Feeling Stressed? Try Out Some Laughs on the Line

School Administrator, Sept, 1997

Hotline Advice

Ring ... ring ... ring.

"Hello. You have reached the school administrator psychiatric hotline for stressed-out superintendents. Please listen carefully to the following message and make the appropriate selection:

* If you believe you are now obsessive or compulsive, press 1 repeatedly and count the number of tiles on the ceiling while on hold.

* If you suspect you are now codependent, ask your secretary to press 2 for you.

* If you think that you now have multiple personalities, press 3, 4 and 5.

* If you believe that the school board has made you paranoid or delusional, we already know who you are and where you're calling from. Just stay on the line so the board can come to get you.

* If you believe the demands of your job have made you schizophrenic, listen carefully to that little voice inside your head and it will give you further instructions on what to do next.

* If you believe the parents in your school district are making you manic depressive, it doesn't matter what number you press, no one cares about you and no one at this office will return your phone call.

Thank you for calling the school administrator psychiatric hotline."

(Source: Jim Cisek, Audio Education Inc.)

A Decisive Wish

A superintendent was in intensive care at the local hospital after suffering a heart attack. He received a telegram from the clerk of the board, saying: "Please be informed that at their regular monthly meeting last evening, the board of education voted 4-3 to wish you a speedy recovery.

(Source: Paul Kirsch, retired superintendent, Geneva, N.Y.)

No Sweet Surprises

Students at the L'Ouverture Computer Technology Magnet School in Wichita, Kan., are instructed that when they accidentally run into inappropriate material on their computer screens during an Internet search, they should click on "stop" and go elsewhere.

Principal Howard Pitler reports that a 5th-grade boy doing research for a report on candy entered that word in an Alta Vista search on the Internet, then paused and asked his teacher for advice.

"I was just thinking," the boy said. "A lot of the girls in my dad's magazines are named Candy. I might get some stuff that would be inappropriate."

The teacher agreed, so they settled on "chocolate" as an alternative search word.

Litigation on the Mind

Superintendent Richard Kendall was driving his car on business to the state Capitol in Salt Lake City when he spotted a loaded school bus parked in an awkward spot on the side of the road "and thought that some superintendent's day was about to be ruined."

Kendall, who retired earlier this year as superintendent in Davis County, Utah, then realized the name of his own school district on the bus. Teachers from one of his junior highs told him the bus had been involved in a minor accident and another bus was on its way.

As Kendall walked beside the bus to return to his car, a boy stuck his head out the window and shouted, "Are you an attorney?"

Remarked Kendall: "I guess he just saw that I was a guy in a suit."

High Grades for Bravado

What does it take for a principal to earn a promotion to the central office? For some high achievers, the answer lies in getting noticed.

Art Johnson regularly accomplished that as principal for 10 years at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Fla., where his antics once included donning a tuxedo and diving off a two-story tower into a kiddie pool with four inches of water in it. (The pool was anchored to a mar.) He also has bungee-jumped from the top of the school gym and one time even attached himself to a hydraulic rocket ship for a fast ride from the gym floor to the ceiling.

Johnson, by the way, earned his promotion last fall to Area 2 superintendent of the Palm Beach County, Fla., schools.

Red-Faced Moments

The American Association of School Personnel Administrators recently asked its members to reveal their most embarrassing moments as professional educators. Here's how two responded.

Diane Cox, principal, Princeton Street Elementary School, Delano, Calif.: "Trying to run off a suspicious-looking loiterer on my campus, only to discover it was a school board member!"

Sonny DeMarto, assistant superintendent, San Mateo-Foster City, Calif.: "Bringing back a board policy for a second reading two years after the first reading. Somehow it had been forgotten."

A Humbling Comment

Before becoming superintendent in Falls City, Neb., two years ago, Duane Stehlik apparently made his name known while working in the same position at the neighboring Table Rock Public Schools.

Stehlik said he was chit chatting with a faculty member in his new district who said she was familiar with his work in his previous posting.

"You know," she admitted, "when you came here as superintendent, I thought you were too intelligent for the job. But I've since changed my mind."

Short humorous anecdotes, quips, quotations and malapropisms for this column relating to school district administration and school board governance should be addressed to: Editor, The School Administrator, 1801 N. Moore St., Arlington, Va. 22209.