WEEKS 31 & 32 - New Leadership

I am currently at 431 hours of overtime this school year. That amounts for nearly 11 weeks (or 2 months) of full time work...all of it extra.

It is with extremely mixed emotions that I write this post. This past week brought big changes at Washburn. For those of you in the Twin Cities area who read the news, you are probably aware of everything that has been going on at my high school. I won't go into everything here, but I will touch on the important facts. You are free to look up the rest on your own.

Over spring break, news broke that our athletic director was under investigation for a personnel matter involving money used to buy a new scoreboard for the school. Students rallied around him and staged a walk-out on the Monday back from break. Over 200 students (of the 1200 students who attend the school) walked out during 4th hour and didn't return. Two days later, again over 200 students staged a sit-in in front of the principal's office. That night, as a big surprise to many, the superintendent decided to relieve our principal of her duties at Washburn and bring on an interim principal to finish out the year, citing the need to stop all of the distractions and restore an effective learning environment to the school.

For most, it was a complete shock. Even some students who participated in the walk-out and sit-in didn't realize that their actions could have negative ramifications against the principal. For others who did not particularly care for Ms. Markham-Cousins, it was reason to celebrate.

Ms. Markham-Cousins was in her 6th year at Washburn, and had led a school turnaround which resulted in transforming the school from being one that many did not wish to attend to one that so many wished to attend.

With the risk of sounding biased, I would like to say that this has been a particularly difficult pill to swallow. Ms. Markham-Cousins was a principal who walked the halls and made a point to get to know the students by name. She popped into classrooms and visited teachers just to see how we were doing or if we needed anything. She fought to support the language department's effort to start a course geared towards teaching native Spanish speakers how to read and write (studies show that if they can read and write in their first language, their English scores go up). When the school performed the musical Fame last year, she attended 5 times. Before Ms. Markham-Cousins showed up, our school hadn't put on a musical in 17 years. Before her, we had 5 band directors in 6 years. Before her, the language department was half the size it is today.

The way in which we found out about this decision was difficult. There were about 5 minutes left of the last period of the day, and a student walked into my room and said, "Ms. K, I think you need to check your email." I quickly checked my email, but there was nothing. The bell rang, and as I was standing at the door saying goodbye to students, there were many students running the hallways yelling, "We got Ms. Cousins fired! We did it!" It wasn't until afterwards that the district notified us of this decision. The decision had been leaked to the media and made the Southwest Journal and Star Tribune before any of us knew. It was very difficult to find out this way.

Were there things that she could have handled differently? Absolutely. Is it easy for a teacher to suddenly be put under the direction of a new principal when there are only 35 days of school left? Absolutely not. For whatever reason (which the board will not disclose), the removal of our dedicated leader had to happen immediately. Hopefully the truth will come out eventually.

Below is the link to the story at our school. Please be mindful that not everything you read or hear is completely true.

http://www.southwestjournal.com/news/news/washburn-principal-markham-cousins-reassigned

Here are my hours for weeks 31 and 32.

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	4/7/2013	12:30 PM	1:00 PM	0.5
		9:00 PM	10:00 PM	1
M	4/8/2013	7:30 AM	4:00 PM	8.5
T	4/9/2013	7:30 AM	3:45 PM	8.25
		8:45 PM	9:30 PM	0.75
W	4/10/2013	7:45 AM	4:00 PM	8.25
Th	4/11/2013	7:45 AM	4:30 PM	8.75
F	4/12/2013	7:30 AM	4:30 PM	9
Sat	4/13/2013			0
	Total			45

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	3/24/2013	8:30 PM	10:00 PM	1.5
M	3/25/2013	7:45 AM	4:45 PM	9
T	3/26/2013	7:45 AM	4:15 PM	8.5
		5:45 PM	9:00 PM	3.25
W	3/27/2013	7:45 AM	4:30 PM	8.75
Th	3/28/2013	8:00 AM	4:00 PM	8
F	3/29/2013	9:15 AM	5:15 PM	8
Sat	3/30/2013	9:45 AM	11:30 AM	1.75
W	4/3/2013	10:30 AM	2:30 PM	4
Sat	4/6/2013	9:00 PM	10:30 PM	1.5
	Total			54.25