![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
When Will I Ever Learn
Apr. 15th, 2018 11:52 amThe sun was setting over Avalon,
The last time we stood in the West.
Suffering longtime angel, enraptured like Blake.
Burn out the dross, innocence captured again.
Standing on the beach at sunset.
Yeah, and all the boats keep moving slow.
In the glory of the flashing light,
In the evening glow
When will I ever learn to live in God?
When will I ever learn?
He gives me everything I need and more.
When will I ever learn?
Whatever it takes to fulfill his mission,
That is the way we must go.
But you’ve got to do it your way,
Tearing down the old, bringing up the new.
(When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God? Van Morrison – 1989)
The other night, I listened to the Van Morrison song, When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God? And it struck me that I had been feeling that same sentiment lately. Ever since the silent retreat in Sierra Madre a few weeks ago, I’d been going through some changes. I started going to daily mass, meditating, reading the Gospel, and listening to spiritual directors on Audible. Kathy, watching these practices, and listening to me describe them to her, put it this way:
“You’ve been here before”.
She did not say it mockingly or in jest – she was just stating a fact. I have been here before – feeling the NEED to go to mass, read scripture, listen to spiritual direction, and meditate. So where is HERE? Where am I that I’m repeating behaviors and practices that I’ve employed before? What events or situations had I experienced in my life that had called up these familiar, but long ignored, strategies and practices?
Over all, I’d have to admit that I’ve had a wonderful life. Two parents who loved and cared for me and my 5 brothers and sisters; provided a comfortable and happy home, with lots of attention; sent us to Catholic schools where we received structured and developmentally sound educations and religious instruction; and tolerated and guided our adolescent mistakes and rebellions. Our parents emphasized and supported the need for an enlightened college education, and engendered the priority that professional lives and careers also carried a responsibility of service to others. The sudden death of our father in 1971 was a shock, but the family rallied together, and we all pitched in to reorder our lives in this new, fatherless paradigm, until we started separating from the family by the need for independence and marriage.
My marriage to Kathleen in 1975 was blessed. How I came to meet and wed this fabulous girl is a tale I’ve told before, and the life we created together was the fulfillment of our hopes and expectations. We both started our careers as high school teachers, until Kathy took time out to raise two children, Tony and Teresa, in our home in Reseda. It was there I began a professional trajectory that would lead me from classroom teacher, to bilingual coordinator, instructional adviser, dean of students, personnel specialist, assistant principal, and finally middle school principal. In all that time, although every job and position challenged me and stretched my skills and abilities, I was pleased with the way I mastered each new situation and responsibility, and immensely flattered by the attention and praise I received from immediate district supervisors and superintendents. I was just entering middle age at 45 years of age when I became principal of El Sereno Middle School in 1992. Ah, middle age.
Wikipedia describes “middle age” as the time between 45 to 65 years of age, with many changes occurring at this stage. The body may slow down and the middle aged might become more sensitive to diet, substance abuse, stress, and rest. Chronic health problems can become an issue along with disability or disease. Emotional responses and retrospection vary with people, and some experience a sense of mortality, sadness, or loss at this age. Taking a different tack, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, and noted spiritual director and inspirational speaker, interprets middle age this way: “By the time most people reach middle age, they’ve had days where life has lost its meaning, they no longer connect with an inner sense of motivation or joy. Sometimes this manifests as clinical depression and requires a therapist’s skilled care and medication. But even if we don’t experience depression, most of us go through periods of darkness, doubt, and malaise at some point in our lives.”
Entering middle age and becoming a principal at the same time was like crashing into a double wall of reality. At the time, I believed I had reached the apex of my professional and interpersonal skills and abilities as an instructional leader. I was proud of my advancements and achievements, and I thought I had learned all I needed to know. I was now the master of the ship, like Captain Kirk on the starship Enterprise. All I had to do now was give commands and lead my loyal crew of teachers into “strange new worlds, and to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!” That’s not what happened, and my ego took a beating. I thought I had been a popular assistant principal at two schools, getting teachers and parents to do what I needed them to do. I had been valued and praised by my principals and other district officials, but they weren’t around anymore. Suddenly I felt isolated and alone, with vocal critics and unhappy teachers who seemed unwilling to take my direction. I felt split into two selves: one pretending to be a knowledgeable, confident, and self-assured leader, while the other was an overwhelmed novice, struggling with resistance, frustrations, and failures. That was the first time I began searching for coping strategies and practices that would help me survive emotionally and professionally.
