So, gentle reader, your humble author hasn't addressed the biggest change I've experienced in many years. This past fall I changed jobs, and moved from being a middle school principal to going to elementary as a principal. Many people have asked why, and although I've perfected my elevator speech of why I made the switch, the answer, like life and Ikea directions, is much more complicated.
The six years I spent at the middle school level were some of the most challenging and most rewarding in my career. Middle school is a challenging place for students, teachers, parents, and administrators even when all is working well. Throwing in six years of construction and moving from a 7th/8th grade to a 6th/7th/8th grade and subsequently 1/3 more staff to hire and 450 more students, makes for an exhausting work environment. To be sure, I learned so much and feel I could probably at this point be a construction manager if needed.
I made a promise when taking the job that I would finish out the conversion and construction. The promise was to our HR person at the time but really the promise was as much to myself as to anybody else. Those that are closest to me know that when I set a challnege I am compelled to meet it, even when the timeline shifted from 4 years to 6 years. Some say this is an admirable trait, I think it is an annoying character flaw fraught with opportunities to ignore my own self interest as well as the interest of those around me. This challenge is something a younger version of myself as an ambitious young administrator would've relished.
After six years I know that there was much good that happened under my leadership. I know that the culture of the school shifted from a dysfunctional, bitter, and disaffected group of teachers to a positive climate where people wanted to be. Some of this is was due to me, some due to several exceptional staff members and some was due to a bevy of well timed retirements that opened the door for new people. I'm very grateful to all of the people that helped create a vision and put in the blood swea tand tears needed to change the culture of the school. There were so many people that sustained me over these six years with encouragement, help, and downright hard work. We all can be exceptionally proud of all the work that happened at Centerville over the past six years and quite frankly the new building itself is quite stunning.
The timing for leaving was right. As a third of the staff turned over, the staff was ready for a new leader to come in and reenvision the school from a junior high to a middle school. New systems were needed to be put in place and a new leader needed to break from "the way things were done"at Centerville. But really, this makes me seem alot more altruistic than I feel.
There was a time when I wanted to be a superintendent come hell or high water. I clearly saw my career path as clearly as if it were on Google Maps. Destination typed in with stops along the way and a timeline as well, Directorship (something I did do), Associate Superintendent (of Curriculum and Instruction), Superintendent of a small district, then medium, and dare I say it a large district. All in the name of doing what is right for kids. This road map didn;t come to pass.
The realization quickly came that it is more difficult to do what's right for kids the higher in the heirarchy you ascend. Superintendents, to be effective, must be excellent politicians, and although Im not a bad politician it is not my true calling. I am not implying that superintendents can't do what's good for children, in fact they do, but at times it seems necessary to toss aside one's values to meet a greater goal, to acheive that higher purpose.
Why bring this into the picture, it is because when I was the principal of Centerville, I didn't always like who I was. I found myself having to fight with construction workers to ensure student safety, ignoring the concerns of a coworker, tell a white lie to a colleague or to a parent, or put aside the needs of our most vulnerable students for expediency (never fear gentle reader, not enough to actually harm a sudent but sometimes making decisions where equity was not my core principle). Compromising my values happened with a frequnecy with which I was becoming uncomfortable.
The one place I felt that I could do work that was an expression of my values was as an elementary principal. So, I took the pay cut and applied for an elementary position less than a mile from the middle school. This past fall I started at a high performing elementary school with 780 students.
How's it going, you may ask, genlte reader? One might expect that magically all of the stress and trauma from the last six years would magically disappear, but again that's not how life works. Coupled with the school stressors has been construction at home woes, a whole different story, only mentioned due to the amount of stress that has casued as well. Having spent alot of my time over the past six years in various modes of crisis, my response to issues and my emotional state were often from a crisis frame of reference. I'm having to unlearn that response. I don't mean to lessen true forms of PTSD, but after six years I think I'm experiencing a mild form. I often make professional and personal decisions that range from not in my best self interest to downright destructive.
The difficult part is that living in this mode one creates a shield around emotions. I spoke with a high school colleague once when his school was experiencing a crisis and I asked how he was doing, he said, "You know you do this job long enough you get really numb to this stuff." The disconnect for me is that I often feel numb in crisis, good decision making must come from a rationale place, but elementary school teachers and staff are steeped in empathy. It's a framework I'm working my way back towards.
I know I'm in the short rows of my career. In these last few years I want to do good for our most vulnerable students and quite frankly for all of our students. I believe I can do so at this particular elementary before my career ends. On the verge of my sixtieth brithday it is becoming much more important to me to keep true to my values and principles, and get back to the better version of myself, the higher version of myself.
This definitly isn't the elevator speech version of why I moved back to elementary, but hopefully, gentle reader, you have a good understanding of where my head is at...I'm not sure I do...
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