Glimpses into Headship: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

In the days leading up to a break, I am fond of noting that “the wheels come off the bus.” We are all ready for a break, crave a respite, and sometimes, the last few days preceding a vacation lead the whole school to feel a little frantic.

I speak with a colleague several states away, who asks, “Is it always hard? Leading schools? It doesn’t seem to get any easier.”  We are talking on the phone; she is a few years into her first headship.

I pause.

“Yes,” I think, “it’s always hard,” but that seems a little bleak to say to someone who is looking for hope.

I remind her that school leadership is hard because there is always stuff to manage: unhappy children or dissatisfied parents or disappointment around college admissions or mental health crises or a faculty that is being asked to do too much or, or, or–and, often, it’s all of the above at the same time. And, and, and. The list of hard moments, tricky situations, challenges grows daily, and the world is hard, too. In the past five years alone–and she has not yet been a head for five years–things have gotten a great deal harder. We have learned more about the climate crisis; deep political polarization has fractured our nation; we have had a racial reckoning; we have lived through a global pandemic; we’ve faced backlash for initiatives that center all children in our schools. While we know more about the ways in which kids learn, we also know more about the ways in which they suffer. Phones are a constant–for kids and for adults. Anxiety seeps into school life. Parents need more from us; our faculty need help–they are not all trained as counselors, but kids trust them and confide in them. Differentiation within a single classroom takes time and training. Every school leader I speak with wishes for more staff trained to work with kids who are struggling in all kinds of ways. I talk a great deal about integrity and honor and principles, but my students do not always see those values reflected on the world stage. Many of the girls in my school wonder about their worth and value in our nation. The world is a lot, and schools are tiny microcosms of the world.

While I try to remember that every generation has had its challenges–we used to hide under our desks as if that would protect us from a nuclear bomb, and our bank had a bomb shelter in the basement–the ones we have  navigated recently in schools are real for each of us living them and leading through them.  

And, I say to my friend, trying to avoid any kind of pat reassurances that smack of toxic positivity, “We do have choices about how to lead.” Early in my headship, I used to worry I was somehow attracting crises in my school. Was there something about my temperament that invited calamity?  My style in those early years was “Wait for the other shoe to drop.” I was constantly on edge, hyper-vigilant, prepared to fly into action, to fix whatever was awry. We’d get through one complicated situation, and I was certain another would follow. I was not wrong, but it took me some time to realize that my worry would not change what might happen, and my agitation about what might come was good neither for my school nor for me.

But I come by worry naturally.  In first grade, I was cast as Chicken Little in the class play, scurrying onto the stage in a yellow leotard, replete with tailfeathers, to proclaim, “The sky is falling; the sky is falling.” This starring role foreshadowed that later “waiting for the shoe to drop” mindset. Charged with keeping the school safe, I imagined I was Cassandra on the ramparts of Troy, foretelling doom. I was ready to stand between my school and disaster, to imagine, wrongly, that I could both invite or forestall disaster and that it was my job to fix every mess.  Paradoxically, I was simultaneously without all power and all-powerful

Fortunately, a wise therapist friend, gently chided me one day when I was spinning. 

“Whoa,Calamity Jane,” she smiled. “You must think you have a whole lot of power to make so much bad stuff happen. Or to fix it all when stuff goes wrong. You know you don’t really have that much power, don’t you?”

Busted. I stopped my rant, grinned back at her.  “Ego?” I asked.

“Big time,” she answered, “Are you a witch or a headmistress? Aren’t you doing the best you can?”

“I am,” I gulped, embarrassed by the tears that sprang to the back of my eyes.

“Ease up, girlfriend,” she continued.  “Stuff happens. Sometimes, it’s really hard, but set yourself free of the idea that you can control any of it. You’re just not that important.”

We are just not that important, Trust a friend to both cut you down to size and give you permission to be human.I let my shoulders drop away from my ears. My worry about my own inadequacy was an odd form of ego.

A burden lifted. We can plan, implement systems, hire great people, do our best. But we are not all-powerful. Believing in our schools helps me manage–I love the school I lead and the people with whom I work. I believe in our mission and values. And, when I’m overtired, it’s easy to revert back to that grooved track that characterized the beginning of headship. Awake in the middle of the night, I fret, believing that I have caused the demographic dip in Northeastern Ohio, that I’m the reason a parent is unhappy about our approach to homework, or a neighbor is frustrated at the way our students park, that I am supposed to solve all of it. But when the sky lightens, these days I am more apt to remember that I am not the Great and Powerful Oz–he was a sham anyway. Dorothy ultimately learned that  courage, love, smarts and trust were what would help her–what helps all of us–to weather the inevitable storms.

I explained to my colleague on the phone that one benefit of my long tenure in my school is that I’m aware of my own tendency to catastrophize when tired. I am also more aware of the rhythms of the school year, the vicissitudes. Everyone gets cranky in the days leading up to vacation; the long, dark winter months are trying; being seen and affirmed by leaders is one way to improve morale for faculty and staff. Celebrating little triumphs can’t fix big, hard things, but looking for what’s good can help–there’s a balance between constant gloom and doom and toxic positivity. People are allowed to complain and it’s not my job to smooth away all the discontent–some of it is justified. Spending time with students reminds me why I chose to lead schools in the first place. And I have to be deliberate about not sinking down into my “lowest common denominator” self when it’s easier to whine than consider solutions. Cookies or chips can’t solve everything, but can improve a late afternoon meeting. These days, I try not to “borrow trouble,” as my mother would say, but to breathe through the tough stuff, secure in the knowledge that my team and I will manage–together. I am not Superwoman or Elphaba or Athena or a victim or a tumble-weed. I’m Ann–human, pretty good at solving problems, administering chocolate, and trusting that we will move through tricky situations and get to the other side. I am also better when I sleep and write and do chair yoga, but that doesn’t always happen, and I have to resist beating up on myself when one of my self-care rituals doesn’t happen the way I’d hoped. These days, I am better at interrupting the earlier musings of the tired, working mom-head of school, who worried that everything, absolutely everything, was both her responsibility and her fault. I’m better at remembering that I’m not that powerful.

My friend and I talk a little more. I listen, offer some encouragement but honor her feelings–her work is hard, her school is tough, her board is a challenge.

“Be gentle with yourself,” I counsel. “You are doing the best you can.” 

“Yes,” she answers. “I am.”

“And you don’t have to stay,” I remind her. “Maybe there’s another chapter, another adventure?”

“Maybe,” she says, unconvinced. I tread softly here, wanting to validate her struggles and to suggest that she has agency, that there are possibilities. When we know we have choices, sometimes we feel less stuck. 

We hang up.

A few days later, I am up in the middle of the night, worried about the weather and whether or not I will have to call a snow day. I think about my friend, about the fine line between taking responsibility and being humble. I decide to wear my red shoes to school. They make me feel brave. We are all Dorothy, aren’t we, finding our way, learning as we go?  Maybe I’ll send a tiny pair to my friend, too, to remind her that she has everything she needs within. We all do.