D is for Disappointment

Before I became a school principal, I was a coach and worked as a manager at the district office level for quite a bit of time. I was partly responsible for resolving parent complaints and providing technical assistance to school sites when they called. I was also responsible for coaching and providing professional development. I was always taught by my superiors that everything that we did should be designed to serve school sites and that we needed to be responsive. I took pride in providing customer service to teachers, parents and school leaders.

During my first year of being a principal, I'd have to say that one of the biggest stresses that I feel is the disappointment that I feel over the lack of response or support from the district office. I call for help and no one responds. I call with questions and no one knows the answers or they give me conflicting information. I see my old department falling apart over ineffective leadership and feel sad and disappointed that my effective team is jumping ship from a great ship that we built together. Those are just some small examples of my disappointments but my disappointments are many.

My mentor and another principal that I speak to often tell me that I need to just deal with the fact that no one is coming when I call and that I just need to only depend on myself and my team. They suggest to me that I am making myself more angry by having the expectation that they show up. I know this and I will try to get to that point but I also can't shake the fact that I am hurt and disappointed also in my evaluator, who I worked for and served for 20 years but she can't even call me back when I am having an emergency. All I can do is try to accept it and hope that I get better with managing the disappointment because it often manifests itself in anger, self righteousness or stress.

Most importantly maybe I also am a little disappointed in myself that for years I maybe thought I was serving school site leaders when I was at the district office but maybe then I also didn't fully understand the complexities of their job. When they didn't prioritize certain compliance issues, I because frustrated but at the time I didn't understand how much they were navigating and how hard it all is. When schools first opened up during the pandemic I was angry that we often had to go substitute in classes when teachers were sick with covid. I complained that we had too much of our own work and that school sites needed to handle their own problems and I didn't understand how much they were falling apart with lack of personnel.

I am glad that I finally made the leap to be a leader at a school site. I don't know if I will ever go back to the district office. My old team claims that this position I have is probably just temporary and is a stepping stone for me to go back with a higher position at the district level, which I wouldn't have been able to do without being a principal. But sometimes the disappointment that I feel about the lack of response and understanding of the issues that we are facing makes me never want to go back to the district office again. Do I really want to be part of a system again that isn't responsive, doesn't understand our needs and causes more work for us? There are a few responsive people here and there at the district though and they make a huge difference and have been a lifeline for me. Time will tell what happens in the future.