At first I addressed the problem logically and practically, thinking that I only needed to become a more efficient administrator and leader. So I began researching and reading as many management books I could find: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey; On Becoming a Leader, by Warren Bennis; The One Minute Manager, by Blanchard & Johnson; and In Search of Excellence by Peters & Waterman. None of these books worked. They did not make me a more effective principal at El Sereno, and they certainly did not make me happy. The only times I was happy was at home with Kathy and the kids. So while looking for alternative strategies that might address this unhappiness, I found myself falling back on long unused methods for dealing with times of family and personal sadness, pain, and despair. I turned to my childhood and college practice of going to church and receiving the Eucharist. Luckily, I passed Holy Family Church in South Pasadena every day on my way to school. I could attend their 6:20 am daily mass and then proceed to work. The liturgy at this church had the benefit of two excellent homilists who could take the daily readings and interpret them to illuminate their messages for every day use. Daily mass and communion helped immediately, and they got me started looking for other supportive spiritual practices, which Kathy greatly aided. She recommended specific authors, spiritual directors, books, and tapes. Soon I was reading books and listening to audiotapes by Frs. Anthony de Mello, Richard Rohr, and Thomas Merton on my way to and from school. Kathy and I also began attending workshops and conferences that identified spiritual alienation from God as the cause for much of our personal and emotional sufferings, and recommended methods and strategies for reunion. These practices stabilized my emotional situation at school, but before they became habitual I was transferred to Van Nuys Middle School in the summer of 1995. I saw the change as a second act and an opportunity for redemption.
I entered Van Nuys Middle School a different person from the arrogant, self-assured, and ambitious administrator I was at El Sereno. That principal had met failure and resistance at every turn, and had walked away humbled. At Van Nuys I wanted to learn. I suspected that hubris was the primary cause of my difficulties, and now I wanted to learn how to lead by serving. I wanted to learn from the teachers, counselors, and other administrators. I wanted to learn how to work with them, listen to what they had to say about the students, the school, and, together, find ways to let them achieve. My first year was a blissful honeymoon period, where I avoided hubris and my previous mistakes, and became part of a cooperative teaching and learning community, in which I had their confidence. Going into my second year, I felt I had the cooperation and backing of the 3 essential foundations supporting a successful school – teachers, staff, and parents. What I never saw coming was the subversive influence and mayhem a small band of zealous parents could cause when led by a pair of disaffected and angry staff members, the Title 1 Coordinator and her husband. That year was a pyrrhic war against an onslaught of false, malicious, and slanderous charges from these parents who besieged the district superintendent, claiming that the school was being ruined, and demanding my removal. Unfortunately at first, I fell back into old patterns of independent action, and defended myself and countered these measures alone, thinking that this group of parents was my problem alone.
Entries in the daily journal I kept at that time stretch from September 22, 1996 to April 17, 1997 (when they suddenly stopped for 8 months). They chronicled my solitary struggles and the steady deterioration of my physical and psychological health as I battled the insubordination, defiance, and undermining efforts of these two staff members. The conflict began as a tropical depression at the start of the year, gained intensity through the winter, and reached hurricane proportions in the spring. Principals are easy targets if one wishes to relentlessly criticize and attack them, because they are responsible for EVERY aspect of a school, and for EVERY action, error, oversight, and mistake by the people they supervise. Principals sin by commission (what they actually do), and omission (what they didn’t do); and they are only as successful as their clients (teachers, parents, and students) believe them to be. If principals become hesitant and fearful, they run the risk of pandering to their opponents, and judging themselves through the eyes of their critics. In doing so, they lose all confidence, becoming more and more isolated and suspicious of everyone; finally despairing, completely – as I did. At first, I arrogantly thought I could handle the growing problems by myself; refusing to believe that two or three unhappy, and determined, staff members could effect my removal from a school. I was confident that if I acted intelligently, professionally, and ethically, I was safe and secure. I never expected the opposite behaviors by my antagonists: unauthorized and unsigned letters with outrageous lies about me, assistant principals, and teachers, being placed in faculty mailboxes; formal petitions with unverified parent signatures being mailed to District administrators and board members demanding my immediate removal for lack of leadership; and visits to elected officials and community leaders by spokesmen of a parent organization secretly directed by my disaffected coordinator to make unsubstantiated allegations of supervisory incompetence, intimidation, and racial discrimination. It was a gradual campaign of slander and innuendo, which grew and grew because the accusations were so outrageous and so incredible, that reasonable parents, teachers, and administrators began wondering if there weren’t SOME grounds for suspicion. In December I was ready to ask for help from District consultants and my administrative team (composed of assistant principals, trusted coordinators, the teacher’s union rep, my administrative assistant, and a counselor). I didn’t want them to assume my burden, but I realized that I desperately needed their help to generate ideas, implement strategies, and win others to our cause. The District consultants recommended a battle plan of transparency, honesty, and full disclosure; which translated into systematically exposing the sneaky, underhanded, and unethical maneuvers employed by our opponents, and pouncing on their errors and misjudgments. In doing this we built leadership capacity and awareness in the faculty and among parents, and I documented every unethical and unprofessional misstep they took – following it up with a witnessed meeting and a conference memo. It was a smart strategy, but it took time, a long, long time of ceaseless conflict and emotional damage - and I did not feel I was winning.
