We're in For It Now

This year lots of new things happened:
1) I had a baby.
2) I went back to work after many months bring a stay at home parent.
3) I stopped working for myself and started working for someone else.
4) I became a school administrator.

Now don't get me wrong. All of those things are fantastic. My child is the central pillar of my life, and I actively chose to close my business in favor of becoming an admin. I suppose that should I do anything differently, I wouldn't have done all those things quite at the same time.

I realized how dramatically different the life of an administrator was within my first few weeks. Granted, I have know during the many years of my teaching career that administrators have a whole different set of problems. Much like parenthood, though, administrator-hood is only truly learned in the trenches.

A teacher, here named C, came to let me know an eight year old student repeatedly asked for him to accompany her to the restroom and further button her pants after she...completed her business. Ever aware of propriety, I gave Mom a call to let her know that not only will we not be accompanying dear little Crystal to the restroom, we certainly were in no position to button her pants.

Mom becomes irate despite the fact that we clearly state the only children than are 'independent' can enter our school. She tells me 'Well, had I known that I would never have sent Crystal to you. She has a physical handicap. Her arms are too short. She can't wipe her own butt.'

This is the first time I actually taken the phone from my ear and stared at it in disbelief.