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!

In mid-December 2017, I drove across town from my home to Mullen High School for an afternoon interview for the position of Principal and Chief Academic Officer. 

Months earlier, after telling my wife that my dream job – the principalship of a co-ed, Catholic high school in Denver did not exist, I was out to lunch with a former colleague and shared with him that I was searching for a principal position. He told me that Mullen was looking for a principal.

Mullen High School.

Here’s the thing: I had departed Regis Jesuit High School four years earlier. I was a graduate of Regis Jesuit. Over the course of my time there, especially when I was a student, Mullen High School was Regis Jesuit’s major rival. When I was a student, both had been all boys schools. They competed fiercely in academics. There were fights in parking lots. There was an enmity between the student bodies of the two schools. My own, small contribution: I was yearbook editor my senior year when our basketball team defeated Mullen for the first time in a long time. I made a picture of the scoreboard showing the final score of that game the divider spread for the Athletics section of the yearbook.

Oh, and there was this: about seven years prior to this principal hiring cycle, Mullen had hired the principal I replaced in my year as acting principal of Regis Jesuit. He had a torrid tenure at the school and had left after less than a year.

Feeling the cards were stacked decidedly against me, I submitted my application.

I was, frankly, surprised I received an interview. Perhaps the intervening four years between my tenure at Regis Jesuit had somewhat inoculated me. 

I arrived at the school and was greeted and taken into a waiting room outside Mullen’s Board Room to await the interview. As I sat, I noticed that a buffet of food which had been seemingly attacked and demolished. As I recall, my interview was in the mid afternoon and I realized, looking on the food, two things: first, the interview committee had been at this all day and, second, that I was the last candidate they would be interviewing.

That realization, coupled with the fact that I did not think I was actually going to get the job, immediately relaxed me. I truly thought I was the kind of candidate whose resume almost forced an interview and that there was no point in not speaking my mind. I went into that interview with a calm, let them get to know me attitude. 

I had fun. The committee must have, too. 

A few weeks later, I was back on campus as the “lead candidate” for the job, meeting faculty and staff (a handful of whom I had known as our paths had crossed at Regis Jesuit) and interviewing once again. 

A few weeks after that, I was offered the position. 

I was thrilled!

I had interviewed with two other schools, both out of state, and was not the first choice of either but, as it turned out, they were not my first choice following my interview at Mullen. 

Mullen did something in their interview and with their committee that no other school did: they had students on the interview committee. And the students were not simply for show: those students interviewed me. They led large tracts of the conversation. They were concerned and they loved the school.

This said so much to me about what kind of place Mullen is. It told me what kind of leader I would need to be to serve the school well.

I received the offer and set out to being just that.

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 had a wonderful 4 years working for the Jesuit Schools Network. I served the organization alongside wonderful colleagues who were dedicated to the mission of Jesuit education and to supporting the schools which we served. I logged thousands of air miles all over the country (and, as you will read below, internationally). I got to meet hundreds of people. I was blessed by the work and gifted by the experience. And I remain very, very close to some of my co-workers to this day. I love these people and the gifts they shared with me. I will always have “two minutes?” to speak with them.

In my fourth year with the JSN, I was asked to go to Rio for an international conference of leaders of Jesuit education from all over the world. “Asked” is the wrong word. “Honored” is more appropriate. I was honored by the invitation to go to Rio.

But I am an idiot and resisted. I am a bit timid when it comes to international travel, having not done much of it. I looked at the calendar for the month of October, the month during which the gathering would take place, and saw that I would be home in Denver for fewer than six days that month adding the conference to my schedule. I was reluctant to commit.

My boss at JSN removed the reluctance. We were blessed to go and we would all be going.

Roger that.

What I could not possibly conceive when I boarded the plane in Denver to layover in Houston to get to Rio was that the trip would change my life.

This is not a hyperbolic statement. This trip changed my life.

I am a religious person and ever have been. I am a devoted Catholic. I pray. But I had never had what I would define as a “religious experience” where I really, truly felt God speaking to me until my trip to Rio.

At a Mass, Arturo Sosa, SJ, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus was celebrating. I was seated in the front row and was within feet of Father Superior as he offered his homily. He spoke about how leaders in Catholic schools need to be in touch with who they are and how they must be authentic in their leadership.

When he said the word authentic, there was something of an echo in my mind, as though he and I were standing in a cave and he was speaking the word only to me and it was reverberating off the walls, back and forth, ringing gently in my ears.

Authentic. 

I heard the word repeated in my mind. 

Authentic.

I knew I was doing good work at the Jesuit Schools Network, and I was enjoying it.

I also knew that I felt I had not done the authentic work I was called to do: I had not been a principal (not a bloody “acting” principal, but a principal) of a Catholic high school. That was authentic. That was my calling.