In April of that year, I was dreading going to school. Every day promised a new catastrophe, a new crisis, or another emotional scene of defiance and confrontation with one of the opposing staff members or their minions. I could only compare my feelings to the “battle fatigue” that bomber crews experienced during World War II after countless missions over flak infested skies where they were sitting ducks for enemy fighter pilots and anti-aircraft guns. Yet, even at that point, I hadn’t hit the depth of my despair. It was not until the first Friday of the month that I realized how broken I was. I was driving home when the aftermath of the week caught up with me. The week was the same as many others that year, with the usual emotional incidents: the same group of parents going (for the fourth time) to the Office of the Deputy Superintendent to demand my removal; the coordinator and her community rep again scheduling a meeting with the Cluster Leader to report my unfair treatment of them; and the parent officers of the advisory council demanding my presence at a special budget meeting to answer their questions. These highlights flashed through my mind, and when I arrived home, I just sat in the car, without moving, for about 30 minutes. I felt shell-shocked and depressed. I was comatose – just sitting there, gulping deep breaths, closing my eyes, and then opening them to stare off, vacantly, into space. I’d spent the day dealing with emotional personnel and angry administrative interactions that had drained me. I was paralyzed and unable to think or make decisions. I felt helpless and overwhelmed by these never-ending problems and the constant realization that they were being taken “over my head” and delivered directly to my superiors. Feelings of failure and inadequacy welled up like a giant, black wave, and then came crashing down over me. I only had one wish – I wanted to feel competent again. I wished I could once again act with confidence instead of reacting with doubts, fears, and uncertainty. That evening Kathy finally stepped in and, by telling me all that she had been observing in my actions and behaviors, put a mirror to my face and let me see for myself what I had become in the course of the year. I wasn’t sleeping through the night, awakening daily at 2:00 or 3:00 A.M. and not being able to return; I was experiencing gripping aches and pains in my back, neck and chest which were recurrent; I was coming down with constant colds and coughs; I had stopped jogging and exercising, replacing a healthy routine with daily cocktails at 6 o’clock, and drinking wine with dinner; I had developed an uncontrollable and annoying twitch in my upper eyelid; my handwriting had deteriorated so badly that my secretary (who had worked with me for 4 years) could no longer decipher it; and I was always so sad, that not even my daughter Teresa’s animated talk after a basketball game could cheer me. Kathy told me that she loved me, and would do anything to help, but if I could not recognize the symptoms for myself there was no hope. I was stunned, but not blind. I called Employee Assistance the next day, and scheduled a psychiatric assessment the following week. The psychiatrist confirmed what Kathy already knew and I suspected; I was clinically depressed, and had been for a long time. What surprised me most was my quick consent in accepting medication and therapy; a long period of stoic bravado, machismo, and hubris gave way to my desire to be ME again – the intrepid, curious, and humorous assistant principal who found his job interesting and wanted to learn how to be a principal.
By May, the conflict had boiled to the point of direct confrontation. A handful of parents had finally gone to the School Cluster Leader demanding that I meet with them to answer their complaints, allegations, and demands. Suspecting an ambush, or, worse, an inquisition followed by public burning at the stake, I had dodged this frontal assault for weeks - believing myself vulnerable and defenseless. The Cluster Leader, however, sided with the parents and she directed me to appear at their meeting. That weekend, feeling alone, cornered, and defeated, it finally dawned on me that there might be people willing to help me, if I were humble enough to ask and let them. Nothing (except my pride) prevented me from inviting other school “stakeholders” (students, teachers, parents, and community members) from joining this meeting. On Sunday night, I called Dorothy, the teacher representative, and asked for her help. She gave me her unqualified support and, between the two of us, we divided up a telephone tree composed of teacher leaders, department chairs, staff members, and administrators; asking them to join us on the night of the “tribunal”. That evening, the original, hand-picked audience of 10 denouncing parents was outnumbered and outmatched by a crowd of 30 open-minded and supportive teachers, staff members, and parents. Every outrageous slander and lie directed at me, or my staff, was challenged, countered, and contradicted with the truth by other parents, teachers, and counselors. What had started as a trial for my job, ended as a vindication of my leadership. The tide had finally turned, and within weeks of this Armageddon encounter, the three staff members would resign, and eventually be released from their positions for the following year. There would still be some emotional skirmishes at parent meetings, and an embarrassing parent demonstration in front of school that was covered by television and newspapers, but the opposition was tiny, exposed, and irrelevant, and it faded away over the course of the next two years.
