0.4 The art of successful school-based management  (Page 20/36)

This e-mail is killing me. When I arrived in the morning there were always several messages from teachers,parents, and central office personnel waiting on my computer. I found myself arriving at work earlier and earlier each day so thatI could deal with these messages before teachers and students began to arrive. Additionally, I stayed later in the day to catch up one-mails and other business that should have been handled during the day when I was managing other e-mails. As a last resort, I begantaking my laptop home to respond to e-mails and found that there was little time for me to be away from the affairs of schooling.Managing these e-mails was burning me out. I was working fourteen and fifteen-hour days.

As in many jobs today, it is interesting to note that technology aimed to helping people work more efficientlyand therefore have more time for themselves has achieved the opposite effect. The principals’work is following them everywhere and they feel overwhelmed. Today, there is a severe shortage ofprepared leaders to fill the leadership positions in schools across the nation. There is the real chance that the very technology thatintended to make lives better is, in fact, draining the energy of principals, and thus creating an increased leadership vacuum in ourschools. It would be important for further research to examine the relationship of principal resiliency to e-mail management.

In the interviews conducted in this study, another area of possible inquiry became clear. Do principals whocommunicate well with personnel on an interpersonal basis find it easier to engage in empathic writing than those principals who donot relate well to staff members? From these few interviews, there appeared to be a positive correlation between principals whoengaged in successful active listening and those who were comfortable with empathic writing. Principals who had previoustraining in active listening seemed comfortable translating those skills to the writing medium. This is an area where closer studyneeds to be conducted before any conclusions might be drawn, however.

In reviewing material for establishing e-mail messages, a potentially disturbing trend appeared. Under theperceived urgency to respond to e-mail immediately, many teachers found their lessons being interrupted by the frequent "beep" of thecomputer, notifying the teacher of a new e-mail. As one teacher put it, "We have replaced the intercom interruptions with computerones." Several teachers and principals set their computers to check for new e-mail every two or three minutes, also saying something toresearchers about the school culture and technology. Have we exacerbated an already fractionated, episodic school day with theinclusion of e-mail technology in schools? It would be very important, also, to examine to what extent teachers are respondingto e-mail during instructional time. Finally, how much time are principals spending responding to e-mail versus their timeconducting instructional supervision?