This tip’s meant for newbies, but people who have changed schools or administrators may find the tip useful as well.

From my last post:

*In practical terms, you genuinely should avoid airing all the laundry in front of the administration, but your coworkers should be mostly “safe,” especially if you ask for help and advice. Experienced teachers expect to help colleagues get started.

I can’t leave these two-sentences of advice dangling at the end of a post. Administrators are like bit players in a Star Wars movie. By temperment and character, some are greedy shopkeepers, some are surly bartenders, some are embittered former Jedi knights, some are Rebel fighters and some are Imperial Stormtroopers. You may not always know what you have, too. Those administrators can be tricky.

Especially be careful of new, young or desperate administrators.

Put any administrator in a potential turn-around school in the desperate category. Put any administrator whose job depends on improving test scores in the desperate category. Desperate administrators make desperate moves in order to hang onto their jobs. Getting rid of “substandard” teachers looks good to higher-ups in the district office — whether you have truly sub-standard teachers to fire or not.

The problem with new and young administrators can be a lack of understanding of “normal” school conditions. If Maribeth taught in a prosperous, middle-school district with great test scores, but took her first administrative teaching position in your urban school with its 39% drop-out rate, Maribeth may have no idea what she’s doing — but she may not realize that fact. If you come at her describing too many problems, she may decide you cannot manage a classroom — a classroom that she herself might be unable to manage. But she won’t necessarily realize that fact because historically her own classes always went well.

Admin may claim to want the best for you. They may act like your friend. They may even be your friend. You can’t trust that friendship, however.

If the administration decides to get rid of a few teachers to show that they are addressing the problem of lower test scores, you want to be invisible. Too many requests for help can translate into too much trouble managing a classroom. I watch a colleague lose her job in her second year, very unfairly in my view, in part because a group of middle-school girls had put her on the radar. I loved the principal responsible, but I still think my colleague lost her job because he needed a “sacrifice” as the state closed in on my district.

Eduhonesty: Get help from colleagues, not your administration. Watch out for colleagues who are too buddy-buddy with administration. Watch out for colleagues who share too much gossip in the teacher’s lounge.

Tip # 15.5: Ask for as much useful professional development as you can. The best help sometimes comes from outsiders, and requesting professional development always looks good. Share the best parts of that development with other colleagues who did not attend useful seminars with you.

Tip #15.6: If admin asks how you are doing, the answer is “Great!” A small question here might be indicated, especially if you are in the Dean’s office with a student, for example. You might tack on something like, “I do need to work on keeping Fatima and Sarah on task, though. I have already separated their desks and called home. What else would you do?”

Asking for a few pieces of administrative advice should help you to make a good impression, provided you make sure that administration understands that, overall, you are doing “Great!”

P.S. Obviously I am overgeneralizing here. The best administrators I ever knew were working in challenging environments. You may have nothing to worry about. I’d follow one man who worked in desperate times to Mars. He was a wonderful leader. But in this time when schools have been known to use the numbers in the Charlotte Danielson (or other) rubric to decide on teacher retention, letting administration know that you are struggling with small groups may lower your evaluation score and final average. I knew someone who was let go for getting a 2.7 when her district required a 2.73. These are crazy times. I’d say, better to be safe than sorry until you have been in your position and worked under your new principal for long enough to know the lay of the land.