hi there i'm kathleen jasper and today we're talking about some tips and tricks for new assistant principals especially assistant principals who are working in discipline i was once a disciplined assistant principal and i've been through it too and i thought i would share some things that i learned along the way with you let's get started all right so we've been getting a lot of updates from you guys many of you have passed your slla 6990 exams scores just came out not too long ago for this round and we got a lot of passers many of you used our products and we were really excited for you and so every time we get an email saying we passed we're so excited we get very very happy and elated with you guys and so we know that you're about to venture off into the world of being an assistant principal and it's exciting it's one of those things that where you're leaving the classroom and you're going into becoming a building administrator and many of you are going to be working in discipline where you're processing referrals you're working with students who are having behavioral problems and you're supporting both students and teachers through the discipline part of school it can be very very challenging and it can also be very very rewarding and as i was jogging today i like to run and think and i was thinking about some of the things that i did as a new assistant principal and i made a ton of mistakes especially in discipline and i felt like i would share some of those mistakes with you and then show you some ways in which i corrected those mistakes and ended up making a real impact on my students lives and so that is really um what i wanted to talk about today so first um i became an assistant principal i was pretty young i think i was about 32 or 33 when i became an assistant principal and i was really excited one reason being is that you know you kind of pass all your exams you get your masters in the ed leadership and you you know check all the boxes and now it's time for you to be a you know kind of in charge and you're excited about that um the other thing is i was working my way up that ladder and i was happy to be doing that i was going up in my career and i wanted to be an assistant principal of curriculum i wanted to work in curriculum that was really where i thought my strengths were but that job was already taken and so i ended up being an assistant principal of discipline one of three in a high school so this video is really for you know your high school principals or assistant principals or middle school but elementary school principles you'll definitely get something out of this as well so when i started i made a lot of mistakes i was kind of this the hammer i was chasing kids down i was getting them for dress code i was following the code of conduct to the t if they broke a rule i went by the book and i said okay it's four days home or you know two days in iss or this that and the other thing and i would just follow the book and i was noticing that the same students over and over and over again were coming through my door and this business of sending them home for four days for for out of school suspension or sending them to the iss room to sit there all day and do nothing wasn't really working it wasn't solving the problem and many of you know this for sure um some of you are working in a positive behavior support school where you're working through that but even with pbs you know sometimes those tactics don't even work and so um i was getting to know my students a lot through just them coming into my office so i could process referrals and i would process anywhere from 5 to 25 referrals a day little tip to teachers out there if you're writing a lot of referrals you're not really doing a lot of good um in the school you're actually clogging the system up so i would say to teachers who are you know having a hard time with students make referrals your last resort and really work on that classroom management we'll do another video on that on another time but assistant principals are there to support the teachers and make sure the kids are not you know acting up but when you see the same kids getting written up over and over again by the same teacher over and over again you know red flags start to uh go up in your mind now you see the students in a different way you know these kids were coming in and they're not in my classroom they're not causing problems in my classroom they're coming into my office to process a referral and so i was getting to know them in a different way and i was a teacher also before i was an assistant principal so i know how frustrating it is when a student is acting up and being a complete jerk in your classroom and disrespecting you and all you want to do is get them out of there get her out of there and so i definitely understand that but as they were coming through the door you know i was learning more and more about them because we were having these one-on-one conversations which is something that being an assistant principal is is a benefit and so i decided to try a new approach one of the things that my principal taught me and i thought was really really helpful and i'll say this to you as you become assistant principals is when a student comes into your office for any reason whether it's a referral or you know he got picked up in the hallway for smoking in the bathroom or whatever it is if it's high school it could be any number of things you always want to pull their academic history and their attendance the reason being is that they tell a story the academic history will show you what's going on um the student may have been a straight a student you know last year the year before the year before and all of a sudden the grades are going down right the attendance may show you that there's been some gap in attendance where the student is missing a lot of school and you can start asking questions from that point right that's data you're actually looking at the data and quickly asking questions to investigate what's going on and we talk a lot about that in our videos for you know the the certification exams well this is like real life doing it on the fly and so i would pull the academic history and pull the attendance and ask these questions and often i would say to the kid hey you've got you know five days here no school what's going on you skipped five days and you know because the student might have been a problem student before we automatically think the kid is up to no good or something's going on but sometimes it's the student's parents got deported in the middle of the night and the student had to skip school because he had to stay home with his little brothers and sisters and make sure they were taken care of or you know the kid ran away from home and slept in the woods those that happened a couple of times where students were like living in the woods because they ran away from home and they're in an abusive household and all of that other times it was kids just skipping school to smoke pot and play video games you know i mean there's all these different things happening so you know getting those stories getting that data getting those academic histories and the attendance is really important for you to make a decision now of course you have the code of conduct in the book that you have to go by but really leadership is situational and you want to make sure that you are looking at the entire situation so obviously i'm not going to throw the book at a kid who has stayed home from school because his parents were recently deported and he's had to take care of his brothers and sisters right that's a different situation than a kid who just decided to skip school and smoke weed and play video games for five days right so um obviously that those are two different situations but one of the things that i found to really help in all situations where i had the same kids