Looking back at my 10 years at Van Nuys Middle School, I would call them the happiest, rewarding, and most successful professional period of my life. I fell in love with the school, and in dealing with the inevitable problems, disappointments, and difficulties that arose, learned how to be a principal. I did not learn it from practical books on effective management and leadership – I finally learned from the people I worked with. I allowed them to help me and to influence me: assistant principals, teachers, clerks, deans, counselors, students, district consultants, and therapists. All of these colleagues, friends, and helpers gave me advice, insights, practices, and behaviors that I incorporated into my own attitudes and actions. The most important lesson was realizing that the job of principal was ABSURDLY IMPOSSIBLE, and you can never please everyone. There was simply no way ONE person could assume and perform the overwhelming number of duties and responsibilities heaped upon them by parents, teachers, boards of education, superintendents, universities, state legislatures, governors, or presidents. There is no way ONE human being can do it all, or please everyone. Trying only leads to frustration, disillusion, or depression. The more a principal acts in the belief that they alone can perform this role in a controlling, linear fashion (“getting all their ducks in a row”), the more they will experience paradoxical consequences and unintended outcomes. I found that the more I tried to CONTROL people, choices, and events – the opposite results would occur. I noted this phenomenon at El Sereno MS while there, but it didn’t make sense until I read a book recommended to me by a District consultant called Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership, by Richard Farson. There I discovered that once I accepted the notion that the job was overwhelming and impossible, I was liberated to ask for help and advice, and to act in the best interest of children. I let go of the illusion of the all-controlling and all-responsible principal and focused on my IMMEDIATE (momentary) interactions with people. I concentrated on doing the RIGHT thing (being fair, honest, and caring), or not doing anything. CONTROL requires clear choices and decisive actions – even when the alternatives are bad (picking the best of the bad choices). FREEDOM from this illusion allows one the option of doing NOTHING, and letting other people, or other forces come into play. It recognizes that something, or someone greater is in control. This was illustrated for me when I stumbled into a prayer group at school. Even after my “Night of Armageddon”, I was never certain of the outcome of the conflict until the day I hurriedly unlocked the closed door to the Dean’s Office and discovered Magda, a school clerk, and four classified employees, sitting quietly in a circle. I was surprised and embarrassed. Magda just smiled and put me at ease by saying “we were praying”. I mumbled an apology for intruding, turned around, and closed the door behind me. As I paused outside, I was embraced by a sensation of such comfort and warmth, that I imagined myself being carried to bed, in the arms of my father, while pretending to be asleep in the car after a long ride home. Without another word of explanation, I KNEW what Magda and the other women were praying for; they were asking God to resolve the conflict and bring peace to Van Nuys Middle School. She knew and loved all the parties involved in this crisis and she was not picking sides; she was picking God, and beseeching him to take control. For the first time that year, I knew everything would work out fine. God was in charge, and I knew He would answer the prayers of these women. All I needed to do was concentrate on the essential interactions of my job and leave the grand strategy and future to God. In 2005 the District transferred me to a new school, Sun Valley Middle School, where I served four more years before retiring in 2009, at the age of 62 – finally leaving the profession of education and middle age behind me.
It took me years to realize that I had survived a mid-life crisis. My ego had been shattered and I was forced to grow and change. The person who walked into El Sereno MS as the new principal was not the same person who retired from Sun Valley MS. People, difficult circumstances, and failures, had melted me down – but a boatload of teachers, helpers, books, new behaviors, healthy habits, and projects had reformed and recast me. When the logical, analytical, “either-or” left-brained thinking of Covey, Bennis, Blanchard & Johnson, or Peters & Waterman didn’t work, I finally had to turn to right brain teachers, with their creative, intuitive, spiritual, paradoxical, and “both-and” way of thinking. I continued reading books and listening to audiotapes by Frs. Anthony de Mello, Richard Rohr, and Thomas Merton. Kathy and I continued attending religious workshops and conferences. I started jogging and meditating regularly, and was opened up to a new dimension of creative expression by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Cameron’s book offered a radically new approach to self-awareness and creativity. In her work with “blocked” painters and writers, Cameron helped them overcome their creative paralysis with journaling - the simple practice of producing 3 pages of spontaneous, reflective writing every morning. I never thought of myself as artistic, or creative, but the practice helped me to maneuver my years at Van Nuys and led me to writing personal essays for this blog.
