One might think that independence in making decisions and determining policy increases as teachers or principals move up the administrative ladder.

This is not the case. To the contrary, the higher you go, the more that you are tested by others in the system. Administrators often feel that they cannot hide from the public eye.

Administrators can remain relatively independent as long as they are not noticed. They begin to feel the heat when their superiors feel a need to test them. When they are tested, other issues arise. Those issues may affect or attract additional people, thus further reducing the independence.

Those tests have obvious ramifications:

• You are no longer independent or certainly less independent than before
• The person in authority tries to make you dependent on him
• The person in authority may also decide to be tough with you
• The person in authority may make decisions for you, thereby certainly removing your independence
  In a worst-case scenario, he may present you with a fiat without allowing discussion.

  In some cases, you may be able to partially reverse the situation after this happens. However, you will pay a price:

  • You may be stuck with a new reality, since there is no guarantee that you will be able to reverse the situation
  • Things may be very difficult now as a result
  • If you are new in the job then this might be a good way to discover that your days of grace have come to an end
  • What we can tell without any question or doubt is that the situation will never be the same as if you had prevented it from occurring in the first place by not having it by steering clear of the person in authority or taking steps so that the person in authority would not notice you

  At any rate if you do discover that you are faced with a crisis because of your superiors then two important things can result from it:

  • You can learn from this issue so that it won't happen again in the future
  • You can recognize and realize how important you had been previously. It's quite possible that you did not realize that you were experiencing a period of grace