coming through my door over and over and over again was to work with them on a level where it we took the discipline out and we started talking to them about their lives and making them responsible for coming back to see me not because of discipline but because they have a standing appointment so what i would do is i see this kid over and over again it's not working you know he's gotten suspended whatever and i would pull the academic history and i would say okay his english grade is down his math grade is like borderline f something's going on here and so i would have the student put in his calendar in his planner or in her planner a standing appointment with me to come back in a week or two weeks and we would make a plan to get that grade up so i took the discipline completely out of it and focused on the grades and the appointment that they were going to come back and see me now they were going to come back and see me not because they were in trouble but because they now had an appointment with me i also reiterated to them that i was a busy woman and that i had things to do and if they stood me up then this relationship this you know back and forth was going to end and i wasn't going to be available to them so they needed to show up and so often i would have them take out their phones put in their google calendar you know the next time i wanted them to come see me i would pull my calendar up on my screen and i would say okay what about monday at 2 p.m can you be here uh when's your lunch okay let's do that all right what elective can i kind of get you in here for 15 minutes and talk about your grades maybe you know they have shop or something like that not that shop is not a very important class but maybe they had a class that wasn't a content or uh you know high academic area where i could pull them for 15 minutes and talk about their grades and so i would say to them all right i want to see you in a week and in a week i'm going to pull your history again i want to see your grades and i want to see this grade go up not to an a you know maybe it's a d right now maybe i want to see it go to a c or i want to see you turn in more homework or some sort of goal we set that is attainable in a week's long period of time and i will tell you 99 of the time those students showed back up to my office without me having to chase them down they would be there on time waiting outside my office i remember the first time i did it i set a time with the student who was just having problems you know in every class english class math class he could not get it together and i did this thing where i said okay i want to see you in one week and i want these two grades to be up and i had just come off lunch duty and i was coming back to my office and i had kind of forgotten that i had set the the appointment with him and uh because you know your calendar is just packed when you're assistant principal and there he was sitting outside my office waiting for me he was early for the appointment and this is a kid who was in iss like almost every day of his life and so um i was surprised that i didn't have to call him down to meet me for that appointment he did it on his own and when he came in he had raised his grade now he wasn't you know top of his class he wasn't going to you know graduate with straight a's but he had turned it around and now instead of focusing on his discipline we were focusing on these small incremental goals with his grades and having an appointment with me made him feel important and made him feel like he had something to do and it wasn't just about discipline it was actually about his life his grades and his like existence as a human being and so i started doing this with students who um were having problems major behavior problems and could not get it together and i will tell you it really started to work i started seeing them more and more for their grades and less and less for behavior and i kept having these appointments and instead of processing referrals i was pulling up their grades talking about their goals and helping them to do better as students and the teachers really noticed a difference in their behavior now did this work for every single student and did we save every kid and did everyone become a perfect human being in the classroom no not at all but those kids who were quote problem kids and i i don't like to say that word because i really loved my my kids that i saw in discipline i just i thought they were great um instead of focusing on that discipline we were focusing on the grades and a whole new attitude and outlook on life happened for them and they were able to carry that on and and then they would you know make standing appointments with me they'd come in and say hi um once we got to a point where they were kind of you know doing it on their own without having to see me i would spread out the appointments a little bit more maybe a month you know maybe once a quarter and sometimes they would say no i want to keep up the the once every two weeks or once a week and that was fine with me you know and i would make time on my calendar for them and so i thought i would share that with you today i just remember my back up against the wall trying so hard to get these kids to do what i said and when i started treating them like human beings and focusing more on their goals and helping them it really changed things for me as a as an assistant principal of discipline the other thing i will tell you very quickly is i help them use google calendar on their phones and so um it was almost like a life skill as well um i would say okay open your phone download google calendar and they were like google calendar like none of them use email none of them use any of that they all use like well now they use tick-tock and all that back then they were using snapchat and everything else and um i said okay download google calendar and i would show them how it works and they would use it and set reminders and i would say even set a reminder you know a couple of days before the meeting with me so that you remember that you have a meeting with me in two or three days so you make sure you do what we said we were going to do and they would do that and they would use google calendar to organize their day and when they organized their meeting with me they would then use it to organize other things and they became better organized in the classroom and things like that some of them probably used google calendar to organize their drug dealing business you know i don't know but whatever we got them organized and it became a real high point in my uh my career so i thought i would share that with all the new assistant principals who are going out there this year you're probably wondering how you're going to handle some of these things discipline is tough it's really hard to process referrals all day to call parents and tell them constantly that their students are messing up and being rude in the classroom and all of this some students are really tough and hard to reach and others just need a little bit of support and an appointment with you maybe on a weekly basis so that you can go go over goals and objectives that will help them to become better human beings and so that's really our job as educators so that's all i wanted to talk about today no test prep or anything just wanted to cheer you on as an assistant principal really excited for you guys who have passed your exams and going in to the field and i hope maybe you've got a little something out of this today and i look forward to hearing about your stories you can put them in the comments below you can ask me questions in the comments below i'm happy to film more on my experience as an ap and if you haven't already consider subscribing to this youtube channel and give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and let us know how you're doing have an awesome day