As I was finishing my master’s program in school leadership, I started interviewing with schools around the country looking for the right opportunity to try my luck as a principal. I made it into the district principal pool in New York City and Houston, Texas. I applied to districts across the southwest, and was offered jobs in Boston, San Francisco, and my home town of Mesa, Arizona. I’m not sure how many interviews I had that spring, but one of them has been seared into my mind.
It was a first round interview for a handful of turnaround schools in Tucson, Arizona. To be honest, Tucson was not on the top of my list. Mostly, my wife wasn’t keen on desert living if we weren’t close to family. Yet the conditions of employment intrigued me. The student population of predominately first and second generation Mexican immigrants, many of whom were English Learners, matched precisely the type of students and families where I felt my experience and contributions would be most useful. Plus, the superintendent was launching an ambitious effort to turnaround some of the district’s most challenged schools. It was a mix of conditions that was compelling for my particular vision for moving public schools forward.
Getting the interview with Tucson Unified was somewhat lucky in the first place. I had applied but was initially screened out. The reason for my exclusion from the interview phase was a lack of total years in education. Never one to take no for an answer, I shot off an email to the superintendent, firmly but politely asserting my qualifications and preparedness for the challenge. I got a call back shortly thereafter inviting me to interview.
By all measures, the interview was a success. Eventually I was even offered a position, albeit for an Assistant Principalship at the school that I felt least matched my skills and interests. I was only given 24 hours to decide in order to meet the board deadline, and ultimately I declined. It was a learning experience to be sure, one of just many such learning experiences working with hiring timelines and public school boards.
The interview panels were well constructed – with a genuine mix of staff, parents, community partners, and even students. They allowed me some time at the end to ask my own questions. For many interviewees, these are seen as throw away questions – a last chance to reassert major talking points and politely conclude. In fact, a mentor recently told me that I blew an interview precisely because I asked too probing of questions at the end of my interview. In any case, I had some questions for Tucson Unified. Why is this school a turnaround school? Where had the previous administrators gone wrong?
The answers from the panel members stay with me.
The dismissed admin team, I was told, consisted of good people. Well-intentioned. In some cases, even well-liked. But they didn’t move the school. They got comfortable. They knew how to run a school. But they were too content maintaining the status quo.
In other words, they were competent but not transformative.
When the interview concluded, I couldn’t get these recently unemployed administrators out of my mind. I couldn’t shake the years of service that they gave their schools, only in the end to be dismissed as well-intentioned people who did little to improve outcomes for students. I tried to imagine myself in their shoes – what mental rationalization would I employ to convince myself that I had been successful? How might I avoid an internal verdict of leadership failure? Or would I reject the analysis of my tenure out of hand? Would I refuse to see what so many others saw – a well-meaning professional who was essentially going through the motions with no measurable impact? I thought about the long days these people gave to their schools. I can only assume that they went about the work as honestly as they could.
And yet it wasn’t enough.
That interview stays with me. It helps me to never confuse long days with effectiveness. It helps me to never believe my own hype. It helps me walk with the assumption that I’m focusing too much on temporary fires and not enough on the systems of performance and accountability that will shape the system in much more profound ways. It keeps me humble.
Truth be told, leadership is not comfortable. We can’t expect to transform a system we are doing everything possible to conform ourselves to. We please too many people at our own risk. Of course there is the opposite, turning up the heat higher than the system can handle, and getting ourselves marginalized or rejected in the process. That’s not achieving our end goal of system transformation either. But even as we pace ourselves, we have to continually question whether we are pushing hard enough and holding high enough expectations. Riding that edge will likely be dangerous, but essential nonetheless to ensure that we getting enough traction to make a measurable difference.