Principles of Principals

That people make up afterwards. I hear people say this all the time, and it just makes my moral and ethical skin crawl. Everything happens for a reason. Everything? Really? Bullcrap.  What reason would that be? Folks who say this have no idea what they are saying. However, when an event confirms their belief in that statement, the verbal diarrhea resumes. "See! I told you there was a reason. It is/isn't meant to be! Things happen for a reason." No they do not.  Things happen.  The reasons that get propped up happen after and do not relate except in your feeble mind. Stop saying this to people. Stop saying it to yourself.   Child abuse doesn't "happen for a reason". Genocide doesn't "happen for a reason". I lost my wallet because I'm an idiot. Good and evil are real. They exist in my heart, and in the hearts of us all. We do dumb things, for no reason. We do great things for no reason. We are humans BEING.  Attributing some random illogical ...

I'd taken a post in a large unified school district north of Phoenix, Arizona, in a primarily middle class K-8 elementary school. As the newly minted Assistant Principal, I'd established my career understanding how to mitigate and manage behavioral crisis in classrooms - this particular campus housed a self-contained program for Emotionally Disabled students - and they hoped to lean on my so called expertise. Mid-way through the year, and in context of dealing with most of the code of conduct issues across campus, I got to know a group of students for whom navigating school structure was complicated. One student in particular was often in my office for increasingly physically violent actions - hitting a female student in the side of the head with a basketball - and I was working closely with his family and teachers to support rapid changes. It heightened my anxiety around school safety, and stressed my awareness. Cafeteria duty was part of my routine, not my favorite, but...