Coordinating and Conflict

I've learned a lot in my new role as Year Ten Coordinator this term. Keeping tabs on eighty sixteen-year-olds means negotiating with all sorts of personalities; dealing with insolence and deceits and laziness, but also rewarding and being rewarded by unexpected pleasantness; and spending half an hour every morning in a flurry of paperwork. For approximately $20 extra a week and 5 lessons a fortnight off (out of 55), it's a perpetual wonder to me that anyone chooses to do this job. It makes it difficult to maintain good relationships with students and it drains you of time and emotion. On the upside, I get to go to meetings where the big, interesting decisions that affect the whole school are made. I get to interact with the other coordinators, who are experienced and much wiser than me, and who act as my 'big brothers' (all older, male, and fraternal) and get me out of scrapes when I act hastily.

Top 3 moments as coordinator:

1. Once, I got very angry at two cheeky boys for their rudeness towards me; the next week, they presented me with a stool they'd made in woodwork as an unspoken gesture of goodwill. Now, they're still cheeky, but endearingly so, and less rude.

2. A girl came to me with the news of her parents' separation, and I was able to support her in that by negotiating with her teachers and her counsellor and putting procedures in place for her, which was humbling. We have a unique and special relationship now.

3. Taking homeroom devotions to cover for another teacher (which is, staggeringly, another duty that coordinators take on several times a week) and doing an impromptu devotion on Psalm 46, which the students responded to warmly.

Worst 3 moments as coordinator:

1. Knowing that a girl has an eating disorder, among other problems such as disinterested and probably abusive parents, and not being in a position to do anything about it besides recommend her to counselling (which she probably won't go to).

2. Confronting several girls about their too-short skirts, and then overhearing a conversation later - "she was so nice last term, and now she's completely changed. Bitch."

3. Giving a devotion at Year Ten assembly, and losing my notes, so that a carefully planned and hopefully memorable lesson about David and Goliath became a two-minute farce. I think I covered my mistake, but it was a lost opportunity.

Biggest lesson learned as coordinator:

I hate conflict. It stirs up my very soul. I will go miles out of my way to avoid a situation in which I have to make myself unpopular. I drew a girl out of class today and trying to diffuse an ongoing argument, and had to fight tears on the way back to my office; not because I'd done badly, but because conflict hurts. Knowing that someone, even for a short period of time, probably hates my guts, is quite confronting, because goodwill with students (and everyone) is important to me. If I want to be a coordinator again sometime, learning to handle conflict will be my greatest challenge.