The last time we stood in the West.
Suffering longtime angel, enraptured like Blake.
Burn out the dross, innocence captured again.
Standing on the beach at sunset.
Yeah, and all the boats keep moving slow.
In the glory of the flashing light,
In the evening glow
When will I ever learn to live in God?
When will I ever learn?
He gives me everything I need and more.
When will I ever learn?
Whatever it takes to fulfill his mission,
That is the way we must go.
But you’ve got to do it your way,
Tearing down the old, bringing up the new.
(When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God? Van Morrison – 1989)
The other night, I listened to the Van Morrison song, When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God? And it struck me that I had been feeling that same sentiment lately. Ever since the silent retreat in Sierra Madre a few weeks ago, I’d been going through some changes. I started going to daily mass, meditating, reading the Gospel, and listening to spiritual directors on Audible. Kathy, watching these practices, and listening to me describe them to her, put it this way:
“You’ve been here before”.
She did not say it mockingly or in jest – she was just stating a fact. I have been here before – feeling the NEED to go to mass, read scripture, listen to spiritual direction, and meditate. So where is HERE? Where am I that I’m repeating behaviors and practices that I’ve employed before? What events or situations had I experienced in my life that had called up these familiar, but long ignored, strategies and practices?
Over all, I’d have to admit that I’ve had a wonderful life. Two parents who loved and cared for me and my 5 brothers and sisters; provided a comfortable and happy home, with lots of attention; sent us to Catholic schools where we received structured and developmentally sound educations and religious instruction; and tolerated and guided our adolescent mistakes and rebellions. Our parents emphasized and supported the need for an enlightened college education, and engendered the priority that professional lives and careers also carried a responsibility of service to others. The sudden death of our father in 1971 was a shock, but the family rallied together, and we all pitched in to reorder our lives in this new, fatherless paradigm, until we started separating from the family by the need for independence and marriage.
My marriage to Kathleen in 1975 was blessed. How I came to meet and wed this fabulous girl is a tale I’ve told before, and the life we created together was the fulfillment of our hopes and expectations. We both started our careers as high school teachers, until Kathy took time out to raise two children, Tony and Teresa, in our home in Reseda. It was there I began a professional trajectory that would lead me from classroom teacher, to bilingual coordinator, instructional adviser, dean of students, personnel specialist, assistant principal, and finally middle school principal. In all that time, although every job and position challenged me and stretched my skills and abilities, I was pleased with the way I mastered each new situation and responsibility, and immensely flattered by the attention and praise I received from immediate district supervisors and superintendents. I was just entering middle age at 45 years of age when I became principal of El Sereno Middle School in 1992. Ah, middle age.
Wikipedia describes “middle age” as the time between 45 to 65 years of age, with many changes occurring at this stage. The body may slow down and the middle aged might become more sensitive to diet, substance abuse, stress, and rest. Chronic health problems can become an issue along with disability or disease. Emotional responses and retrospection vary with people, and some experience a sense of mortality, sadness, or loss at this age. Taking a different tack, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, and noted spiritual director and inspirational speaker, interprets middle age this way: “By the time most people reach middle age, they’ve had days where life has lost its meaning, they no longer connect with an inner sense of motivation or joy. Sometimes this manifests as clinical depression and requires a therapist’s skilled care and medication. But even if we don’t experience depression, most of us go through periods of darkness, doubt, and malaise at some point in our lives.”
Entering middle age and becoming a principal at the same time was like crashing into a double wall of reality. At the time, I believed I had reached the apex of my professional and interpersonal skills and abilities as an instructional leader. I was proud of my advancements and achievements, and I thought I had learned all I needed to know. I was now the master of the ship, like Captain Kirk on the starship Enterprise. All I had to do now was give commands and lead my loyal crew of teachers into “strange new worlds, and to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!” That’s not what happened, and my ego took a beating. I thought I had been a popular assistant principal at two schools, getting teachers and parents to do what I needed them to do. I had been valued and praised by my principals and other district officials, but they weren’t around anymore. Suddenly I felt isolated and alone, with vocal critics and unhappy teachers who seemed unwilling to take my direction. I felt split into two selves: one pretending to be a knowledgeable, confident, and self-assured leader, while the other was an overwhelmed novice, struggling with resistance, frustrations, and failures. That was the first time I began searching for coping strategies and practices that would help me survive emotionally and professionally.
