(Or Woman. But in this case it is a man.)
Many of you know that the year I began at HHS was also the first year in the reign of Mr. P, a principal hired to “save” our failing school, brought from another school which he supposedly had saved. There was a media blitz and Mr. P was hailed as the soon-to-be hero of HHS.
You may very well be aware of how that turned out. During my first three years teaching there, HHS was irreparably blemished by an incredibly inefficient , inconsistent (or, perhaps, consistent in its inconsistency) administration. Students were not given the stable, healthy environment they needed to succeed, and teachers were berated and belittled regularly(Actual quote from Mr. P, on the first day of his third year at HHS: “If this ship [that would be HHS] is going down, we’re all going down together.” How inspiring.). A lack of communication constantly made our jobs more taxing than they needed to be. Teachers stopped enforcing school rules because there was absolutely no back-up for them when they did so. It was an extraordinary unhealthy work environment, a fact which is easily supported by many of my blog posts over the past three years.
Last Spring, several of my coworkers and I made sure that the right people in our school district knew for certain what HHS really looked like. We met with the school board and the superintendent. I didn’t blog about those endeavors due to their sensitive nature, but, suffice it to say that the change we were seeking came to fruition, whether it was a result of our efforts or not. Mr. P resigned (a forced resignation) in June.
During Mr. P’s tenure at HHS, I read Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation and said this in a blog post from Spring 2007:
“…Certain highly gifted or, in any case, initially impressive urban principals are periodically elected to assume the same role as an incarnation of the possibilities for hope within a context of historic failure which we are encouraged to believe is not systemic but the fault primarily of the ineptitude or lassitude of previous administrators…”(198). Kozol says that though sometimes these principals do make a lasting difference, often they simply establish a “degree of calm” or a “sudden spike in test results” (199) that fail to last. Kozol warns that the problem with placing faith in one individual is that it causes us to ignore the “pervasive injures inflicted upon students by our acquiescence in a dual system and to convey the tantalizing notion that the problems of this system can be superseded somehow by a faith in miracles embodied in dynamic and distinctive individuals” (200).
This year, my first year at HHS, also happens to be the first year of Mr. P, the principal who is exactly as described above. He is an imposing black man with a shiny shaved head and impressively tailored suits. He was recruited from a high school in Virginia, where, under his leadership, the school’s test scores spiked dramatically. At the beginning of the year, he spouted speeches and slogans with a winning mix of authority, professionalism, and “real” talk, and I was quite taken. However, disciplinary and control issues at HHS this year have gotten absolutely no better, and have possibly gotten worse. Mr. P now seems to be a whole lot of mean talk and not very much serious action, although, to give him a break, it might be too early to tell. But I definitely now believe that hope for improvement cannot lie with one individual, no matter how nice his suits are.
It seemed very clear, under Mr. P’s reign, that real change could not come from one person. I agreed with Kozol completely. Then, though, came Mr. L, our new principal.
I have to admit that, despite my satisfaction over Mr. P leaving, I was skeptical of the new guy. My colleague R described it this way on her blog:
At the same time, however, it’s kinda scary. It’s like starting a new relationship–feeling like this could work out, but having second thoughts because you don’t want to be hurt again. Have you ever been there before? You’re a little hesitant to enjoy the moment or to have high expectations because, emotionally, you just can’t afford another let down, another heartbreak.
That’s exactly how I felt. My friend and colleague C commented to R and I last week that it is as though the whole HHS faculty is coming out of an abusive relationship right now and it is very hard and scary to trust again.
But after only two weeks, I feel myself trusting, and I had to ask myself if Kozol was wrong. After all, it seems that Mr. L IS making all of the difference! It’s crazy awesome…and he’s only been employed at HHS for two weeks! Suddenly HHS feels like a healthy place to work, like a place we don’t want to leave. R has already commented that the changes Mr. L is enacting make her want to stay in teaching at HHS, while previously she was sure this was her last year. C said HHS is now a place she wants to work, not just a place she is tolerating.
A couple of telling differences from the first two weeks:
1. Mr. P regularly used HHS’s intercom to sternly lecture/yell at students, so much so that we all learned to tune him out. Worse, he sometimes used the intercom to berate teachers while students were in class with them (as in, “Teachers, did you not hear me?? DO NOT let students out of your rooms!!”). I almost laughed aloud in amazement when Mr. L told the faculty that he wanted to use the intercom to say to students, “If no one has taken the time today to tell you that they care about you, let me be the first one to say so. I love you.”
2. Many of our students, for many different reasons, do not get to school on time. Class begins at 7:30, but there is a constant stream of students in the doors between 7:30 and 8:00. This was a problem that was never addressed under Mr. P beyond an occasional mass phone message home encouraging students to be on time. Not effective, believe it or not. On the first day of this school year, Mr. L noticed the problem. Before noon, he had talked to the Parent-Teacher Association president about getting some parent volunteers in the building to help sign in late students. He had also talked to our database manager about creating a system to identify and flag chronically late students. He announced this plan at the faculty meeting that afternoon. School started Tuesday. The plan was enacted by Thursday.
Most telling, though, has been the incredible sense of unity and hopefulness among HHS’s facutly. I’ve always been of the opinion that some amazing teachers work at HHS, despite what our test scores might say, and now, under leadership that brings us together, it is all the more obvious. In the previous three years, many of us were saying, “it would be so powerful if we were unified,” but that message was perceived as divisive because it was not supported by the administration. Now, the call for unity is coming fromthe administration, and we are all of one accord! The faculty is not cliqueish, and the teachers’ lounge is not, as the stereotype suggests, a place for gossip. Even the other administrators are flourishing under Mr. L; they seem much more positive and effective than last year. And this unity makes it so obvious that HHS’s staff is devoted to helping all our students, from the highflyers to the hallwalkers. As C said on Facebook, “positivity, warmth, and collegiality are contagious. It feels incredible to be a part of a team.”
So, can one man make all the difference? No. One man (or woman) alone cannot solve HHS’s problems. But the leadership of one man can (and will, I pray!) bring others together, so that all of us, together, can make all the difference.
specifically for 
in one sitting (a sitting in a beach chair, in fact, with sand under my feet and a sunhat on my head) in an hour or less. Some Englishy person recommended it to me awhile ago, and I recently discovered that it already existed in our personal collection (this happens all the time…I have no idea which 2000 or so books we actually own). This is a book of letters (non-fiction) written between 1949 and 1969, between the author, who is a New York screenwriter, and an employee at a second-hand rare bookshop in London. Over the course of 20 years, the author and the employees of the bookshop develop a deep relationship, though they never actually meet. The back of the book describes it as a “love-affair” between the two sides, but it doesn’t mean a love love affair, more like an infatuated friendship. Anyway, it was cute, and made me muse about the lost art of letter writing. That’s all.
Barbara Ehrenreich
the story of Arnold Spirit, better known as Junior, a fourteen year old Spokane Indian born with a variety of medical problems, who is nerdy and picked on, but also incredibly smart. He’s also a budding cartoonist, and “his” drawings and accompanying observations appear throughout the book. After an unfortunate incident on his first day of reservation high school, Junior’s teacher encourages him to transfer to the white high school 22 miles of the reservation, where Junior will get a better education and a chance to go to college. Once he does, Junior must endure both the pain of navigating a new social environment as a socially awkward kid, and the ridicule of the other Indians on the reservation, who see him as a traitor.