The Principal I Thought I Was
During this past holiday season, I attended my wife’s holiday party. It was exactly what you would expect from a room full of educators. Easy laughter, shared frustrations, food, drinks, and that lightened emotional state that comes when the end of a quarter and a break are finally in sight. As we sat talking, my wife and her colleagues started pointing out the “babies” who had recently joined her team. New teachers. Fresh energy. Wide-eyed optimism. At some point, we realized something that stopped us for a moment. Some of them were the same age as our own kids. Then one of her colleagues walked in, stopped in her tracks, and stared at me. She looked familiar, but I could not immediately place her. She eventually sat with us and said, almost casually, that I had been her principal at Thea Bowman. I was only at Thea Bowman for one year. It was my first year as a principal. I was thirty years old and, if I am honest, there were plenty of moments when I questioned whether I should be run...