DESCRIPTORS:
Principal, school management, scheduling, human relations, extracurricular activities, school projects, school-community relations, school day, time management, management >

SYNOPSIS:
This article provides “snapshots” of a Russian school principal’s week. Included in the article are descriptions of school activities and meetings within the school and in the community. These descriptions provide a candid view of this writer’s management >

Here are the entries from my diary for last week. I would like to share them with you. Let’s think of my notes as individual photographs. With that understood, dear friends, sit back and relax for you are going to have an intimate look at this principal’s photo album.

MONDAY

Look at the first “photograph” in my album. Of course, I tour the building every day, but, on Mondays, I do an especially thorough job. It is obviously more convenient to perform my tasks while the children are in class, but I can’t resist the pleasure of being around while the children are in the halls. At those moments, I am like a storage battery charging up. “Good morning, Mr. Kamensky,” “Morning, Mr. Kamensky,” “Hi, Mr. Kamensky.” These student greetings accumulate on me like tiny electrons.

The supervisor of buildings is being grumpy. Someone has torn off a skirting board in the boys’ locker room. Inside the opening, she has found an empty cigarette pack. “They’ll burn down the school,” she warns. Well, she is right. That could easily happen. I go down to the maintenance room and personally ask Volodya, our maintenance man, to fix the hole, ASAP. I also use the opportunity to offer him an extra job during the spring break (The ceiling in the second gym area needs whitewashing.) I hope I won’t forget to talk to the Athletics Director about the smoking issue. This incident may have happened because the coach, Sergey Sergeyevich, spends all his time in the office and doesn’t check the locker room during the break.
I take the stairs to the third floor and give Tatyana Alexeyevna, the coordinating manager, the figures for next year’s academic hours. The extra hours needed should be taken into consideration when specifying each teacher’s working hours.

Over the weekend, I had worked on the new budget which is dependent on the number of students that we will have enrolled. Everything looks terrible! Yet, we are lucky to have a large school otherwise things would be a lot worse. I wonder what other schools are doing? I tried to scrape up more time from all the available sources: extracurricular activities, special needs services, extended day classes, but still, it is not enough. Some teachers will have to work part-time, either that or quit. We have never had a situation like this before. I have never had to reduce staff numbers. It will be the young, inexperienced teachers, those who haven’t had time to earn career status who will be the first ones to face the consequences. And, it took so much effort to recruit them for our school in the first place. What for?

I ask Yuri Vladimirovich, our methodologist, to organize a “round table discussion” to be called: “Good Fathers.” There is to be a “Childhood Planet” exhibition at the LENEXPO exhibition center soon. Our colleagues at the Teachers’ Training Institute have asked us to send someone from our school to give them a hand putting the exhibition together. No one can lead a discussion on the topic of children better than Yurii. He is the father of five children.

I return to my office and put out a call for all department heads to join me during the next break. Meanwhile, I meet with Inessa, the designer who is handling the renovation of our cafeteria. We are at the decoration stage so we discuss plates. Our theme is based on the emblem of our school, the bee. (By the way, we chose if before BEELINE, the second largest cell phone operator in Russia. Their logo was a bee but now it is a circle with yellow and black stripes.) I speak with Inessa about her progress in setting up a new display that we are planning in which we will feature our top students.

The chief accountant arrives with a few papers for me to sign. I need to discuss an issue with her. We need to hire a temporary substitute for our cashier who is on sick leave. Not everyone can do this job.

During the break, I have a short meeting with the department heads and hand out the final version of our curriculum. I ask them to tell me whether I have managed to include all their suggestions and amendments. I ask them to prepare a draft of the teaching load of each teacher in their department and to get it to me by the beginning of next week.

