As I suspect is obvious to anyone who has read the blog this year, has been a year unlike ANY other I have ever lived.

Exactly nine months ago today, I posted Playlist ‘24-’25. Written prior to all of the events this year, the playlist has new resonance as I look back on it this week. 

As I noted in August, readers of the blog may remember that, years ago, my good friend and educational leader Sean Gaillard (author of The Pepper Effect – great reading for any and all Beatles fans and a must read for educators!) introduced me to the idea of #OneSong which developed into the idea of a mixtape which morphed into the exercise of developing an annual playlist. For the last few years, I have put together a playlist to lead me with energy, optimism and enthusiasm into the upcoming school year.

My specific criterion for songs to make my list: 

• songs whose lyrics of the song resonate with me,
• songs that move me, 
• songs that inspire me,
• songs that send me. 

Below are my reflections on the songs including one quote from them and how it resonated with me this year. 

As I suspect is obvious to anyone who has read the blog this year, has been a year unlike ANY other I have ever lived… The playlist was designed to be about school, but it is impossible to review it through that lens alone.

Playlist ‘24-’25

Track One: Magic  |  Olivia Newton-John

And if all your hopes survive, destiny will arrive

If all my hopes can survive after this particular year – and I believe they have – I am grateful and know that they can survive anything the world can throw at me.

Track Two: September  |  Earth, Wind and Fire 

Do you remember never a cloudy day?

This one is aspirational. I would like to never remember a cloudy day. This is a goal for my life. Move beyond the clouds.

Track Three: Overture – Star Trek the Motion Picture  |  Jerry Goldsmith

Instrumental

How I have needed my comfort food this year. Star Trek, in general, and Star Trek The Motion Picture in particular have ever been that for me. I must have rewatched it over five times these last nine months and listened to this soundtrack over 100 times. Really.

Track Four: Queen of California  |  John Mayer

If you see her say, “Hello”  … The Queen of California is steppin’ down, down

And so she did, so shockingly unexpectedly.

Track Five: Upside Down  |  Diana Ross

Instinctively, you give to me the love that I need/ I cherish the moments with you

So, so, so many people have given me the love that I need this year. I hope I have shared half as much with them. How would I have made it through this particular year without the blessing of all these people? Answer: I would not have.

Track Six: Cool Change  |  Little River Band

Now that my life is so rearranged/ I know that it’s time for a cool change

My life is utterly rearranged. I know that changes are coming. I am embracing them…

Track Seven: I Can Do It with a Broken Heart  |  Taylor Swift

I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks/ ‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart

I think this one might be self explanatory…

Track Eight: Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday  |  Stevie Wonder

What happened to/ The world we knew

This year has taught me that the world we knew becomes the world we know. That has to be okay. This is okay. 

Track Nine: Change  |  Taylor Swift

Cause we never gave in/ And we’ll sing hallelujah, we sang hallelujah/ Hallelujah

In education, we cannot give in, even though we get tired, even though the days are long. The same is true of life: we cannot give in, even though we get crushed, even though the nights are longer than the days. I will not give in.

Track Ten: Hell of a View  |  Eric Church

You holdin’ me holdin’ you/ It’s a hell of a view

It is, indeed, one hell of a view.

… what I have come to understand – is that Xavier would become a place of personal healing for me, even as it called on my professional self.

When it comes to luck you make your own
Tonight I got dirt on my hands but I’m building me a new home

– Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen

I stepped onto the campus of Xavier College Preparatory High School in Palm Desert, California as principal in March of 2024. I came with a full heart and a ton of excitement. I suppose I was thinking about what had come before in my life and all that had brought me to this school: three decades I had spent in Catholic education leadership, relationships I had with people at Xavier, the Jesuit mission I tried to live. I was also excited about the promise of a new chapter in life as Caroline and I were moving here for an adventure together. It seems hard to believe that the joyful beginning of this new venture would turn to sorrow when, a few months later, Caroline was gone.

What was impossible to know then – but what I have come to understand – is that Xavier would become a place of personal healing for me, even as it called on my professional self. 

Xavier is a remarkable school. It is the only Catholic high school in the Coachella Valley, and it carries a responsibility because of that. I feel that responsibility almost every day. There is something unmistakably special here. From the moment you enter the gates, you sense that this is not just a school, it is a community grounded in the Jesuit tradition, committed to forming young people who will live lives of service, leadership, and faith.