At first I addressed the problem logically and practically, thinking that I only needed to become a more efficient administrator and leader. So I began researching and reading as many management books I could find: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey; On Becoming a Leader, by Warren Bennis; The One Minute Manager, by Blanchard & Johnson; and In Search of Excellence by Peters & Waterman. None of these books worked. They did not make me a more effective principal at El Sereno, and they certainly did not make me happy. The only times I was happy was at home with Kathy and the kids. So while looking for alternative strategies that might address this unhappiness, I found myself falling back on long unused methods for dealing with times of family and personal sadness, pain, and despair. I turned to my childhood and college practice of going to church and receiving the Eucharist. Luckily, I passed Holy Family Church in South Pasadena every day on my way to school. I could attend their 6:20 am daily mass and then proceed to work. The liturgy at this church had the benefit of two excellent homilists who could take the daily readings and interpret them to illuminate their messages for every day use. Daily mass and communion helped immediately, and they got me started looking for other supportive spiritual practices, which Kathy greatly aided. She recommended specific authors, spiritual directors, books, and tapes. Soon I was reading books and listening to audiotapes by Frs. Anthony de Mello, Richard Rohr, and Thomas Merton on my way to and from school. Kathy and I also began attending workshops and conferences that identified spiritual alienation from God as the cause for much of our personal and emotional sufferings, and recommended methods and strategies for reunion. These practices stabilized my emotional situation at school, but before they became habitual I was transferred to Van Nuys Middle School in the summer of 1995. I saw the change as a second act and an opportunity for redemption.
I entered Van Nuys Middle School a different person from the arrogant, self-assured, and ambitious administrator I was at El Sereno. That principal had met failure and resistance at every turn, and had walked away humbled. At Van Nuys I wanted to learn. I suspected that hubris was the primary cause of my difficulties, and now I wanted to learn how to lead by serving. I wanted to learn from the teachers, counselors, and other administrators. I wanted to learn how to work with them, listen to what they had to say about the students, the school, and, together, find ways to let them achieve. My first year was a blissful honeymoon period, where I avoided hubris and my previous mistakes, and became part of a cooperative teaching and learning community, in which I had their confidence. Going into my second year, I felt I had the cooperation and backing of the 3 essential foundations supporting a successful school – teachers, staff, and parents. What I never saw coming was the subversive influence and mayhem a small band of zealous parents could cause when led by a pair of disaffected and angry staff members, the Title 1 Coordinator and her husband. That year was a pyrrhic war against an onslaught of false, malicious, and slanderous charges from these parents who besieged the district superintendent, claiming that the school was being ruined, and demanding my removal. Unfortunately at first, I fell back into old patterns of independent action, and defended myself and countered these measures alone, thinking that this group of parents was my problem alone.
Entries in the daily journal I kept at that time stretch from September 22, 1996 to April 17, 1997 (when they suddenly stopped for 8 months). They chronicled my solitary struggles and the steady deterioration of my physical and psychological health as I battled the insubordination, defiance, and undermining efforts of these two staff members. The conflict began as a tropical depression at the start of the year, gained intensity through the winter, and reached hurricane proportions in the spring. Principals are easy targets if one wishes to relentlessly criticize and attack them, because they are responsible for EVERY aspect of a school, and for EVERY action, error, oversight, and mistake by the people they supervise. Principals sin by commission (what they actually do), and omission (what they didn’t do); and they are only as successful as their clients (teachers, parents, and students) believe them to be. If principals become hesitant and fearful, they run the risk of pandering to their opponents, and judging themselves through the eyes of their critics. In doing so, they lose all confidence, becoming more and more isolated and suspicious of everyone; finally despairing, completely – as I did. At first, I arrogantly thought I could handle the growing problems by myself; refusing to believe that two or three unhappy, and determined, staff members could effect my removal from a school. I was confident that if I acted intelligently, professionally, and ethically, I was safe and secure. I never expected the opposite behaviors by my antagonists: unauthorized and unsigned letters with outrageous lies about me, assistant principals, and teachers, being placed in faculty mailboxes; formal petitions with unverified parent signatures being mailed to District administrators and board members demanding my immediate removal for lack of leadership; and visits to elected officials and community leaders by spokesmen of a parent organization secretly directed by my disaffected coordinator to make unsubstantiated allegations of supervisory incompetence, intimidation, and racial discrimination. It was a gradual campaign of slander and innuendo, which grew and grew because the accusations were so outrageous and so incredible, that reasonable parents, teachers, and administrators began wondering if there weren’t SOME grounds for suspicion. In December I was ready to ask for help from District consultants and my administrative team (composed of assistant principals, trusted coordinators, the teacher’s union rep, my administrative assistant, and a counselor). I didn’t want them to assume my burden, but I realized that I desperately needed their help to generate ideas, implement strategies, and win others to our cause. The District consultants recommended a battle plan of transparency, honesty, and full disclosure; which translated into systematically exposing the sneaky, underhanded, and unethical maneuvers employed by our opponents, and pouncing on their errors and misjudgments. In doing this we built leadership capacity and awareness in the faculty and among parents, and I documented every unethical and unprofessional misstep they took – following it up with a witnessed meeting and a conference memo. It was a smart strategy, but it took time, a long, long time of ceaseless conflict and emotional damage - and I did not feel I was winning.
