This was the best education I ever got.
“What is your goal for us?” or “what is your goal for the school?” or a variation of those interrogatives are fair questions to be asked of a principal new to her or his position.
I have been a new principal three times.
In each stop, at Regis Jesuit High School, Mullen High School, and Xavier College Preparatory High School, I have been asked this question. It has seemed that the person asking the question truly wanted an answer and expected me to have one. I thought the unstated implication was that if I did not have one, the institution would have made a mistake in hiring me.
Typically, my response to this question has been something along the lines of “oh, I have a plan, don’t worry about that.” Sometimes I would say “I don’t want to scare you with my plan” and smile.
The reality, however, is that, were I truly pressed, I would have had a hard time clearly articulating what my plan actually was.
My philosophy as an educational leader which I have embraced over the years is to allow the community to develop plans, to suggest directions, and to map the future together. I have rarely – if ever – wanted to lay out my own, fully articulated blueprint. I have never, to the best of my recollection, decided the direction of a school I have served and expected or demanded that the staff and teachers simply fall in line.
I believe that is not my style. After all the years, I hope it is not.
However, in the lastest stop at Xavier College Prep, I had a unique onboarding. The school was able to add me to the staff in March and I got to meet with each member of the community one-on-one as their year wrapped up simultaneously to my tenure beginning.
That was a real gift.
In those conversations, more often than not, I was asked “what is your plan for the school?”
It began to be unseemly that I did not have an answer.
Surely a principal has a plan. Surely the person in That Office has expectations. Surely the educational leader has an idea where the school should go.
As end of the year meetings approached, knowing I had 45 minutes to speak with the faculty to send them off into their summers, I reflected on and prayed about this question, the answer to which was found in the most unlikely of places.
In the late spring, comedian John Mulaney was interviewed on David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs no Introduction program. A fan of both men, I was eager to watch the show.
Mulaney is Jesuit educated. He is a graduate of Georgetown University. He went to high school at St. Ignatius Preparatory in Chicago, IL. Part of the Letterman interview was filmed at St. Ignatius in December of 2023.
The entire show is worth watching as Mulaney opens up with Letterman about his life, drug addiction and recovery, and fatherhood. It is a powerful show.
But, during the interview when Mulaney was asked about his experiences at St. Ignatius, he made two comments that resonated with me so much that I immediately rewound the show to watch them again.
Of his time at the school, Mulaney said: “When I was a student I thought ‘Oh my God, they are on our case 24/7. Luckily we have this theater to goof off in and do things.’ And I’m here now and I’m like ‘well, they built it, you know? It wasn’t like a clubhouse we found in a sewer, you know?”
Letterman follows up this comment with the question: “Did you like high school better than college or college better than high school?”
Mulaney immediately replies: “I liked college better than high school but the education in high school was better than college. Yeah.”
Letterman is suprised. “Wow!”
Mulaney: “Oh yeah. This was the best education I ever got.”
And thus was articulated my goal by a man far smarter than I.
At our faculty meetings, I set up this clip with something about Mulaney’s background as a St. Ignatius and Georgetown grad and andI said: “Okay, many have wanted to know what my goals for us are. I can’t articulate them better than this.”
There were a few audible gasps.
Truly.
Whether Mulaney knows it or not – and I believe he does, he is a very smart guy – the “education” he is talking about is not simply academic. It is about the whole person. It is about how good teachers, counselors, and coaches work together to allow a student to grow in every way imaginable.
So, this is my goal. It is two pronged. Be a school where students can find themselves, their passion, and their relationship with God within our guardrails and guidelines and be a school that provides our graduates with the best education they ever got.
Simple.
It only took me 34 years to figure it out.