I have always appreciated office staff in schools. They really know what's going on and they bail teachers out from all kinds of difficulties. They also have a lot of pupil contact.
Teachers seem to have the fear that if they for one second they let somebody away with something , the whole world will fall in and all students will want to be allowed to get away with the same thing.
One example is being late for school. Most schools have a very stringent late policy. There always are some students who are habitually late. Well yes, if a kid is late he needs a late slip to get into his class and he will be punished by having to stay after school. That's supposed to make him not come late and most of the time it works.
So one of the fine people in the office has to look after lates. One person we had looked after the front desk to handle school visitors, kids and teachers. And yes she handled lates. She was good at it.
I happened to be in the office one day when she was having a kid fill out a late slip. The kid was a big guy and a little rough around the edges. While the kid was filling out the late slip our lady was giving him a running talk as to why he shouldn't be late. It went something like this. " Honey, you can't be late all the time. Honey, you have to get to school on time, Honey, you will have to get up earlier." Well the poor kid had probably never been called honey before. He was uncomfortable and rocked back and forth with each "HONEY". So it was funny to see this kid's reaction to the secretary's pep talk about being late.
I've often wondered if the kid was ever late again of if he wanted the "HONEY" treatment again. This kid certainly got much more for being late than just a late slip.
By the way, I got the hone treatment a time or two and I wasn't even late. That's just the way this lady was. She was excellent in handling the front desk...the first point of contact in the school.
