The Journal presents my weekly reflections on being a private, Catholic school principal during what promised to be a year filled with energy, excitement, challenges and possibilities…
… there is a vocal “many” who are very willing to substitute their judgement for mine. They do not hesitate to question decisions. They do not hesitate to share their opinions. They do not hesitate to cast aspersions on my motives. They do not hesitate to demand my time. In the role I play for the our school and the manner in which I want to serve it, that has to be okay.
Since the late spring and early summer, when Emergency Remote Learning ended, when grades were calculated and grade books were closed, when plans to celebrate the Class of 2020 were finalized, questions about this fall surfaced and demanded attention: When would the school reopen (hint: our school never closed, only the buildings did, the work very much continued)? How will we know it’s safe to return (that’s a great question)? How will the events of the last months affect our students, our teachers and staff, our community (the data here is still being collected)? The sheer amount of things I had never considered in my over a decade of high school administrative leadership was and remains staggering.
I had never truly thought about cleaning protocols, mask wearing, ventilation, one-way hallways, what color face masks our students should be allowed to wear… the list goes on-and-on. I had not asked myself just how to be a high school principal in the midst of a global pandemic. I had asked myself how to be a principal in school facing a crisis, for sure. Heck, I have already been a principal in a school facing a crisis. But to be serving a community faced with circumstances beyond any of our control, circumstances that seem to daily redefine our lives and our work? I had not truly wrestled with all of the implications.
Surely, very few of us no matter our vocations have.
What has become very clear to me as the school I serve has made decisions (in the spring to cancel international travel, to close our school buildings, to temporarily alter our grade scale and over the summer announcing our plans for the fall, selecting an in-person reopening plan and then moving to a different “Phase” of that plan) and as I have participated in that process often offering decisive opinions and being called upon as a key voice in our deliberations is that there are many in our community who believe I don’t know what I am doing.
Or, rather, there is a vocal “many” who are very willing to substitute their judgement for mine. They do not hesitate to question decisions. They do not hesitate to share their opinions. They do not hesitate to cast aspersions on my motives. They do not hesitate to demand my time.
In the role I play for the our school and the manner in which I want to serve it, that has to be okay.
Over these last months, I have had almost every choice I have articulated challenged and questioned and that gauntlet has forced me to confront my own decision making process, repeatedly. As someone who likes to consider himself a reflective leader, being forced to consider and reconsider and, then again, reconsider decisions should be a comfortable place for me.
I continue to work to make it so.
There is a lot, according to many, that I don’t know about what is facing our world and our community and our school. There is a lot in fact, according to voices that demand a hearing, that I don’t know about running a school, this school, our school.
The reality is, those perceptions are true. There is a lot I don’t know.
But I am working, along with a talented and committed staff of faculty and servant leaders, to figure it out. We are working – together – to figure it out and to keep our community healthy and safe.
That’s the goal.
The rest comes with the territory.
And, as I noted above, that has to be okay.