Our students are at the heart of that mission and have been so helpful in coming to terms with Caroline’s passing. They are bright, funny, messy, determined, deeply human and they want to be challenged. They want to be seen. They want to matter. I am thinking specifically of my senior Cura Personalis group with whom I meet weekly and of my ninth grade, Pre AP English One class with whom I am blessed to talk about literature almost every day.

I get to journey with a wonderful team of educators and staff, colleagues who are passionate about their disciplines and deeply invested in the whole person of each student. They know the power of accompaniment. They know that formation is more than a transcript. They show up, day after day even as they contend with a principal who is just learning the school.

There is nothing flashy about the work we do, but it is sacred. It is in the ordinary rhythms: morning check-ins, classroom discussions, retreats, hallway chats, practice fields, service outings, and liturgies that stop us in our tracks with their quiet beauty. It is in the way we pray together, the way we wrestle with hard questions, the way we tell the truth. At Xavier, when we are at our best (as we often are), the Jesuit call to be “women and men with and for others” is not just something we teach, it is something we try to live, imperfectly to be sure.

I often think of Caroline when I am walking the campus. She quickly fell in love with the school and she loved the season of Lent, especially the idea of metanoia: the Greek word for conversion or a turning of the heart. For Caroline, metanoia was never about shame or penance. It was about freedom. It was about being open to transformation.

Since her death, that word has taken on new meaning for me. These past months have been a season of profound metanoia. Grief has turned me inward and outward all at once. There is a stripping away that comes with loss, but also a deepening. The work I do now is filtered through that clarity. I do not take the days for granted. I know how fleeting they are. And I know how important it is to use our time to build something that lasts. Each day that passes, I am somehow more peaceful. The people of Xavier Prep have so much to do with that. There is work to be done. We are working on enrollment, on transparency in decision-making, on the spiritual formation of both students and faculty, on the concretization of the president/principal model.

But this is joyful work for me. It is rooted in hope.

So here I am, in the desert, still walking through the mystery of resurrection. Still grieving. Still grateful. Still believing in the power of Catholic education to form young people who will go out and set the world on fire.

And deeply, deeply thankful to be doing that work here, at Xavier Prep.

… I was immediately struck by a significant question: can I do this job?

Had a coat of fine leather and snakeskin boots
But that coat always had a thread hangin’ loose – Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen

Following my late summer departure from Mullen High School and an aspirational – if ultimately unsuccessful flirtation with consulting and starting my own enterprise – a singular reality hit me: I had worked in Catholic education my entire life and had not made enough money to live on savings for very long. Motivated, perhaps, more by fear than anything else, I began to look for positions in school leadership and turned my eye toward charter schools. They held two advantages. First, I had never worked in them and wanted to try something new. Second, they did not immediately require credentials, a reality very appealing to an uncredentialed dude approaching his mid-fifties.

Following a significantly arduous application process, I was hired as Assistant Principal of Culture at KIPP Northeast Denver Leadership Academy. I was eager and I was anxious. 

Arriving at KNDLA with an understanding of my position that bore little resemblance to what the job would actually entail (a situation for which I blame myself; no one misled me), I was immediately struck by a significant question: can I do this job?

There are so, so many individuals at KNDLA who are doing wonderful, even heroic work. They are serving a school in turn around that has challenges beyond my limited understanding to enumerate. They are working with students who need them and are changing lives each and every day. They are passionate. They are devoted. They are first responders in the most praiseworthy sense of that term. 

I was sad to realize that I was not one of them.

Early on in my one semester at KNDLA, I understood that the work behind me – the almost 30 years I had already spent in schools – had not prepared me for the work ahead of me, at least not the work at KNDLA. Though I worked very hard, I was not successful and had a suspicion, a gnawing feeling, that I was letting the school down, letting my colleagues down, letting our students down. I was overmatched and I was underperforming. 

I was, simply put, miserable. 

That I also was dealing with health issues during my short tenure there was real – though the hindsight of a couple of years leads me to understand that the mental health issues I was contending with were utterly intertwined with the physical ones.

Determining with my wife (who was suffering in her own purgatory at the time) that our next positions would not be in Colorado, I resigned in January and devoted myself to a nationwide search for my next position. 

This was the right decision for us, but I will ever feel shame for departing KNDLA in the middle of the school year.

There were heroes there, colleagues who changed my outlook on education and who challenged my conception of our work. I smile when I think of Carrie and Brittani and Kelly and Erin. Kelly and Brittani, in particular, have had a lasting impact on my life. I was blessed to know them all and blessed in my short time there. 

