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!

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?

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!

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.

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!

I do not remember being intimidated in the first days and weeks I served Mullen High School as its principal. I was absolutely aware of the responsibility and I was incredibly humbled to have the privilege. Through the generosity of my boss at the Jesuit Schools Network, I had been able to work a few days a week at Mullen throughout the spring of 2018 so, when the 2018-2019 school year opened, I felt I knew the school a bit better than I had when I interviewed. As the calendar moved into late July and early August, I was ready for the opportunity life had presented me.

I spent days reviewing the staff list, looking over the prior year’s yearbook and running through lists of departments to try to familiarize myself with everyone’s name. I had met many of the faculty and staff over my brief association with the school, but I wanted to know them as best I could before the year started.

I walked the campus every day. Mullen’s campus is vast and encompasses over half a dozen buildings. Some of the classroom numbers do not exactly follow logical patterns. Many of the locations are not referred to by what they are actually named, but by some colloquial understanding. I wanted to be certain I would not get lost on my way to any particular gathering or find myself in the wrong hallway in a crisis. 

As I got to know more people and they got to know me, I realized that all of my old stories, the stories I had told many times at Regis Jesuit and the stories I had used as an instructor for JSN, were all new. The folks at Mullen did not have a 20 year history with me. Hell, they did not have 20 minutes experience with me.

Many of my early conversations with people at Mullen necessarily dealt with my past, with what made me want to teach, with who I was.

It was like interviewing all over again sharing my professional and not a small amount of my personal history with my new colleagues. And it was a gift.

I have found when I tell someone why I am a teacher or why I am an administrator, I am energized because the work I am blessed to do truly inspires me. 

Mullen High School inspired me in those early weeks.

It still does.