My friend, Marina Alexandrovna, a movie director and scriptwriter from LENNAUCHFILM STUDIO, arrives on time. She is such a wonderful, sensitive, and compassionate person. Their studio made and released an outstanding documentary called “Everything Begins from Childhood.” She brought the DVD. We will definitely show it to parents and teachers. The students and teachers from our school participated in the filming. I invited Marina to the classical music concert that is about to start in the assembly hall. It is a non-profit project. At the beginning of the school year, some senior students from the music conservatory offered to promote music education in our school. Though the musicians are all winners of various competitions, they still volunteer. I was so happy to use this opportunity. It is so rare nowadays. They are probably “one of a kind” in our city. Like The Wanderers bringing real art to the common people in the nineteenth century, these musicians promote real music in the twenty-first century.

Today’s concert will be unusual for us. For some reason, we had always invited whole classes to concerts in a somewhat obligatory way. It had never occurred to us before to check on the children’s desire to attend. This time, we asked beforehand. To our surprise, there were over a hundred volunteers. Although the pieces chosen by the musicians were not easy to comprehend, the children who attended listened very attentively.

I took Marina Alexandrovna on a tour of the school one more time. I showed off the new art exhibition in our school gallery and then had a cup of coffee before she left.
The meeting of the administrative board will start soon. On Mondays we discuss the results of the previous week, current issues, and plan for next week. Today we are discussing the results of the trimester. As usual, the debate will be hot. Before the meeting begins, I manage to talk to the vice principal for extracurricular activities. She sent a group of students to a “Dance Sport” competition this past weekend.

I ask the secretary to send a personnel report to the Department of Education and tell her to print out the final draft of the School Improvement Plan that my colleagues and I put together last week.

I call the Regional Committee for Trade Unions and inquire about the proper procedure for making reductions in employment. I still don’t believe it’s really happening. We work with real people who have joys and sorrows, lives and destinies not with just “staff units.”

I call the aide to a deputy of the State Duma in Moscow[5]. Previously, we had made an agreement about providing support for the “Kind Lyre Contest” initiated by our school. This is a unique contest. Unlike other literary contests, the organizers undertake to make it possible for the public ant large to read the books of the winning authors. What can be more precious for a real writer? We get approval from many people, but what we really need is support. We arrange to discuss this again next week.

The meeting of the administrative board went more peacefully than I had expected. The number of students having learning difficulties has been reduced. We scheduled the final teachers’ meeting for the day after tomorrow.

I didn’t have a chance to talk to the school building supervisor today. She was out of the school all day. I also failed to call the information center and the psychological support center.

TUESDAY

Every Tuesday morning begins with my own Physics classes[7]. It is not easy to combine administrative work with classroom teaching because of frequent interruptions due to emergency meetings, special sessions, or inspections that I have to attend to no matter what. I was able to find a way out. I decided to “home teach” children with health problems. This way the schedule can always be adjusted when necessary. Of all my students, Natasha makes better progress in Physics, but her scattered attention makes it hard for her to concentrate. She gets easily distracted and at times it takes a lot of effort to bring her back to where we were. Lyosha is the toughest case. He is a bit lazy and sometimes he skips homework not because he didn’t understand the material, but because he spent time doing something else. At the same time, he is fascinated with radio engineering, and he might spend hours talking about electricity. Masha has only good grades. She is quite modest but very capable. She has some major problems with motor functions, so I try to limit the number of written assignments for her. Such classes are more tiring, but I am most happy to see my students making progress[8].

Some students from Petrovsky College come in the afternoon. They have teaching field- practice in our school. They are going to become school social workers. I really like this college. I am the chairman of the final examination commission there so I witness how the level of the graduates’ professionalism is growing every year. Almost all the students there want to pursue academic careers. That is why they continue their education in the teacher training universities.

Finally, I got through to the information center. We are working on an interesting joint project, an “All-City Information Technologies Day.” Our school’s major focus is on information and communication technologies. That is why such cooperation is especially valuable for us. I will try to promote this idea at the upcoming meeting to get the businessmen interested.
I talked on the phone with the director of the Center for Psychological, Pedagogical, Medical, and Social Support. I found out the details of next week’s sex education session that is held in the local outpatient clinic. It is a very delicate and sensitive subject that requires careful deliberation.

I call RSPU. We agree to sign a contract on cooperation with their department of information technologies.

