(L) 1994 (R) 2018
It is my intention to share some reflections on the highs, the lows, the excitement, the routine, the successes, the failures and everything in between which I experience the course of the next 10 – 12 months, my first months as a full-time principal of a high school. Writing this journal will help me grow. Reading it may make you laugh…
08 | November | 2018
My latest learning as a new principal?
Be ready to be surprised. Be ready to check my assumptions. Be ready to leave expectation at the door. Be ready to admit my instincts, though often solid, are not always correct.
Be ready to be humbled.
One of these lessons came to me this week though it had been brewing for months. In the early weeks of this school year, I was ready to make a very significant decision. I was sure I had sized the situation which I was considering up very well and I was within moments of executing a course of action that would have major implications for myself and for others. I was convinced of my righteousness of purpose and of my own reasoning. I was primed.
And I was convinced not to make the move I was going to make.
Okay, I thought. Be collaborative. Be consultative. Allow others in and allow them to hear your process and allow them to stay your hand.
Then sit back and watch them be wrong.
Trouble is, they were not wrong. They were right. The action I was going to take turned out to be unnecessary. Watching the scenario unfold over these past months has validated the opinions of those who told me to reconsider.
I am grateful. And I hope I have told them that enough.
Another humbling happened this past week. It happened twice.
In two instances I was dreading parent meetings. In both cases I knew the topics and I assumed that the families would be unhappy with the school, with our direction as it pertained to their students and with me. These situations were challenging and serious and the school had taken clear and decisive action.
Had I had hatches prior to these parental contacts, I would have battened them down.
You know what is coming. In both meetings, rather than rail against the school or me, the parents thanked me and praised the school. They were grateful. They were pleased. They were gracious.
I had approached both meetings certain that I would have to hold a line, be firm, protect myself and the school.
In both cases, I was wrong.
Be ready to be humbled, man. That is my lesson these past two weeks. I sure hope I have learned it.