In April of that year, I was dreading going to school. Every day promised a new catastrophe, a new crisis, or another emotional scene of defiance and confrontation with one of the opposing staff members or their minions. I could only compare my feelings to the “battle fatigue” that bomber crews experienced during World War II after countless missions over flak infested skies where they were sitting ducks for enemy fighter pilots and anti-aircraft guns. Yet, even at that point, I hadn’t hit the depth of my despair. It was not until the first Friday of the month that I realized how broken I was. I was driving home when the aftermath of the week caught up with me. The week was the same as many others that year, with the usual emotional incidents: the same group of parents going (for the fourth time) to the Office of the Deputy Superintendent to demand my removal; the coordinator and her community rep again scheduling a meeting with the Cluster Leader to report my unfair treatment of them; and the parent officers of the advisory council demanding my presence at a special budget meeting to answer their questions. These highlights flashed through my mind, and when I arrived home, I just sat in the car, without moving, for about 30 minutes. I felt shell-shocked and depressed. I was comatose – just sitting there, gulping deep breaths, closing my eyes, and then opening them to stare off, vacantly, into space. I’d spent the day dealing with emotional personnel and angry administrative interactions that had drained me. I was paralyzed and unable to think or make decisions. I felt helpless and overwhelmed by these never-ending problems and the constant realization that they were being taken “over my head” and delivered directly to my superiors. Feelings of failure and inadequacy welled up like a giant, black wave, and then came crashing down over me. I only had one wish – I wanted to feel competent again. I wished I could once again act with confidence instead of reacting with doubts, fears, and uncertainty. That evening Kathy finally stepped in and, by telling me all that she had been observing in my actions and behaviors, put a mirror to my face and let me see for myself what I had become in the course of the year. I wasn’t sleeping through the night, awakening daily at 2:00 or 3:00 A.M. and not being able to return; I was experiencing gripping aches and pains in my back, neck and chest which were recurrent; I was coming down with constant colds and coughs; I had stopped jogging and exercising, replacing a healthy routine with daily cocktails at 6 o’clock, and drinking wine with dinner; I had developed an uncontrollable and annoying twitch in my upper eyelid; my handwriting had deteriorated so badly that my secretary (who had worked with me for 4 years) could no longer decipher it; and I was always so sad, that not even my daughter Teresa’s animated talk after a basketball game could cheer me. Kathy told me that she loved me, and would do anything to help, but if I could not recognize the symptoms for myself there was no hope. I was stunned, but not blind. I called Employee Assistance the next day, and scheduled a psychiatric assessment the following week. The psychiatrist confirmed what Kathy already knew and I suspected; I was clinically depressed, and had been for a long time. What surprised me most was my quick consent in accepting medication and therapy; a long period of stoic bravado, machismo, and hubris gave way to my desire to be ME again – the intrepid, curious, and humorous assistant principal who found his job interesting and wanted to learn how to be a principal.
By May, the conflict had boiled to the point of direct confrontation. A handful of parents had finally gone to the School Cluster Leader demanding that I meet with them to answer their complaints, allegations, and demands. Suspecting an ambush, or, worse, an inquisition followed by public burning at the stake, I had dodged this frontal assault for weeks - believing myself vulnerable and defenseless. The Cluster Leader, however, sided with the parents and she directed me to appear at their meeting. That weekend, feeling alone, cornered, and defeated, it finally dawned on me that there might be people willing to help me, if I were humble enough to ask and let them. Nothing (except my pride) prevented me from inviting other school “stakeholders” (students, teachers, parents, and community members) from joining this meeting. On Sunday night, I called Dorothy, the teacher representative, and asked for her help. She gave me her unqualified support and, between the two of us, we divided up a telephone tree composed of teacher leaders, department chairs, staff members, and administrators; asking them to join us on the night of the “tribunal”. That evening, the original, hand-picked audience of 10 denouncing parents was outnumbered and outmatched by a crowd of 30 open-minded and supportive teachers, staff members, and parents. Every outrageous slander and lie directed at me, or my staff, was challenged, countered, and contradicted with the truth by other parents, teachers, and counselors. What had started as a trial for my job, ended as a vindication of my leadership. The tide had finally turned, and within weeks of this Armageddon encounter, the three staff members would resign, and eventually be released from their positions for the following year. There would still be some emotional skirmishes at parent meetings, and an embarrassing parent demonstration in front of school that was covered by television and newspapers, but the opposition was tiny, exposed, and irrelevant, and it faded away over the course of the next two years.
