Ginger Bordeau

I think you have to be able to juggle quite a few things at one time because you could start working on something, but then you get called away because kids are most important, so you have to pause. You have to be good at planning, but then you also have to be able to be flexible to pivot when things don't go as planned and you've got to change with the flow. I think also you've got to be willing to fail. You gotta take risks, and you gotta show it's okay to not get it right the first time. I'm not one to over-plan. I'll plan, but if I have an idea, we're just gonna go for it. Like, let's just get it done, let's just go. When you have an idea for an initiative on campus, yes, you think it through, but you can't over-plan it because you're dealing with people, so you've got to be willing to jump in feet first or head first and start doing it while you're planning it. I'm really good at big picture, I can have a vision, and then you just gotta jump in and work it out as it goes. I have really good people that are the little detail people, so they'll pull me back when needed.

I had a principal one time when I was an AP tell me to be able to quiet the noise, and I didn't understand that until I became a principal. I was like, what is she talking about? And the noise of, when you're here, it could be the noise of you made a decision, people aren't happy, but if you know you made it because it's what's best for kids, then you have to just quiet that down and be confident in what you did. You have to just realize not everybody's gonna like your decisions that you make, and you have to also quiet the noise of just all the outside things that can get in the way.

You have to come in every day, and as one of my teachers said it best, this job is kind of like an acting job. Not that we're pretending, but when you get here, you have to leave everything outside. Whatever's going on in your personal life, it has to stay at the door. When you come in, the kids are the priority. And anybody in education, it should always be the children are the priority. Every decision that I make, every thing that we do has to do with the kids, and this is what's best for students. Then you go into, is it what's best for the adults? But it has to be what's best for kids, because that's why we're here. So, just keeping that focus. Every decision you make, what we think about has to be about what is best for the student.

I think one of the biggest challenges I have is when teachers have to be out because a child gets sick, or they get sick, or something happens. That does hurt, especially this day and age. We don't have a lot of guest teachers, we call them guest teachers, substitutes. It's a challenge because you need people to do what they need to do, and they need to be home if they're sick, but then you also have this other expectation. You gotta have somebody in the classroom that can help the kids. And I think one of the biggest challenges I had this year is trying to find quality guest teachers so that it was kind of seamless. That's the hardest part. I think that's the hardest part for teachers, too. And I think that's when you talk about teacher burnout, that's part of it, is because they don't ever feel like they can be out. Because they love their kids, and they worry about them, and they worry, like, okay, I'm sick, but who's teaching them? Who's making sure they behave?