New Beginnings


My new life started when I showed up at Orem High School at the end of August 1992. We had been on vacation a couple of weeks before that eventful time. I walked into school and went to my classroom, good old D-2. There I found two student teachers. They said that they were to take my class, and the principal wanted to see me in his office. I really didn’t know what was going on, but I went down to his office to see John, the principal. He asked me to come in and sit down. He said that he had heard that I was taking some administrative classes at BYU. I told him that I had been. He said simply, “You have a new job.” I was to be the assistant principal on special assignment. My office was two doors down from his, and I should go and get started. It was a surprise to me, because I hadn’t applied for an administrative position in the district. I just wanted to work for BYU.
I didn’t know what he wanted me to do, so I asked him. He indicated that I was going to be over all of the vocational programs at the school. It was a pilot program at Orem High, and if it worked out okay, they were going to have someone over the vocational program at each high school in the district. I asked what I was supposed to do. He said he wasn’t sure, but the district was going to have me on their payroll half-time and on the high school’s payroll the other half. This was one of John’s ideas to keep the cost of the school’s full-time employees down, hoping that this would allow for the hire of two new teachers.
I walked back to the office that was now mine and sat down. I didn’t even know what a vocational program was. I looked around. On one side there was a large desk, a nice chair, a computer, and a couple of other chairs. On the other side of the room was a counter and a row of cupboards and a place for a filing cabinet. I was there because I had taken some administrative classes so I could supervise student teachers for BYU, and I now had an administrative certificate.
I got up and walked down the hall to where the secretaries were. They seemed to know what had happened before I did. They were all smiles and seemed to be happy I was in the office. I asked if any of them knew what classes were vocational. They provided me with a list of the teachers that were classified as vocational. I spent the rest of the day and a couple more walking around the school visiting with each of the teachers on the list. At the administration meeting next week, we were all sitting around the office making reports of what we had accomplished. One of the administrators was in charge of all of the athletics, another was in charge of all of the academic classes, and then it was my turn. All I could really say was that I had visited all of the vocational teachers. I said that I was going to the district office to visit with the vocational director since I had been termed a vocational coordinator.
The school administrators determined that I really didn’t have all that much to do, so I could be over all of the secretaries, the counselors, the lunch program and the custodians. I think that no one else wanted to be over those areas, and it had been decided before my arrival that the new guy should have that opportunity. It worked out well for me. They all became a great support to me.
One of the early examples of how being over all of these areas, as well as vocational, came as all of the good calls got routed to me by the secretaries. They got a call from WordPerfect who wanted to know who to talk to about a donation of computers. The secretary directed the call to my office, and WordPerfect then delivered a large truck, full of computers and monitors, to our school. We needed a large storage area to house them all.
Another time one of the secretaries sent me a call from Stephen Covey. He wanted to donate about a thousand calculators, several thousand pencils, pens and other equipment to the school. He had joined forces with another company and they became Franklin Covey, but he had all of these materials that were just labeled Covey, and he wanted us to have them. The next call, some weeks later, was from a company that made mouse pads. They had a pickup load of mouse pads that were rejects or over-runs, and they wanted to know if Orem High would like them. They knew that we would because I had talked to the owner at Comdex in Las Vegas.
I had been doing a lot of different things in my new job, but these items were large. The other administrators couldn’t figure out how I had managed to get all of these donations for the school. It was because the secretaries directed calls my way that seemed like would be helpful to me. Many of the donations actually ended up at all of the schools in the district because Orem High didn’t have the need for so many computers, calculators, mouse pads and other items. Often, the people who donated material to Orem High then told others who to call, or to get in touch with me. It was a wonderful start to this phase of my life. I will try to remember to write about some of the other blessings that came my way in this job, but for now I’m sure that this is enough to put everyone to sleep.
 


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