NAESP’s Mentor Center principal continues to chronicle her year and needs your advice. Here’s her latest entry:
This has been quite an interesting and fast-paced year. I am excited to share that we will be adding to our family, with my due date in early May. While this is exciting, it is also very overwhelming, because planning for my maternity leave is not the same as when I was a classroom teacher.
Due to the small size of our district and the timing of my expected arrival, we will not be hiring anyone to fill my shoes. Instead, we are being creative with the people and resources we currently have. One benefit of having grades K-12 in one large building is that the middle/high school administrators and superintendent will be able to assist in the elementary division if a serious discipline or other incident should occur. I am also fortunate to have a teacher who is working on her administrative degree and completing her internship hours under my supervision this spring and summer. She has assisted me this past month with planning for summer school and end-of-year events. I will also be relying on her to check my phone messages each day during my absence and either return the phone calls or pass them on to an administrator.
There will be some tasks that I plan to complete by coming into the office on evenings or weekends during my maternity leave. I only live a mile from the school, so it will be easy for me to pop in and out as needed. I also hope to attend the end-of-year events for staff and students. I am only planning to take off five weeks for this maternity leave and then return during summer school.
Have any other administrators taken a maternity leave or other short-term leave of absence? What tips/advice can you offer?