When I arrived home, I spoke with my wife about the message I had received and she was absolutely supportive. She made my next choice possible. Without a job and without having applied for a position, I told my boss at the JSN that I would be leaving the organization at the end of the school year. He was gracious, supportive and told me ‘it’s time for you to run your own show.”

Following my conversation with my boss, my wife and I spoke again. She asked me “what’s your perfect position? What are you looking for? If you could wave your magic wand, what would your perfect job look like?”

That was easy. I would be hired by a co-ed, Catholic high school in Denver. I knew there was no such position open so we began to look at schools that would require a move.

Two weeks later, a co-ed, Catholic high school principalship opened.

Funny how religious experiences work.

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!

Following my year as Acting Principal of Regis Jesuit High School Boys Division, I returned to my role as Assistant Principal in the Girls Division. The subsequent 2 years I spent in that position were good ones albeit challenging ones as I found myself clashing too frequently with the direction leadership was moving the school. I was in leadership, of course, but not in a principal role and I felt that the effect of my voice was significantly diminished. 

This may have been only perception, but it was my perception and it was painful.

I began to reluctantly search out a new job.

That came in the form of a vice president position at the Jesuit Secondary Schools Association. Over my 20 years at Regis Jesuit, I had been blessed to take part in numerous personal and professional development opportunities staged by the JSEA. I had been to every Colloquium the network had offered. I was a graduate and an adjunct instructor in their Seminars in Ignatian Leadership. I had presented at many gatherings. 

I had friends on the staff of the JSEA and my mentor – a man I still rely on for direction to this day – was departing his role. 

I applied to be his successor and was so very happy to be granted the role. I was happy. I was lucky. I was blessed.

The Jesuit Secondary Schools Association was part of the Jesuit Conference of North America, providing programming and support to more than eighty secondary and pre-secondary schools. Its offices were in Washington, DC (about 4 blocks from the White House!) and I would be able to remain in Denver with the expectation that I would travel to the office regularly and would be responsible for programming and teaching all over the country. 

It was an incredibly exciting opportunity and I loved every minute of it. 

Departing Regis Jesuit was a challenge. My last day there was something of a surreal experience. Finding a home at JSEA (soon to be the Jesuit Schools Network, but that is a subject for another post) was a beautiful gift.

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!

One day I – provisionally – received the job I had been chasing for years: principal of Regis Jesuit High School. 

Less than 10 months later, the dream job ended.

Shortly after that, I departed the school I had worked at for 20 years.

This is a very simplistic, but perhaps not inaccurate, way to look at the end of my years at Regis Jesuit High School. Following serving for seven years as an administrator in the Girls Division of Regis Jesuit, I was asked to take on the role of Acting Principal for the Boys Division in late May and agreed to do so. 

My perception of the months I held that position is that they were challenging but rewarding, that I worked very hard to serve the faculty and staff and students at the school and that the results of my almost full year on the job were good.

I was thrilled to have the role but not everyone was thrilled to have me in it. I knew this and worked as diligently as I knew how to illustrate that I was the person for the role. I wanted to show through my actions that I had the best interests of the institution and the people who served our students at heart. I desired nothing more than to win over those who believed I was the wrong person for the position.

As I noted above, that quest lasted 10 months. When I applied for the ongoing position, I was not hired, though many, many signals were shared with me that I would be.

It was a very bitter pill to swallow, one of the most bitter of my entire professional career. 

Following the limited explanations offered me by the president of the school (and, to be fair to him, I was in far too much pain to ask for further details than those he offered in one of the more uncomfortable conversations I have ever had), I sat down with the people I worked with on the administration of the Boys Division and told them I was not going to have the job. 

I believe they were all surprised.

To one of them, I said: “If I could punch you in the face and be put on paid leave for the remainder of the year, I would do it.” 

I found out the news in February. There were months left with me in the position, some pretty critical months in the life cycle of the school.

My favorite professional memory of this time concerns the plans the President and I created to tell the full faculty that a different hiring determination was made. We decided that he would meet with the faculty and staff for the first 15 minutes of our weekly staff meeting, share the news with them and then I would enter and run the rest of the meeting. Writing it out now, I wonder why we thought that would be a good plan. Surely there was a better way to proceed here…

Ah, well.

As the faculty and staff met with the president in the library, I waited outside the closed doors until the appointed time. My desire was to come in quickly and quietly with a modicum of dignity and assume leadership of the meeting. 

There was tension in the room as I opened the door at the back of the library and began to walk in. Everyone’s backs were to me, but I could sense the mood. Perhaps I was projecting how I felt on the group. Regardless, I moved into the library. To enter the room, one had to pass through scanners that looked like metal detectors which tripped when something was being taken into or out of the library that was not checked out. If that happened, an alarm would sound.

You can likely guess what occurred next. While I had nothing with me that should have set off the alarm, it sounded. 

Loudly.

And 150 heads turned to see me.

All I could do was laugh. 

All any of us could do was laugh.

It was the perfect entrance to the meeting.

It feels like the last time I would laugh that year.