Before I became a Vice Principal, I was terrified of the aspect of being an administrator where you had to "put down the hammer." Meaning, my thing has ALWAYS been building relationships with my students, and I wondered how possible that was going to be when I had to discipline them on a more severe level - suspension, expulsion, etc. One thing I learned was that there WAS a way to have those difficult conversations with students while also having and building a good, solid

My daughter Sophie is six years old. She often plays with the kids in our neighborhood by running back & forth between our respective houses. One day she went to our neighbor's house after making Play Doh and slime (slime is all the rage right now). I sat down to get some work done, and about 20 minutes later, the neighbor kid's dad texts me asking to send his son home. I respond, "I thought they were at your house...?" He responds, "I thought they were with you." Panic