If you've been reading the blog for more than a month, you're probably thinking, "Good grief! This woman recently wrote a post called 'Why My Presence Shouldn't Matter(opens in new tab)' and now she's writing the exact opposite." And you're right. On the other hand, as Gretchen Rubin(opens in new tab) says, the opposite of a profound truth is often also true. And I'm being profound. In my earlier post, I was saying, more or less, that if people know what they're supposed to be doing, they should do it whether or not an outside authority figure is watching them. Today, I am thinking more about the responsibilities of the outside authority figure, namely me.
While I don't think students should feel as if they live in a panopticon, being watched all the time from every angle, I do hope they know that we adults are available to them when they need us.
At my school, and maybe at most schools, when people take on administrative roles, they get a commensurate reduction in their teaching load. Being one of two English department heads "counted" as one class, for example, but being a solo head counts for two classes. Because I'm now a dean, instead of teaching four sections of English, I teach two.
Doing the dean job certainly takes as much time as prepping, teaching, and grading two classes, but many of the tasks are ones I could perform at any time of day from any location. I know I would be more efficient at completing those jobs if I were in a distraction-reduced setting, such as my home. Moreover, I could take advantage of my flexibility to schedule lots of appointments for myself at times of the day when a four-course load might have me teaching a class.
But I remind myself that the "distractions" of students coming in to talk about their attendance or to ask for advice or to chat or share good news or for anything else, or a teacher stopping by to give me information about a student aren't extras; they're fundamental aspects of my doing the job. Building up relationships with and getting to know the kiddos in my grade are critical to my being able to help them get from now to graduation, to my work in service of teaching them to become responsible, capable, independent (as much as anyone is) adults. If I'm not easily available to them, I'm not doing the job.
Where I land is that geography matters. Being present and available isn't so much about being able to say, "Feel free to book an appointment with me using my calendar" (though that is important, too), but about being in the room when they randomly decide to stop by.
What do you think? Please share your responses in the comments.