On Taking a Position as a Principal

A few weeks ago I finished facilitating a session at my 4^th year of a Leadership Training and this year, over half of the attendees were from districts adding not one but multiple New Tech schools.  I love seeing this effort expand and see the influence that these communities have and will continue to have on national education.  It took a long time to get here, but the evolution of K-12 work has come directly from schools demanding support, exciting work that has evolved over the years.  

And yet, the more I see this transformation taking place, I cannot help but feel a longing to return to a school setting.  Each time I meet a community, I feel connected to the people and want to stay and work with them.  It is hard to leave these communities and know that I might not ever make it back to see the results of their planning and implementation.

The more students and educators that I meet across the Network, the more that I feel the pull of one community, one place to serve and share what I have learned from the network and put down my own roots in a neighborhood school.

As I think about all of the leaders I have known in schools, I am moved and inspired by their examples.  I have watched them struggle to balance work with life, face disappointment at the missteps of just one student, strive to learn and grow continually, and celebrate every success.   It has been an honor to know these individuals and the best way to repay that gift is to take what I see as the best of those efforts and make them my own.

As I have learned from these educators, I have also started to collect the characteristics of the ideal setting for me. Those characteristics have serendipitously come together in one community where I will be honored to serve as the new principal starting March 16^th: Bonsall High School in North County San Diego, California.  Bonsall offers:

• A smaller school district where I can learn the district office structures more quickly
• A district leader that values partnership with schools and wants to collaboratively solve problems together
• A neighborhood school where all students have access to the kind of outcomes that will lead them to a successful future
• A new high school still in implementation so I can grow with the school community
• A small, family friendly community for my own children to land softly
• Within driving distance of multiple universities where my husband can pursue his own career
• Close enough to our family and friends that I can drive home for the holidays

I didn’t know that it would be possible to find all these characteristics in one place and in fact, Bonsall HS is the only school in the country that has this particular collection of attributes for me.  I know that there will still be challenges serving in this role, but I also know that everything has aligned in the right time and space for me to take this position.  I have been warmly welcomed by the district and school staff and look forward to getting to know the students and parents of this beautiful community in the coming months.  I can only hope that I will be able to serve them well and attend to their needs to the best of my ability.

On Having Best Friends

I have been lucky in my life to have many best friends rather than that one single best friend (well, okay, I do have a single best friend, but we are the kind of friends that haven't lived within reasonable driving distance since college and she is running her own internet party these days while I am traveling around the country making our overlap time limited).

I refer to these other friends as my LOCAL best friend because each place we have moved, I have had a special friend in my neighborhood that has permanently changed characteristics about myself.

These women are amazing individuals like..

Amy through whom I have lived vicariously as she travels around the world doing good.  I think she is currently in Brazil trying to push women's soccer while teaching science to adolescents.

Kate who taught me about volleyball, art, and a positive attitude in every circumstance.

Shima, who I can't really talk about because she is an internet recluse and probably doesn't want me to use her real name.  I at least can share that she is one of the most generous people I have ever known.

Amanda who cannot be pinned down on social media because she is in the real world floating around serving friends and neighbors constantly in spite having five children and an extraordinarily large number of talents that are in high demand.

Katie who can walk into a room, learn obscure facts from everyone in the room, and then leave without having shared a single tidbit about herself.  She taught me that genuine curiosity and interest in another person makes a soul feel loved and cared for like nothing else.

My undisputed local best friend since moving to Utah has been the amazing Diana Larsen.  Since today is her birthday, I wish to dedicate the rest of this post to her exclusively.

Here she is in all her glory on the Pioneer Trek.  The perfect way to honor her as it represents a time in which, in spite of her busy schedule, dropped everything to help me get ready:

Moving to Utah Valley is really hard.  I mean, if you have a large family, it is an astoundingly wonderful place to raise children and beautiful as it can possibly be.  It is not difficult in the sense that life is hard, but because everyone has a large extended family and therefore no time for friends, it takes awhile to break in to the crowd.

