Being an administrator requires a special kind of stamina. It's not the stamina to get through any particular day or week or month. It's the stamina to be able to engage in the same conversation with a particular student (and parent) over and over again, over time.
In my short stint so far, there are four or five at-risk students who repeatedly end up in the office. I've sat in on many parent conferences, and aside from the terrible sadness I always feel when I get to understand family situations at home, I marvel at my supervising administrators being able to repeat the same message to a particular student, sometimes two or three times a week, with a straight face, all the while knowing that there is little to no hope that a behavior will improve. In those meetings, I find myself becoming very quiet and almost somber.
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