Wrong Number

Warning, what you are about to read is nothing but my own ramblings about being an administrator.

I want to write. I feel I need to get some of this out but I’m not sure even how to begin and when I look at the suffering in other places I know it is insignificant. Yet, even with that knowledge, I feel really lousy because of my mistake.
My mistake involved me dialing a wrong number and leaving a message for a parent to call me about an incident with their child. I didn’t check as I dialed and, when I got the answering machine, I just left a message as I was dealing with another issue with another student. Bad excuse. Bad move.
So, when the parent received the letter I sent home, they were very upset I hadn’t contacted them. They tried to reach me but I was in a meeting after school, an hour from where I live and didn’t get home until late. I received their message to phone and did, explaining that I had phoned and left a message. She didn’t get a message and I realized I had phoned the wrong number. I apologized. The parent was understandably upset that now their problem was out and other people knew that their child had been in trouble at school. We discussed the problem, which involved some punches being thrown by her child and another and the consequences. The parent was still upset and I apologized again.

This has added to my “angst” as I had already been reflecting about my interactions with another student and what I could have done differently. The whole 20-20 thing. It’s not that I did anything wrong but I see how I could improve on what did happen and improve my interactions with the student. Good learning experience. When this phone call mixup happened it really threw me. I usually don’t make mistake like that because I’m very careful when I dial as I have a learning disability with numbers. This time, my mind was on a couple things and, voila, mistake.

As an administrator, I really can’t afford to make mistakes like that, or that is how it feels right now, since I have a few other things going on . I want to walk out the front door and shout “It’s not fair!” but, hey, life isn’t fair. I have developed pretty thick skin but it doesn’t help when I do this to myself. The worst part is that I care so damn much about what is happening with these kids and what is going on in the school and this doesn’t help my cause in any way. I know that this has happened for a reason and there is something important to be learned from this whole thing.
Like most of us in education, I am constantly striving to improve what I do. Being an administrator, I am always trying to build the relationships between families and the school, improve the communication and bring parents into the school. Then something like this happens. It’ not the end of the world but these things sure seem to come at the most inopportune moments. So, while others are exploring web2.0 improvements, connections with students and building upon the accomplishments of their web2.0 experiences, I’m using this great tool to wallow, mostly in self-pity, wondering why I’m writing this. Is this what we should be doing? Does this serve any purpose to what we are doing? What can we learn from such a post? Or, have I, in some way, made the digital shift to seeing this as a place where we, as educators, can work through such things as part of our discourse on education? Does it all have to be about great advancements, new tools and the digital frenzy that I seem to be lacking of late? Maybe that’s part of it. As I read through my aggregator, there are no mistakes. Am I the only web2.0 Shleprock? Or is this not the place for such discussions? In a small town, I really have few people with whom I can talk about such things. But is this the forum? I’m not bashing anyone but I’m, how does one say, feeling isolated.

Well, thanks for reading. If you got this far, you are pretty dedicated - or you are feeling much better about yourself because you aren’t doing yourself in like I did. So, if this did make you feel better, great. At least it has helped someone