Looking back at my 10 years at Van Nuys Middle School, I would call them the happiest, rewarding, and most successful professional period of my life. I fell in love with the school, and in dealing with the inevitable problems, disappointments, and difficulties that arose, learned how to be a principal. I did not learn it from practical books on effective management and leadership – I finally learned from the people I worked with. I allowed them to help me and to influence me: assistant principals, teachers, clerks, deans, counselors, students, district consultants, and therapists. All of these colleagues, friends, and helpers gave me advice, insights, practices, and behaviors that I incorporated into my own attitudes and actions. The most important lesson was realizing that the job of principal was ABSURDLY IMPOSSIBLE, and you can never please everyone. There was simply no way ONE person could assume and perform the overwhelming number of duties and responsibilities heaped upon them by parents, teachers, boards of education, superintendents, universities, state legislatures, governors, or presidents. There is no way ONE human being can do it all, or please everyone. Trying only leads to frustration, disillusion, or depression. The more a principal acts in the belief that they alone can perform this role in a controlling, linear fashion (“getting all their ducks in a row”), the more they will experience paradoxical consequences and unintended outcomes. I found that the more I tried to CONTROL people, choices, and events – the opposite results would occur. I noted this phenomenon at El Sereno MS while there, but it didn’t make sense until I read a book recommended to me by a District consultant called Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership, by Richard Farson. There I discovered that once I accepted the notion that the job was overwhelming and impossible, I was liberated to ask for help and advice, and to act in the best interest of children. I let go of the illusion of the all-controlling and all-responsible principal and focused on my IMMEDIATE (momentary) interactions with people. I concentrated on doing the RIGHT thing (being fair, honest, and caring), or not doing anything. CONTROL requires clear choices and decisive actions – even when the alternatives are bad (picking the best of the bad choices). FREEDOM from this illusion allows one the option of doing NOTHING, and letting other people, or other forces come into play. It recognizes that something, or someone greater is in control. This was illustrated for me when I stumbled into a prayer group at school. Even after my “Night of Armageddon”, I was never certain of the outcome of the conflict until the day I hurriedly unlocked the closed door to the Dean’s Office and discovered Magda, a school clerk, and four classified employees, sitting quietly in a circle. I was surprised and embarrassed. Magda just smiled and put me at ease by saying “we were praying”. I mumbled an apology for intruding, turned around, and closed the door behind me. As I paused outside, I was embraced by a sensation of such comfort and warmth, that I imagined myself being carried to bed, in the arms of my father, while pretending to be asleep in the car after a long ride home. Without another word of explanation, I KNEW what Magda and the other women were praying for; they were asking God to resolve the conflict and bring peace to Van Nuys Middle School. She knew and loved all the parties involved in this crisis and she was not picking sides; she was picking God, and beseeching him to take control. For the first time that year, I knew everything would work out fine. God was in charge, and I knew He would answer the prayers of these women. All I needed to do was concentrate on the essential interactions of my job and leave the grand strategy and future to God. In 2005 the District transferred me to a new school, Sun Valley Middle School, where I served four more years before retiring in 2009, at the age of 62 – finally leaving the profession of education and middle age behind me.
It took me years to realize that I had survived a mid-life crisis. My ego had been shattered and I was forced to grow and change. The person who walked into El Sereno MS as the new principal was not the same person who retired from Sun Valley MS. People, difficult circumstances, and failures, had melted me down – but a boatload of teachers, helpers, books, new behaviors, healthy habits, and projects had reformed and recast me. When the logical, analytical, “either-or” left-brained thinking of Covey, Bennis, Blanchard & Johnson, or Peters & Waterman didn’t work, I finally had to turn to right brain teachers, with their creative, intuitive, spiritual, paradoxical, and “both-and” way of thinking. I continued reading books and listening to audiotapes by Frs. Anthony de Mello, Richard Rohr, and Thomas Merton. Kathy and I continued attending religious workshops and conferences. I started jogging and meditating regularly, and was opened up to a new dimension of creative expression by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Cameron’s book offered a radically new approach to self-awareness and creativity. In her work with “blocked” painters and writers, Cameron helped them overcome their creative paralysis with journaling - the simple practice of producing 3 pages of spontaneous, reflective writing every morning. I never thought of myself as artistic, or creative, but the practice helped me to maneuver my years at Van Nuys and led me to writing personal essays for this blog.
