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!
AROUND THE TABLE AFTER 4:30
APRIL 5, 2023
The unpredictable is part of the job of a high school principal and part of what I love about it. Rare are consecutive days that are the same. Very, very rare. Rather, there always seems to be something new with which to contend and some new opportunity to handle.
But, if you are a high school administrator and you are huddled around a table in your office with some of your colleagues after 4:30pm when there is no evening event which you are all planning to attend, something has gone wrong.
There has been plenty that has gone wrong in my years at Mullen High School but the kinds of things that keep you in the building late are about people, about students or staff or faculty, and you are there because something needs to be done.
As I write this, I have situations flashing in my memory, scenarios that were sad or infuriating or frustrating or devastating, scenes that I would never want to live through again.
Never.
It is these moments that can define a life. I am not being hyperbolic. When one is around a table after 4:30 in a crisis, someone’s future is in the balance.
I have sat around many tables like this. Many, many colleagues have taken positions around them with me. Thinking back on these situations and the difficult decisions that have been made in these gatherings, I can say without a doubt that I have been deeply affected by the level-headed, prayerful and compassionate people who have taken up chairs with me. They have had the best interests of the individuals we have been discussing at heart. They have been clear-eyed and calm. They have been manifestations of God’s presence when situations call for God’s presence to be most needed.
Though conversations after 4:30 stand as some of the worst moments in my life as an administrator, I know that I have been blessed in them.
