My previous job in the US was ok. I worked at a small school (1500 kids) in the middle of the Californian desert and the administrators I had were decent - for the first 3 years. In my fourth year, Doc entered my life.
Doc came from Rialto High School where he was an assistant principal and he was moved up to principal at my high school. He came in and made huge changes without consulting any of us who actually lived there. Yup, he didn't even live in my town, he just commuted from Rialto every day (which is a substantial drive). Needless to say, our staff wasn't too thrilled with these changes and there were a few times that Doc did some truly outrageous things that required intervening by the teachers' union.
And I was the vice-president of secondary schools which meant that those grievances came to me.
So I got to go head-to-head with Doc on a rather frequent basis and I can't say that I enjoyed it too much. Nothing like going to work and always having to confront your boss about the stupid shit that he was doing. I was so glad when that year was done because I left Doc behind as I moved to Holland.
Well, Doc left my high school after the following year due to 'personal reasons' - i.e. he fought with the District Office too much. So he went back to where he lived and took a job at Colton High (right next to Rialto) as their principal. He then started making those same changes to Colton as he did to mine and pissed off the staff, just like he did to mine.
The students at Colton High decided to get even with him and bring to light how they didn't approve of his methods and tactics. They had a student walkout to protest Doc and got the media involved. Watch the video that KCAL filmed on it at
http://kcal9.com/topstories/topstoriesla_story_041222847.html
or click on 'doc the dictator' above. I wonder how long he will keep his job after this...
Some people just aren't meant to do certain jobs and I think Doc is definately in the wrong job. Two jobs as a principal and twice he has managed to do the wrong thing. Perhaps a career change is in order. Perhaps.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
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6 comments:
Where are all the good administrators? I have great ideas about running a school one day, and I feel I could do a much better job then most of the administors I've worked with. What I would hate would be all the meetings and shmoozing and trying to make everyone happy.
Now that I think about, I already do all of that (meetings and shmoozing and trying to make everyone happy) as a teacher.
I think it would be a tough job to be an administrator. My colleagues agree with me: as a rule, it's the bad teachers who become administrators.
Even for all the money in the world, I would never want to leave the classroom to work in an office.
Shamash
Hey, Expat Nomad. Check out this link. It discusses Colton High!
http://educationwonk.blogspot.com/2005/02/californias-colton-high-school.html
I thank you for the link. I went and left my view on the issue. I wonder what the response will be
Wow! Comment, you did! What a great read. I just LOVE contraversy. It's quite amazing to me that you actually worked for this guy!
I've really enjoyed reading your insightful comments over at our place. I guess Doc will be looking for another school to tick-off soon.
Is this guy one of those "New Model" administrators that are young, brash, and arrogant? They seem to think that substituting chutzpah for common sense will move their schools forward.
"New Model" admin? Yeah I guess so. He did have good intentions about improving a school but never quite seemed to be able to do a decent job of implementing his ideas.
But as we all know, good intentions pave the way to hell...
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