I managed to give out all the planned assignments to different staff members:

First assignment: the picture frames for the exhibition for the “German/Russian, Neva/Elbe Project.” We have scheduled for this spring a photograph exhibition prepared by our students and the students of Hamburg, Germany. The children decided to show different ways in which rivers influence big city life. I am curious to see the two different points of view, Russian and German.

Second assignment: it is connected with tomorrow’s event. Our school cooperates with the Agrarian University,[9] and its soil specialist will conduct a workshop on improving soil fertility. Some teachers, parents, and students will attend. I need to think of a classroom they can use.

Third assignment: get the equipment ready for showing the film, “Everything Begins from Childhood.”

I am trying to find out where the grade and attendance books for the special needs children have disappeared, but I fail. Though I hadn’t planned on it, I check that the ill-fated hole in the boys’ locker room has been fixed. Good, it’s ok. I had an uneasy conversation with the coach. After that, I asked the vice principal for extracurricular activities for her opinion regarding the quality of the singing classes that our graduates have offered to teach.

I asked Zinaida Yulyevna, the head of curriculum, about the progress that we are making to the amendments of the school charter, and about the submissions for a national school contest that offers the winners a million ruble prize (about $29,000[March 9].) We agreed to discuss final drafts next week.

I went through the details of last week’s incident with the head of security one more time. One of our classroom doors was broken and a teacher’s purse was stolen. The footage from the security camera made it obvious that a female stranger managed to enter the building without being stopped. We decided to hire a new, school security officer. The police officer who viewed the pictures recognized the woman. She is not a stranger to them.

I arrived for the meeting in time. The All-Russian Pedagogical Assembly is a new organization aimed at providing support for education. My presentation was well received. I was able to outline major problems in education and formulate what voters want from the state, city, and local authorities.

After the meeting, many participants came and exchanged business cards with me. I got really interested during a conversation with the head of a large industrial plant. Long before Perestroika, I had the idea of organizing a special school for The Kirovsky Factory. I had read about a similar, American experience. The Kirovsky plant is huge. It is a true “state within a state.” They need professionals of almost all specialties including doctors, journalists, teachers, programmers, etc. Unfortunately, six months after we had reached an agreement on a plan, The Kirovsky Factory began falling apart. Soon after, the Soviet Union itself breathed its last. Now meeting the new Kirovsky CEO, I thought that we might re-investigate the old idea but with new terms. So, my new friend and I arranged a meeting.

It is too bad that I haven’t met with the building supervisor today either. This time I was the one who was too busy. And one more item on my schedule wasn’t completed, the “Kind Lyre Contest.” It’s about time that we sum up the results of our preliminary reading of the submissions.

WEDNESDAY

I arranged a meeting of the fifteen adult males who work in our school. International Women’s Day is at hand. It is a long tradition to give small gifts to the women in our school, so we all chipped in. Yuri Vladimirovich, our methodologist, volunteered to write a script for a short skit. All we need is to entertain everyone for at least half an hour. After that there will be enough fun, and we will no longer be needed. We will finish the evening with our traditional staff party that usually lasts until late at night.

After the “man to man” talk, I call students from Grade 9C who were involved in the conflict into my office. In a nutshell: during a history class students broke a CD player. The homeroom teacher, who is responsible for the equipment in that classroom, wants the history teacher, who had her class there, to repair the damage because she failed to maintain discipline. The history teacher says the player had been broken before her class started. The students are as silent as the grave. I give them a week to think it over, and then we will meet again.

The assistant principal and I finalize the agenda for the teachers’ meeting. I ask the secretary to print out three copies of the corrected and amended contract with the pedagogical university, and I ask the social worker to take them to the university since she is in charge of vocational guidance.

I finally found the grade and attendance books for the special needs program. I record attendance and give my students the trimester grades.

As for the “Kind Lyre Contest,” submitted materials for almost all the nominations have been read through. The only nomination left is “Fiction. No age limit.” After we get that, it will be possible to prepare all the materials for the jury.

