Teach Boldly

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!

The hard calls one makes as a principal tend to deal with departures. There are times that, for the good of the school or for the good of an individual, someone must be asked to leave or be mandated to leave. Over the course of my almost five years as principal of Mullen and in my years as an assistant principal and acting principal at Regis Jesuit, I have taken part in more of these kinds of separations than I would have liked.

There have been situations which are all but obvious, when someone has done something that is so far over the line that there is really only one decision that can be reached, but those are very, very rare. 

More often, these decisions are heart wrenching and, as I write this post, I picture faces and remember names and recall – vividly – the emotions around each of these separations.

While I remind myself that, at the end of each scenario, I and those making the decisions with me did the best we could with the information we had, the sting lingers. Choices such as these change people’s lives. There is immense responsibility in them. 

All of these hard calls remain with me. The emotions still impact me. The history of each choice informs the next.

It might be better if I had the capacity to simply let them go but I do not want to be that kind of principal or that kind of leader.

In the much maligned Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Captain Kirk is offered an opportunity to have the pain of the worst moment of life erased from his psyche. He refuses. “… pain and guilt can’t be taken away with the wave of a magic wand! They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away, I need my pain,” Kirk says.

While I might, sometimes, especially directly in the aftermath of these decisions, want the pain to go away, I have to agree with Kirk.

It is my sincere hope that each hard call and the reflection thereon makes me a better principal when I have to make the next one. 

I have learned the next one is always coming…

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!

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.

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!

Over the course of my first year or two as principal of Mullen High School, I was often asked to compare my new experiences at Mullen with my prior work at Regis Jesuit High School. Both are independent, Catholic schools meaning they are not run by the Office of Catholic Schools in the Denver Archdiocese. Both were all boys schools in the past. Both are run by religious orders, the Brother of the Christian Schools in Mullen’s case, the Society of Jesus in the case of Regis Jesuit.

The long history I had at Regis Jesuit, my new school Mullen’s cross town rival, was, for my tastes, an all too frequent topic of conversation. I became tired of the question, but had my responses at the ready. I was aware this was going to be a subject of inquiry from the moment I received an interview at Mullen. I was hopeful the curiosity would quickly pass.

It did not.

In fact, the questions about it got into my head.

Mullen High School is Lasallian in our charism.  Regis Jesuit High School is Ignatian in its charism. Prior to coming to Mullen, I had been using the word “Ignatian” for almost 25 years. I was certain I was going to – in some disastrously massive and public context, substitute the word “Ignatian” when I meant “Lasallian.” I admit, I have had this happen a handful of times in the last few years. My mind is not what it once was…

I understood the concern behind these questions and I tried to sympathize with it. I think I took the questions with good nature. I believe I replied to the questions with smiles.

The moment that bordered on self-parody, though, was the reaction from some at Mullen the day I wore a red shirt.

Our colors at Mullen are blue and gold. Regis Jesuit’s colors are red and white.

I have many quirks and foibles. One of them is that I choose to wear a comic book character necktie every Wednesday (the day that used to be “new comic day” at stores – the day new comics hit the stands.). One Wednesday in my first year at Mullen, I put on a red button down shirt and either a Spider-Man or Superman tie. 

The reaction was immediate. The fact that I had worn the color red at Mullen was pointed out by more than a few of my new colleagues. “We don’t wear red at Mullen,” I was told, “nothing here is red.”

I got it. I did.

I refrained from wearing red for a year or two after that day.

However, yielding to this kind of thinking – this idea that my past did not happen and did not actually inform the (what I hoped was) good work I was doing as principal – was a drain on me.

And it was what my wife calls “form over substance.” I did not then and do not know wish to ever give in to form over substance for any reason.

I have worn red whenever I have wanted to since that day. 

(But I wear a lot more blue. And gold.

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!

Early in my time at Mullen High School, I had the most amazing day. 

Actually, it was the most amazing 90 minutes of a day, perhaps the most eventful 90 consecutive minutes of my entire career. 

It started with a call over the radio, something to the effect of: “we have a problem in the boys’ bathroom on the 200 hallway.” Normally, calls like this do not come over the radio, so I moved quickly out of my office and down the hall. I was joined by one of the assistant principals on the straight-shot route to the bathroom. As we approached, we could see personnel in the hallway, gathered and watching. 

In we went and what I saw belied expectations.

There was a fountain of water gushing from a broken pipe up and over a toilet, arcing across the ceiling. It was a flood of water, a geyser. It was pretty amazing.

We have the iPhone video to prove it!

Seems a young man broke a pipe from a wall and this was the result. We had to shut the water down, of course, and our facilities staff was on that almost before I could catch my breath. My concern was being without water in this part of the school, but we were within an hour of the end of the day and I thought we could send students to other areas that had H2O.

Not an every day event, but not exactly unprecedented. Boys do things that are inexplicable. All kids do. The assistant principal and I headed back to our offices and back to, what I am certain, was the important work of the end of a school day.

Within a half hour of the Bathroom Geyser, he called me across the hall over to his office, animatedly. I was not accustomed to his voice being raised so I moved quickly over to him.

Water was pouring out of his ceiling, through the socket in which his ceiling fan was mounted. We had had snow the night before and this was clearly a massive leak not just dripping but spilling on his desk. That it was going through an electronic appliance was lost on neither of us. We quickly switched off the light. 

Another water issue, another call to the facilities team. 

Was it the end of the day yet?

It was not. 

Within a half hour of the Giant Leak, the facilities director appeared at my office door. “Can you come with me,” he said. “I need you to see this to believe it.” 

I was surprised to see him given the bathroom and leak issues, but I followed him out the door. If the assistant principal was not given to exaggeration, the facilities director was beyond dry. He exuded calm. In this moment, however, his demeanor said “get a move on.”

We walked into a storage room and therein was a man I had never seen. He was staring at an open electrical box filled with wires and breakers.

“This is the electrician who works with us,” the facilities director told me. I was about to cross the open breaker box when the electrician waved me back. 

“Careful,” he said. “Watch.”

I stopped, watched for less than a minute and saw a foot long jet of fire shoot out of the box and immediately douse itself.

“That’s not good.” I said. I thought something rather different.

“No.” Our facilities director agreed.

“Is this going to catch fire?” I asked.

“I’m watching it,” the electrician said. “If it does, I’ll shut down the system.” 

Which meant we would lose electricity throughout two buildings of the school.

“What’s next?” I asked?

“We can fix all this overnight,” I was told. The facilities director, who has since retired, never once let me down with a promise like that. He certainly did not that night. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ve got this.”

I returned to my office. I had no words.

I did have a prayer that the school did not catch on fire before the end of that day… and it did not.

90 minutes. 90 eventful minutes.

I have not had another 90 quite like those and the “Principal Manual” did not have a chapter on them.

If it did, who would ever choose this job?