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Miracle on 34th Street’s High School: How an Innovative Principal Squashed Vaping in Bathrooms
And the fights fizzled out as well.
Surprise 1: I asked for an appointment and got one quickly! I am a community member and not a high school parent.
Surprise 2: She seems to be in control of her calendar. She let the meeting run over and was OK with it.
Surprise 3: I walked the corridors and could sense something was positively different.
Surprise 4: She is a visionary but also a realist at the same time.
Non-surprise: She was hired by the previous principal who was a visionary herself.
What did she do?
She had people monitors near bathrooms on each floor. Well, people have done this idea before. It usually fizzles out. Here’s what she did differently.
The first week in her job, she made a clear distinction between staff and teachers. Usually, teachers are asked to help with any tasks related to students. In her case, she flipped the script. It was the staff who were given set schedules to sit in front of bathrooms on each floor. No more than two students entering the bathroom at the same time.