For, without question, my months at KNDLA led me to Xavier College Prep.

But that is a story for next week…

Next week, Lucky Town – Xavier College Preparatory High School

…my time at Mullen was filled with relationships that changed me and made me a better person and a better administrator.

And I had some victory that was just failure in deceit
Now the joke’s comin’ up through the soles of my feet – Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen

When I arrived at Mullen High School – a Christian Brothers school and traditional rival of Regis Jesuit High School -, I knew I was joining a Lasallian institution with deep traditions. As a person who had spent almost my entire career up to that point in Ignatian education, I was nervous about what crossing the Rubicon to the Lasallian world might mean for me. I know that people at the school were equally worried about what it might mean for Mullen.

I was principal of Mullen High School for five years, five very good but sometimes very difficult years. That half decade was marked by hard work, a pandemic, catastrophic budgetary concerns, a year serving as both principal and acting president (my first year at the school!), gratifying successes, significant personal illness (nobody wants Shingles), profound emotional challenge, and acceptance that I could not always be the change I wanted to be in the world. Stepping away from Mullen was heart wrenching. Watching it thrive in the ensuing years has been terrific.

Over my years in Catholic secondary education, I have found that  leadership is equal parts vocation and privilege. I have been privileged, time-and-again, to have this work as my vocation. Rarely has that idea been more true for me than when I think back on those five years as Mullen High School in Denver. Reflecting now, I realize that while we tackled important institutional work together, the deepest gift of those years was, without question, the people with whom I served.

Naming names is often a risky enterprise as I tend to leave someone out when I begin listing people who have meant so much to me, but my time at Mullen was filled with relationships that changed me and made me a better person and a better administrator. Liz, a couple of Joes, Trish, Betsy, Lindsay, Christa, Katie, Duan, two Katies, Carrie, George, Rita, Doug, Frank, Leslie, and Raul: each of these people remain in my heart and my prayers.

Mullen also gifted me with a brother. 

I have mentioned in previous posts and in my blog And There Came a Day, The Magister, Jim Broderick King, who is closer to me than blood could bind. He and I were classmates at Regis Jesuit and worked there together for almost 20 years. Godfather to my children and speaker of intimate truths, Jim is my life-long companion. At the JSN, I was blessed to reconnect with the genius Tim Sassen whose wit and love carry me to this day. And at Mullen I met Michael McGuire. Were you to ask either of us how we became friends and at what point a friendship became brotherhood, I do not think we could give you a clear answer. What I do know is that my friendship with Michael has been the defining friendship of the last decade of my life. I am fairly certain that few people are gifted with friendships like this one, especially later in life. What a blessing Michael McGuire is to me.

One of the most unique and humbling aspects of my time at Mullen was working alongside my son, Matthew. To share a campus with your child is a joy few educators get to experience. While we did not see each other constantly, we did check in almost every morning. Both he and I were very early arrivals at the school – I like to think that he may have learned that particular trait from me – and we would chat before dawn and the start of the school day. There was something grounding about knowing he was just down the hall. Watching him grow in his own right, finding his place and voice in the school, filled me with pride. I tried not to hover (he would say I mostly succeeded), but being present for that chapter in his life was an extraordinary blessing. He decided to depart the school months before I did but his decision to do so left a hole that I did not fully comprehend at the time.

Another gift was working daily with my sister, Janna. We had been close throughout our lives, but to be at the school together brought a new layer to our bond. She is the sweetest person on the planet. This was something I knew long before I worked with her. Seeing her share her unique gifts of love and joy with the Mullen community – a community that may not have always grasped what she was offering – was amazing, just like her. No one gives as much as she does. No one.

Then there was Caroline. My wife and partner, who joined the Mullen staff with her own deep commitment to education. This was not an easy choice for her, but one she made so we could be together. We worked together as we had at other points in our lives, and as always, she made every space she entered better. Her warmth, insight, and fierce dedication to students and mission elevated everything we did. Caroline passed away soon after our time at Mullen, and I carry the memory of all of those years with her at Regis Jesuit and at Mullen as among the most cherished in my life. She transformed those places, and me

It was these people who got me through the hard days. It was these people who, in the end, made my Mullen journey worthwhile. The school will always be a place that lives in my heart. Not because of the job I held, but because of the people I held dear.

