My vision of becoming a principal has always included a "chief motivator"-type of component. I visualize myself addressing a large auditorium, cafeteria, of gymnasium full of underachieving teenagers and inspiring them to achieve great things. And why would this be an unreasonable vision? I've done it with a classroom full of students time and again (even with classrooms of kids I didn't know).
"Nuh-uh." Not so fast. There's a huge difference between 30 kids and 300 kids, as I found out yesterday. I have been charged with organizing my school's end-of-year celebration for 8th graders. It's going to be a ton of fun, and to get the kids charged up, I created a quick little powerpoint preview to present during the 8th graders' lunch period. Well wouldn't you know it, it was just downright impossible to get them all to be quiet. There were moments where I was able to speak to them enough to convey information, but they were punctuated by multiple occasions where I had to simply turn off the projector and wait to re-gain their collective attention.
And darn it, there weren't any strings attached to my message either! No orders for them to behave better, or respect their peers, or keep the cafeteria clean! It was simply a message of pure fun. And yet, they couldn't sit respectfully for a simple 5 minutes. You'd think I'd understand teen-agers better than this!
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