What Classical Teachers Want From Administrators

I will begin by directly addressing the administrators who are reading this article: Hello. Because I don’t know you, I’m really in no position to judge how well you do your job, but I am in a position to speak bluntly with you about the standards by which your teachers judge you. Someone needs to speak bluntly on the matter because classical Christian teachers don’t have many advocates. This is an industry that is very, very, very reticent to platform teachers. Of the top twenty movers and shakers in classical Christian education that come first to mind, how many are mere K-12 classroom teachers? None. Make a list of the top hundred, for that matter, and the results will still be the same.  

Given that your teachers aren’t going to give you a written evaluation, it’s up to you to engage in robust self-evaluation. To that end, I offer the following list of qualities that classical teachers want to see in headmasters, heads of school, principals, and deans.  

1. Teachers want administrators who are around. Let’s start with an easy one. Administrators need to be present. They need to put in lots of face time every week. Headmasters at big schools may disappear for days at a time, but not weeks at a time. On the other hand, principals and deans need to be in the middle of things every day so they can hear the gossip, griping, and horseplay of students between classes. Principals and deans need to run into teachers six, seven, eight times a day in the hallway, on the quad, at lunch, and while getting coffee in the break room. Teachers need a regular supply of evidence that administrators are genuine co-laborers and co-sufferers. Administrators should know what’s going on in the student body and the faculty because they’ve seen it, not merely because they’ve heard  about it. Administrators who aren’t physically in the middle of things eventually turn into deaf, distant bureaucrats.   

2. Teachers want administrators who observe classes. On top of just being around, teachers also want administrators who show up in their classrooms just to watch them teach. At a big school, the headmaster may not be able to do this, but the principal and dean must. 

Teachers don’t take classroom observations as a threat, but as a sign of respect. Observing classes is how administrators tell teachers, “Your work is important. I care about how well you do your job. I don’t judge a teacher merely on the number of complaints I get from parents. I get into the weeds. I know how you teach and what you teach. I judge a teacher by how well that teacher provides the education this school claims to offer.”  

The only way to prove something is important is to lavish time and money on it. An administrator can blandly tell teachers their work is “so important” once or twice a year at faculty meetings, or an administrator can spend an hour watching a geometry class, an hour watching a literature class, an hour watching a biology class, and so forth. If the principal and the dean don’t observe classes, they don’t really care about classes. They may care about PR, parent satisfaction, finances, enrollment, and so forth, but they don’t actually care whether the school offers a classical education or not.   

3. Classical teachers want administrators who read classics. While administration requires a different skill set than teaching, administrators at classical schools need to read classic texts. Administrators don’t get to say, “I’m really more of a business guy. I haven’t read Milton or Dante, but I have read Leading with a Limp, which is a book that’s far more necessary for someone in my position.” Either read Paradise Lost or find a new field to work in. Classical teachers won’t remain loyal to administrators who don’t read classics. 

4. Teachers want administrators with sound beliefs about discipline. You’ve probably read a few think pieces on the number of public school teachers who have quit since the pandemic because of the way administrators have come to handle discipline—but this problem is by no means confined to public schools. I’ve heard from plenty of classical Christian teachers who are flabbergasted at how flaccid and gutless discipline has become at their schools since 2020. 

Ask a teacher what ought to happen to a student who vandalizes the bathroom and they’ll tell you, “Have him clean the bathroom every day after school for the rest of the month, sports practice be damned.” If it’s happened before, “Just kick him out.” Ask an administrator the same question and you’re now apt to hear, “We need to get to the heart of the matter. It’s our aim to disciple students at this school, so I think we start with a conversation about why this young man decided to vandalize the bathroom.” In the end, a letter of apology and a few more long conversations with the dean of students will likely suffice. A few long conversations will get to the heart of the matter! That’s what Scripture says, right? Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; therapeutic language about “doing our best” will drive it far from him.  

At most classical Christian schools, teachers are powerless to handle discipline issues on their own. Very few administrators trust their teachers to discipline or punish students, which means teachers are forever sending disobedient students to the office and the office is forever sending them back smirking. In fact, a classical school that won’t give teachers the power to punish students for breaking the rules is a school that isn’t really interested in cultivating virtue in students. Teachers want administrators who understand this exceedingly basic concept. 

5. Teachers want just administrators. In other words, they want administrators who will chew out parents who unjustly chew out teachers. Just administrators don’t make teachers apologize to parents merely because parents are upset about something. They don’t ask teachers to put a thumb on the scale for a board member’s kids, a donor’s kids, or their own kids. 

Just administration also means honest administration. The average school has a thousand after-hours events scheduled every year, and teachers want administrators who will be straight forward about which ones are mandatory and which ones aren’t. If you don’t tell teachers they have to attend an evening event, then they don’t have to attend it. End of story.  

What’s more, just administrators hold themselves to handbook standards as tenaciously or mildly as they hold teachers. Unjust administrators play fast and loose with the handbook when it suits them, then demand strict compliance from teachers. Administrators can’t suspend graduation requirements for a rich family, then nail teachers who complain for not following the grievance policy. Just administrators don’t selectively break out “the Matthew 18 principle” to silence criticism or inconvenient squabbles, then go back to the moderate level of privately trash-talking others which is widely accepted by every Christian alive today. 

6. Teachers want administrators who aren’t corporate social climbers. As classical education grows, and as a few headmaster salaries approach pediatrician salaries, administrators need to remember that their schools ride on the backs of thirty-something dads who have burned through their savings accounts to supplement the $38k they make every year teaching Plato. 

Every classical school has at least one of these teachers. Some guy with three kids, a wife who stays home, and a bank account that crumbles if his paycheck is a day late. He has basically received the same meager salary for six years, and no one knows how he makes ends meet. He has never networked a day in his life. He can’t afford good bourbon. He doesn’t really take vacations. He gets a part-time job in the summer. Plenty of private school parents would think their own children complete failures in life if they never exceeded this teacher’s earning potential—the teacher knows this, and he still humbly gives his own time to tutor their children after they miss a week of classes to vacation in Greece.     

This man is the soul of your school.  

Teachers want administrators who will keep faith with this man.