Diana is an exception to this rule.  Not in the busy factor--she has a large extended family that lives locally and she even cares for her nieces and nephews on most days of the week.  She lives in the same neighborhood where she grew up and knows everyone in the zipcode. If you go anywhere in public with her, you are likely to run into several people that she has known forever.  Where Diana is an exception is that she befriends you instantly.  She doesn't actually care what you know, who you are, how weird you are, or where you came from--she is in.  She is in your inner circle and she doesn't even think twice about whether you deserve it.  You could be a stranger in the grocery store and after five minutes of chatting with her in line feel like you have this magical new friend.

What I find particularly intriguing about Diana is her tireless dedication to the community.  In the few years that I have known her, this is what I have seen:

• School service.  She attends PTA meetings and signs up to help out, not just projects to put in your time, but ongoing.  She has volunteered in every possible way at the local elementary school and I wouldn't be surprised if someone actually handed her a master key one day.
• Church service.  Diana is the president of our Young Women's organization currently--but she continues to volunteer to help out in any way needed.  With ten minute notice she is up and running with a plate of goodies, a meal for 60 people, or collecting a minion of helpers who know they better show because she has shown up for them so many times.  For the last five years, she has also led the efforts for the week-long Girls Camp and is incomparable.
• Constant attention to her family.  While she is off giving service to everyone and every organization around town, she never stops thinking about her kids.  She picks and drops them off from school everyday (Diana, WHY do you do this??) She provides them with constant enrichment like sports and art classes, schedules fun outings for every holiday and weekend, and is generally one of the most nurturing mothers I have met in spite of a wicked sarcasm that runs through her daily dialogue.  See this shot of a typical fun night for the Larsens.  Note they aren't just at a game, they have to have those crazy glowing lights too.
• Feeling bad for everyone who is struggling.  I have received more than one call from her saying "let's just run over and do x for this person, I feel really badly that I haven't done anything yet." She feels this way about the entire neighborhood, for whom she feels a real sense of stewardship and duty.
• Loving every kid she knows.  Any time someone comments negatively about a child that she knows, she usually just says "I LOVE that kid.  He is hilarious."  She feeds the high school kids at lunch, hosts playdates nonstop and generally speaking always has a kid around.  My daughters are constantly asking if they can just go "hang at Diana's" as though she is one of their personal friends.  

I am grateful for all of these things that she demonstrates to me on a regular basis, but she is also the first real friend I have had who has earned her education through real world application.  All of my other best friends I met while in college, teaching, or grad school living and therefore were more formally educated.  Diana is one of the most intelligent women that I know and she has come by her skills by hard work and her own two hands.  

When I first got to know her, through Girls Camp one year, I felt so inadequate--she had this set of skills that I definitely had not developed in my article-reading/podcast listening world.  She was able to whip together food for a crowd in minutes--and the food tasted amazing.  I always thought you had to spend a lot of money to get a decent meal, but she somehow manages to frugally provide an enviable spread.  Yet she is always willing to let others help.  She never once said "hey idiot, don't you know how to work a camp stove?" but instead simply showed me how to do things.  I credit her 100% with my solo camping adventure in which I slow cooked ribs in a dutch oven over coals (her equipment of course).  I even incompetently provided her 9-year old with a slippery, freshly-sharpened chef's knife to open a package of bacon and he promptly sliced his fingers--but she forgave me because she is that kind of friend.  It isn't just the food--her event management, planning for activities, thinking about how to let other people develop, and general ability to have fun in a crowd sets her apart.  

I cannot say enough about what she has done for me personally, taking my kids here or there, reminding me about school events, dragging me places that I need to, but don't always want to go, or letting me know about a community event.  We have been on marching band field trips together, served side by side at some scheme or other, and enjoyed a few traditions of our own making together.  

I am so thankful that she is a "more the merrier" kind of person that welcomed me into her fold in spite of my excessive travel and I know that I have forever been changed because of her presence in my life.  Happy, happy birthday Diana.  Try to think about yourself for a few minutes today.