I call “The First of September” publishing house, one of the contest sponsors, in Moscow. We agree that next week I will send them all the selected works for the readers’ internet-based voting.

I call the deputy’s aide in Moscow right away. Unfortunately there is no news for now.

With the chief accountant, I discuss the budget for next year. We already have a staff list so we can calculate our profits and expenses. The big, fat, blue book of guidelines shows us the unfavorable prospects. It looks like we are short about 3 million rubles (about $87,000 [March, 09.])

I call the head of the foreign language department into my office and ask her about the status of our cooperation negotiations with Italy. Everything is vague. The organization that endeavors to provide assistance, AFS, did not list the specific conditions yet. Without them we can’t send a group of students there.

With the vice principal responsible for students with high grades, we finalize the list of candidates referred by the staff to receive regional awards which consist of a letter of commendation from the local authorities and a badge of honor. We have to discuss this at the teachers’ meeting. The award ceremony itself will take place soon. There is a quota: only three awards per 100 students.

The head of the local “House of Creativity” along with the methodologist came to a meeting. We decided to hold a “Pedagogic Authority” workshop in our school in April for assistant principals in charge of student character development and moral education. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this topic lately. I hope that my ideas will be helpful in designing an improvement plan for the local educational system. We decided that the seminar will focus on an analysis of problems.

We will demonstrate some elements of our school’s work on this topic, but since the workshop is outside of the regular schedule the whole school will not participate, only the assistant principals and student activists. This won’t affect our regular day much.

The gardening workshop began. We expected more participants. Probably the interest towards agriculture has cooled down since private sector farming is obviously unprofitable, and products in shops are rather inexpensive. When it is the right season, you can buy cucumbers and tomatoes for a penny or two but to grow them is rather hard. Still, what a pity that interest in the land is fading away. God grant that those who still have an interest in farming will have the health and strength to pursue it.

Yesterday, I received a telephone message: there is an urgent meeting for school principals at City Hall. I was there in no time at all. It turned out that it was about the upcoming elections. They wanted us to act more responsibly and redouble our vigilance. Well, we never had any mess-ups in our school on election days in the past (Knock on wood!) The meeting is over, and I am back in time for the teachers’ meeting.

The teachers truly liked the documentary film. It really turned out to be wonderful and kind. It showed that one’s childhood is such a wonderful time which should not be missed. More so, it should be filled with creativity, smiles, bonds with nature, and with kind, sensitive people.

After this film, the discussion of academic achievements went especially well. Even our “hawks” were more quiet than usual. They didn’t pinpoint “the eternal sins of our students,” low grades and truancy. “Sinners” from the various grades repented and promised to do better in the future.

When I returned to my office, I finally got through to our city’s Culture Committee. Here is the deal: in our school we have maintained a unique art gallery for many years. It is one of a kind in the city. We hosted more than a hundred exhibitions of professional artists. Our students live in an atmosphere of genuine art. The experts regularly hold master classes of art interpretation here. Our exhibition hall is listed in the city catalogue of exhibition halls. Still, the gallery has no official status. This means that we do not have an official position for a “gallery head.” That’s why I decided to get our gallery certified and registered as one of the school’s subdivisions. The Culture Committee promised to help with that. So, we shall see.
Only at the end of the day did I get to ask my first assistant about the enrolment. There are no problems. Children want to study here, and we accept everyone. Great! The more, the better. Once again, I did not manage to meet with the building supervisor.

THURSDAY

In the morning, I go on scheduled classroom visits to my colleagues, the teachers of physics. The topic is The Use of Information Technologies in Teaching Physics. All the classes are pretty good. Students actively use reference books, textbooks, and run experiments. The teachers competently debrief about their professional practice. Right away, I prepare a short report to be discussed during the board of administration meeting.

Back at my office, I make some more calls. The Association of School Libraries hasn’t met the deadline for turning in the results of the preliminary reading for the “Kind Lyre Contest.” We agree to move the deadline to “after the holidays.” I call Pushkin House* and ask if the Sunday poetry evening is still on schedule and if I can send some students over. Last time, there was a problem.

