Principles of Principals

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire Over and over again, we have learned it is the nature of all people when given a little to power, to exert unrighteous dominion over their fellow humans. To dehumanize and objectify one another, distilling away individualism, and replacing it with a group identity. Mormon. Jew. Black. Racist. Male. Jock. Nerd. In 1966, students identifying themselves as Red Guard (unsolicited protectors of Mao Tse Tung) began beating, torturing, and killing their own teachers and administrators. To be brief in writing, educators across China, grade levels, and subject matter disciplines fell at the hands of children. Middle school students were considered the worst offenders. The total death toll of what historians and documentarians refer to as a Revolution  or Great Leap Forward numbers in the 10's of millions. I looked for numbers on teachers and professors, and I didn't find anything sol...

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...