National Council of Instructional Administrators

 

Instructional Leadership Abstracts

Document Type

Abstract

Date of this Version

9-2019

Citation

Instructional Leadership Abstracts, September, 2019

Comments

Published by the National Council of Instructional Administrators (NCIA)

Abstract

Did you ever have a summer that felt like summer? For me, it was when I was a full-time faculty. I enjoyed the nine-month teaching contract and the three months of downtime, yet I was eager to return to campus and my students. As I transitioned from teaching to administration, my summer “downtime” became the summer crunch time. People ask, “How is your summer going?” knowing that I work for a college. My response is usually, “What summer?” I am sure those of you who work in administrative positions have had similar experiences, and often ask the question “What ever happened to summer?”

As administrators we tend to feel obligated to always be present, or if not present, very available through electronic or other forms of communication. Michael Bugeja (2006) discussed the issue of addiction related to electronic communication in his article “Stalked by E-mail on Vacation,” comparing the electronic connections to the use of narcotics. I know my logic in constantly checking emails is so that I do not have an unmanageable amount of communication to address when I return. Could the real reason for my obsessive email habit be an addiction?

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