill bottle or a CD insert or our budget sheets. I know how I read them a year ago, but they are suddenly making the print much smaller. I finally broke down and purchased a $17.99 pair of reading glasses at Rite Aid. Actually, they were 50% off and I bought +1.25 because the +1.00 glasses that I probably should have started with were ugly. So now I feel like I have vertigo whenever I’m reading something at my desk and I look up to see someone who walks into the office. Is this just the beginning? Honestly.
I mention all this because I find myself in a curious position. As an administrator, I was often one of the youngest people in the room (other than our middle school principal, but he started at a freakishly young age). Now I’m older than the middle school and high school principals and a large portion of our staff. And I like it. There’s a certain amount of credibility that comes with being older.
An article in the February, 2008 issue of District Administration, State of the Superintendency, “examines the stress and satisfaction in a changing profession”. The author, Angela Pascopella, states:
A big surprise for some district leaders is that today’s superintendents are older. The mean age is the highest in history, at nearly 55 years. In years past, superintendents started their positions at around age 40, after about five years as a classroom teacher, another five to seven years as a building-level administrator, and another five years in district administration.
Pascopella goes on to reason that,
One reason for the increase in age among superintendents might be the reluctance of central office administrators to move from a “safe” position to one that may require a move to another district or state. . . . Some good news is that nearly 22 percent of superintendents are female, a better representation considering the majority of females in teaching and other positions.
What does this mean for me, a female central office administrator? I’m not sure this position feels any “safer” than a superintendency would feel. The position of school administrator requires a variety of skills and abilities AND there is also an enormous amount of content to the job. Every administrator with whom I’ve ever worked is expert on part of that content and strong on other parts, but none has ever been expert in every area. The longer I stay in this position, the more opportunity I have to learn the content of the superintendency, a very complicated role. That doesn’t sound like playing it safe, it sounds like playing it smart.
And as far as being female goes, I’m pleased to see that 22% of superintendents are female, but I’ve always believed that I would be hired on the merit of my work and ideas, gender being irrelevant. That’s been my belief since entering the work force at 15 and it’s proven true throughout my career path. My female colleagues, who are well qualified for the administrative track but unwilling, often choose to remain in the classroom due to a lack of time and energy because of conflicting family demands, not due to a lack of confidence or ambition for the position.
I have taught for over 25 years and been head of the dept. for over 15 years when I was asked to go into administration. I was honored and thrilled because I knew I could do the job and it was the obvious next step for me to go. Of course I turned it down for many reasons. It was hard for me to raise my children and be there for my husband (he likes the “traditional” kind of family) if I was an administrator. On the high school level there is so much responsibility that I felt I wouldn’t have a life outside of the school. In a school with 2300 students, the administrators were all taking turns attending extracurricular activities. I also saw them staying late to do paperwork since they didn’t have time during the regular school day because they were handling discipline problems and teacher evaluations. All of that made me feel like I would be so far removed from the joys of teaching, that I turned it down. I’m glad you are in your position because it seems like you would be a great person to work for!