Teacher Leadership Pt.1: M1_FA 6B)-HOD Position Concerns and Commitments

I made this post long ago-I'm guessing it was going to be about how silly and backwards "Maple Leaf Education Systems" is. I honestly, have vented so much about that god forsaken wasteland, that-whatever. I digress, 

Let's first talk about the purpose of this post is, "I'm new to leadership-what do I do?"

Next, let's define some of the terms we will discuss,

HOD's (Head of Department)-British Columbia Jargon

DH (Department Head)-The rest of the world's understanding of the term

To sum up, in the event you are reading and aren't interested in rants, "its an impossible task list basically, and at the end of the semester-as long as no one throws a temper-tantrum or quits, you have succeeded in the position. If you can build up staff morale, your not getting paid enough."

 
Revisiting this at an opportune time to spruce it up with connection to my current enrollment into Teacher Leadership pt.1 AQ,

As per module 1 and focus area 6B),

"What are some challenges of being a leader? Provide a summary of what a challenge may look like, sound like and feel like.

Review and comment on two other postings by your colleagues."

As per discussion, 

"A department head or in a position of leadership, ALWAYS (in my honest opinion), in regard to challenge-morale. Staff morale changes like the wind. Yes, GENERALLY there is a happy staff or "good" work environment. People are humans, cats are cats, and dogs, well are dogs, the point is, people get hungry, people get thirsty and are allowed to feel "burnt out", "tired", "restless" or like they are having "a bad day". That's normal and that is the hardest part about being a leader. 

Leaders are people who are often solving/preventing a lot of issues with the help of others (heaven forbid, by themselves), but still need to find time to be human. I'm not trying to say being human is hard, but it is similar to the idea of how a lot of us need to sometimes bring work home (or work from home) with us when our kid(s) are at home and want to "play" or "make popcorn" and you are saying, "one moment, yes I'll get to you in a moment-almost done". I'm not proud to say that I have been in that position before but that's a fairly accurate analogy in which we overlook the "human" aspect of our job (especially as a leader). How many times has a leader ever said to you, "let me get back to you on that," and (spoiler alert), they don't. In some business offices, ya sure, I can see this is a way of getting people who have silly "issues" to learn to deal with it themselves (I can say I wholeheartedly agree, but I get the perspective a busy manager may have when say 10 let alone 100 people email your IT department for a tech error). However in the education field (let alone as a government employee-however many times removed), that is just unacceptable-pretty sure that is a grievance :/ sorry-I digress, but the fact in the matter is, leaders are humans, but we sometimes need to remind ourselves of that. 

At least, that's my challenge. Stopping-like now, see ya later. "