Right away, I tell the secretary to write an “everything is ok” note to the head of language and literature department. I find out that the delivery of equipment for the physics lab is delayed by Moscow. Now we can take our time in trying to find transportation and movers.

Yuri Vladimirovich brings the script for our International Women’s Day skit. We decide to give it a dry run before the beginning of the party.

Finally, I meet Elena Alexandrovna, the school building supervisor. Our school has won some equipment in a contest organized by the Foundation for the Support of Education. I give orders to pass the CD players to the English teachers; put the stereo system in the cafeteria; and the DVD player in the educational technologies lab. Well done, Elena! She has already finished all the paperwork and sent a request for an inspection to the Fire Department. Soon we will be undergoing a certification procedure, so we need everything resolved. But, the incomplete inventory is totally our fault. I ask Elena to complete all the necessary documentation ASAP and make sure it is ok. Both teachers and parents have brought so many things to school that if we have an inspection, and they find the excesses, our heads will roll. We urgently need to complete the formalities.

After my talk with the school building supervisor, I call the first vice principal and ask about the absentees at our last teachers’ meeting. There can be no shirkers this time.
The school social worker comes in and reports that the contracts with RSPU have been signed. Several students from our school are planning to enroll there. Poor things! They don’t know what to expect in 5-6 years.

I sit down at my desk to put the finishing touches on the next (the 121st) version of the staff roster for next year. I call the director of extracurricular activities to my office and show her the draft of the roster. I ask her to think about the most efficient way to distribute our budget resources. The major task is to avoid axing people and if necessary, transfer employees from one position to another.

Some parents from the ill-fated Grade 9C come for a conference to discuss a different issue this time. The tape recorder controversy has already been settled. The parents are concerned about a rumor that when their children pass into Grade 10, they will no longer be studying together as a group and will have to join new and different groups. These rumors are more than strange. I don’t see where they came from because the situation had been clarified and explained in detail at a previous parents’ meeting. I’m afraid that this is part of the ever active, classroom teachers’ “evil-plot” to set the parents against our plan for next year. I don’t know why. Once again, I explain in detail that they have a choice between a career oriented program or a general curriculum program. It looks like they are satisfied when they leave.

I call the head of the school museum and the assistant principal for moral education into my office. We discuss the new agenda for the April workshop that we talked about yesterday. I think that it would be great if we opened a new exhibition and invited a professional artist at the same time. Starting from this year, such meetings are supplemented with poetry readings with professional poets participating along with our music concerts. The days like these will become “Arts Days.” With Nina Ivanovna, the head of the museum, I also discuss our deadlines for getting the museum exhibit display in order because when the “museum as a school department” goes through the certification process, all documents will be thoroughly examined.

It is the end of the workday. The teachers and I take our school bus to the local swimming pool. We have a traditional Thursday swim.

I simply forgot about the meeting with the vice principal for elementary grades. Well, I’ll reschedule it for next week. There’s no rush.

FRIDAY

In the morning, some “potential renters” come in to ask about using our building. These nice girls represent a group somewhat like the Lion’s Club. They offer martial arts, poetry readings, music, and a variety of other things. In two words; very interesting! Unfortunately, the regional administration is dead set against granting the use of school buildings and facilities. To my regret, I politely say “no.”

I have a meeting with the building supervisor. I ask if she has gotten the estimate for the work on our electrical gauges yet. We have been trying to find a way to get the contractor to speed up the process. As it turns out, there isn’t any.

I give an assignment to Nina Vasilievna, the assistant principal for moral education, to complete the application form for our students to go to Camp Zerkalny. Yesterday, we got a phone call from the “Palace for Young Creativity.[13]” The camp belongs to this organization. They said that they were making schedules, and if we want our students to attend camp, we must send their applications soon. We have been a part of this city program for many years. Our students enjoy going there. No wonder why! The children spend time in an atmosphere of creativity, friendship, and teamwork amongst the tremendous, pine trees of Karelia. There is not enough of this for our children today. This year our students will arrive at camp following its major renovation. There will be 30 new cabins, a swimming pool, a sports stadium, and gyms. We must apply quickly!

