Locker Consultant
My nine year old constantly asks me what I do all day at work as a principal. That answer varies quite a bit from day to day. At the start of a new school year, it is pretty easy to answer though.
With nine passing periods during the day and around 250 new seventh graders trying to learn how to open combination locks, I become a personal locker consultant. Learning to open a combination lock is definitely an acquired skill. It is also a skill that is more difficult when you have a tardy bell looming and you do not even know where your next classroom is located. The new seventh graders put themselves under a lot of pressure in this situation.
As a locker consultant, the time I get to spend with each student is not really about opening the locker. This is a chance where I, as a building principal, get to interact with our new students, and I can begin to try and build relationships with them. It is an opportunity to encourage the students and to help them get comfortable in the new world that they have been thrust into.
If I did a good job today, some of those students will be able to open their lockers by themselves tomorrow. They will not need the locker consultant anymore. Hopefully, though, the students had an opportunity to talk to their new principal and were met with a smile and support in the face of a new and sometimes intimidating junior high world.
Jerod Zahn
Principal