With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
EXPECTATIONS? MEET REALITY.
MARCH 15, 2023
Expectation: The president who hired me at Mullen High School would be the president I would work for.
Reality: The president who hired me retired before I officially started my responsibilities as principal.
Expectation: The Board of Trustees would secure an interim president until a search for a full time replacement could be completed.
Reality: Through no fault of the Board, the interim plan did not work and Mullen was faced with a leadership challenge in the fall of my first year as principal.
Expectation: The administration I was hired to serve would be a solid group for the foreseeable future.
Reality: 2 of the 3 positions in the administration were occupied by different people by the end of my first year than those who were in the positions at the beginning of my first year.
Expectation: I was Principal of Mullen HIgh School.
Reality: By mid-fall, I was Acting President and Principal of Mullen High School.
To say that my realities were different than my expectations is something of an understatement though I could hardly anticipate all of the variables and challenges that combined to create such upheaval in the leadership structures of the school I had just joined.
Mullen had enjoyed almost a decade of stable leadership. The principal I succeeded had been with the school for over 20 years and had served as principal for the last 7. Likewise, the president who hired me had been in place 7 years as well. The leadership shifts were surprising and something of a shock to the system.
I served under 3 presidents in my first months at the school: the president who hired me, an interim president who had made it clear that her tenure would last no longer than early August (she was a former principal of Mullen the school had already coaxed out of retirement once before this – and she is simply wonderful) and an interim president who took the position and moved to Colorado for a year before realizing his health and a mile high altitude were incompatible.
Feeling the community was reeling a bit from all of the leadership changes, I asked the Board of Trustees if it made sense to have me, with the incredible support of Mullen’s amazing and dedicated Chief Financial Officer, serve as Acting President rather than hire another interim person.
The Board believed it did and I began a very short (by design) tenure in both roles.
Looking back on my first year at Mullen, very few of my expectations were matched by reality. But all of them were exceeded.