Next week, Lucky Town – KIPP Northeast Denver Leadership Academy

…during those years, I served alongside colleagues who were wholly committed to the mission of Jesuit education… 

And I don’t know just where I’m going tonight
Out where the sky’s been cleared by a good hard rain
There’s somebody callin’ my secret name – Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen

After the clock chimed midnight on my time at Regis Jesuit, I reluctantly began to consider other career opportunities.

That led me to a role that was both familiar and brand new: Vice President of the Jesuit Secondary Education Association, the organization that would become the JSN. It had been a constant presence throughout my career. I had attended every Colloquium they offered, graduated from and taught in their Seminars in Ignatian Leadership, and presented at numerous gatherings. When the opportunity to join the JSN and succeed Dr. Bernie Bouilette whom no one could (in my estimation) ever replace – a man who would become my mentor and on whom I still rely today arose, I was lucky and so deeply blessed to get the position.

The JSN, part of the Jesuit Conference of North America, supported more than eighty secondary and pre-secondary schools. Our offices were in Washington, D.C. – just four blocks from the White House – but I was able to remain in Denver, traveling regularly to lead programs and support leaders around the country.

It was an incredibly exciting next chapter. I loved every minute of it.

But sometimes, when you least expect it, God speaks one word—and everything changes.

That word still echoes in my mind: “Authentic.”

When Father Arturo Sosa, SJ, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, said that word during a homily at an international gathering of Jesuit educators in Rio de Janeiro, I was seated in the front row of the chapel and was close enough to feel the conviction in his voice. He was talking about leadership in Catholic schools and the responsibility we bear to lead with honesty and deep self-awareness. His challenge was clear: to lead others, we must be in touch with who we are. We must be authentic.

Authentic.

At that moment, I realized something I had not yet admitted or understood. I was doing meaningful work, but I had not yet answered the deepest call of my vocation: my first, best destiny some would say. I had not yet served as a Catholic high school principal. Not as an acting principal, that I had done at Regis Jesuit. I had not been: A. Principal. 

I felt at that moment that there was something more for me to give and something else to do.

That moment in Rio changed everything.

But let me rewind.

I was in the fourth of four wonderful years working for the JSN and, during those years, I served alongside colleagues who were wholly committed to the mission of Jesuit education. We logged thousands of miles together, traveling thousands of miles. I met hundreds of educators and school leaders who helped shape my thinking, challenge my assumptions, and expand my heart. 

I was transformed by the experience. 

Many of the people I worked with remain dear friends—some of the most important relationships of my personal and professional life. 

One of them, Dr. Tim Sassen, is more than a friend. For a person who has sisters but no biological brothers I have been blessed in three men who are as close to me as if we were biologically related. Tim is one of them. We still text and talk, and a casual “two minutes?” message often turns into a holy hour of laughter. 

All of the people I encountered in my time at JSN made me who I am. I am better because of them.

In the fall of that fourth year with the JSN, the entire professional staff received an invitation to attend an international conference of Jesuit educators in Rio. Truthfully, “invitation” does not quite capture it—it was an honor. Leaders in Jesuit education from all over the world were coming together to reflect, pray, and discern how best to lead our schools. I did not belong in the room with such folks. This is a fact. It is also a fact that that is not why I wanted to say “no thank you” to this invitation. 

International travel has never been my comfort zone, and when I looked at my already-packed calendar that fall, I realized I would be home in Denver for fewer than six days during that October. I tried to decline.

Thankfully, Father Bill Muller, my colleague at the JSJN (he would not like for me to call him “boss”) had a better perspective. “We’re blessed to be invited,” he said. “You’re going.”

Roger that.

And so, I boarded a plane in Denver, connected through Houston, and landed in Rio de Janeiro, completely unaware that I was about to experience the most profound spiritual moment of my professional life. That homily. That word.

Authentic.

It shifted something in me. I came home with clarity and conviction. I told my wife what I had heard in my heart and, frankly, what I believed I heard from the Voice of God, and without hesitation, she supported me fully. Her faith in me made my next step possible. Without a job lined up or applications submitted, I walked into Bill Muller’s office at the JSN and let him know that I would be leaving at the end of the school year.

“It’s time for you to run your own show,” he said. What a gift Bill Muller is.

Not long after that, my wife asked, “What’s your dream job? If you could wave a magic wand, what would it be?”

That was easy: a principalship at a co-ed Catholic high school in Denver.

At the time, no such job existed. So we started to look at schools that would mean a move and require a leap of faith (more on that in a few weeks)..

Two weeks later, that exact position opened.

Funny how religious experiences work.

Next week, Lucky Town – Mullen High School