I spent too much time this week having hard conversations with many students and parents around some incredibly difficult issues. As I tweeted out at one point, "lately, the things we cannot write about / blog about have been taking up much of my time." We can write about theory and practice and ideas and successes, but we can’t write about the things that break our hearts for obvious reasons. But those moments when we try to help our kids and their parents deal with the most difficult things are some of the moments we need the most help, the most guidance, the most understanding, because there is no handbook, and there is often no clear right answer or clear best thing to say.

So we do the best we can, we get council from trusted colleagues, and we work with kids, and we work with families. And then we reflect on our decisions and try to figure out how to be better tomorrow than we were today. As a principal, there are days when I wish there was some handbook, some great big chart with an X and Y axis of issues and severity, so that I could follow the lines and figure out exactly what I was supposed to do, but of course, there isn’t, and there can’t be, because those kind of proscriptive rules never come with nuance, and short of the situations of mandatory reporting, those moments always contain nuance.

For me, the answer is to never fall in love with my answer… to always question… to always wonder… to always reflect… and to always remain self-critical. I say all the time that we should be humbled before the enormity of what we are trying to do. Weeks like this remind me of that painfully and powerfully… as I am confronted with my own flawed humanity as I try to help my students deal with theirs as well.
 
Kids are facing a more and more challenging and confusing world. They need us to be the best versions of ourselves we can muster. And that means we have to listen as best we can. And we need to never grow cold to the problems of children, and we can never think that we have all the answers.

I tried to be the best principal I know how to be this week. I sincerely hope I did right by the children in my care. Whether I did or or whether I fell short, I promise to try to be better next week.