I call the city council and ask if the money for organizing the South shore Olympic games has already been allocated. Thank God, it wasn’t. Yes, yes, it is not a slip of the tongue. I really mean it. The thing is that the current members of the council deliberately, on some principle or other, do not give money for our school’s needs no matter what they are. The Olympics is a big event. More than five hundred athletes from five city districts take part. Our school once suggested the idea of holding the games and now they have become a tradition in the south-western district of St. Petersburg. Had money been provided, it would have been quickly spent on making and giving out T-shirts to the participants. But, the council would have screamed from every street corner, “We should help Lyceum 590? No dice! They don’t need anything. Let them do it themselves!”

I call the coaches and tell them to start preparing a reserve basketball team for the games. The kids need the practice, and according to the regulations, since we are hosting the “party,” we have that privilege.

In the afternoon, I leave the building to attend a brief meeting at the Department of Education. The topic under discussion is those very Olympics. The budget hasn’t been finalized yet. There is no money to make the emblem and the medical services issue is hanging in the air. The medical staff is not subordinate to us, and they don’t want to work on a Saturday. We need to get the public health authorities involved.

I return to the building and ask the vice principal for extracurricular activities about the schedule for tomorrow. This department works on Saturdays, and Elena Leonidovna is responsible for all the extracurricular activities: clubs, hobby, and sports groups.

Vladimir Nikolayevich is in charge of the children’s publishing house, “Apiary.” We publish a weekly newspaper, a magazine, and a bulletin. Our students are the winners of several school publishing competitions. They have won heaps of awards during this year alone. With Vladimir Nikolayevich, we discuss a strategy for online newspaper publishing, providing an opportunity for feedback, and as a result, increasing the number of readers.

After the discussion, I call “Realnet,” our Internet service provider. They are doing a great job. They give us a dedicated high-speed Internet line for free. One of “Realnet’s” directors is a former student. I ask them to increase the traffic limit a little bit because what we have is not enough even though we keep tight control over it and children are not permitted to surf the net for non-academic purposes. Lately, however, our students have started using the Internet more often because the amount of project work in our school has increased.
It is almost the end of the working day. It means the end of another week. I stay in my office to sort out the paperwork and tidy it up. I put the office papers into files. I have a long tradition. By the beginning of the new week, my desk must be totally clean.

The last talk of the day is with Zinaida Yulyevna, my assistant. We finalize three amendments to the charter: to change the procedure for school board election; to include the right to establish a school dress code; and to make the museum and exhibition hall, the vehicle fleet, and the extracurricular activities department part of the school’s subdivisions. We also discuss the final version of the “Portfolio for a Million.” We emphasize that in the improvement plan the “Open School” program is our priority. The project’s main idea is that anyone can be a “teacher” not only those who have a degree in education. Schools need interesting, talented, and bright people. Schools have to be as open to the world as possible and vice versa. To promote volunteering and to ensure that our students take part in positive activities outside the school, these are the steps that lead to improvement.

I go home and call my friend. Tomorrow, we are going fishing all day.

COMMENTARY:

Whew! I need to go fishing after reading Alexey Kamensky’s article. I guess I have forgotten, during my years of retirement, just how busy and involved in so many things a school principal gets. I think that the Russian principal’s obligation to teach while also managing causes me to be awestruck. My own attempts at “keeping my hand in” came during occasional after school projects or short-term “club activities.” To keep to a schedule of teaching a class, as most Russian principals must, is praiseworthy.

This article provides the reader with wonderful insights into the working day of a Russian school. The next best thing would be to actually visit Lyceum No. 590. I have visited many Russian schools and have seen wonderful programs, but this school certainly has some terrific projects in the works. I hope that Alexey Kamensky can be persuaded to write future articles in which he would elaborate on several of his school’s special activities like the “Kind Lyre Contest,” the school museum, or the in-house art gallery.

Jack Mc Gurgan, retired teacher and principal,
President of THE AMERUS EXCHANGE, LTD