Jessica Boykin

My day as an elementary school assistant principal involves arriving and planning my schedule to visit classrooms, handle lunch, breakfast, and recess duty, and greet students and parents at arrival and dismissal. I check my email at least 4 times a day. I get the opportunity to witness students and teachers in the hallway during transition, having conversations and preparing for their next lessons. I visit classrooms where I'm able to see teachers empower learning, asking students to think deeper about their answers or strategize how they reached a solution. Students are asking each other for help, engaging hands-on, and you're seeing learning go to a different space. I'm witnessing students encouraging their peers to get engaged emotionally, lifting them up when they're down, or directing them to talk to an adult like our social worker or counselor. I also get to engage with community partners, which brings community resources into the building for our students, families, and the community as a whole. Having that community partnership really does bring togetherness and allows our students and staff to see a sense of belonging within our building. Throughout all of that, it is a lot of communication, emotion, multitasking and multi-thinking at once, strategizing and decision making, while keeping the vision and the goal at the core of the decision.