A Postcard from the Principal’s Office: #3

Four letter words—well, just one.

Oct 04, 2024

And the greatest of these….

I thought these postcards in a Substack bottle would be a monthly submission, at best. But as I started to think about these postcards sent from my past life as a principal into the now, I’m realizing just how many stories one can accumulate from a lifetime spent in the classroom and school amidst hundreds of teachers and thousands of students. All a part of the book I’m not writing—all a part of me. (Maybe I’m the book!)

My life as a student, teacher, and principal played their unique Alchemy upon my body, my emotions, my mind, my heart, and my Soul. I was changed by each experience—the person I could have been had I chosen a different profession is forever left to the graveyard realms of “impossible to know so why bother?” I don’t bother. I was a teacher, and I am damn proud of it.

I spent a lot of time, as teachers are wont and required to do, learning to become even better at my craft. Ironically, or maybe not so, because I took seriously my study of the teaching arts, I was a better Dad because of it to my own two children. I was a better husband too. The Alchemy of it is also the fact that because I became a Dad, and a husband, and I took seriously those aspects of my life too, I was a better teacher. Nothing in life is mutually exclusive, no thing—only our thinking mind sometimes thinks that is the case.

I want this postcard to be about a four letter word we didn’t often say at school.

Let’s imagine you were a new (or experienced) teacher interviewing with me for a teaching (or other) position in my school. And then imagine the interview had one, and only one question. Imagine the importance of your answer as your mind raced “OMG, what’s ‘the right’ answer?” “What should I say?” “What answer does HE want to hear?” “OMG—ONLY ONE QUESTION? MY WHOLE CAREER COMES DOWN TO ONE QUESTION?”

Yes, yes it does. Because it should.

The question: “Do you want your students to like you?”

If it’s too hard a stretch for you to imagine you’re a teacher (first, I feel sorry for you, you missed out on the greatest kind of work one can do), then consider “do you want your colleagues to like you? Do you want your boss to like you? Do you want your customers to like you?

I’ll get to the answer, well, MY answer, in a second because it actually forms a parallel thesis to my intention for Postcard #3 — THE four letter word.

So keep thinking about that. And think about the setting in which it’s being asked—you are vying for a position as a teacher, a leader of kids, a teacher of curriculum, tasked with insuring your students learn from you. Along with your teaching, and the content knowledge you are supposed to have, you know a large part of your job is to hold the attention of each child, sometimes upwards of 30+ kids who are staring right back at you (saying to themselves, “I dare you to keep me interested in anything you have to say”) for at minimum an hour if you teach at the secondary level, or all day if at the elementary level (and yes, even kindergarteners know how to think to themselves “I dare you, teacher, to keep me interested in anything you have to say for this entire day. And then tomorrow. And the next. And for each of the next 179 days I’ll be right here in front of you.”)

Over the course of my career, as a teacher leader then administrator, I interviewed hundreds of adults—for student-teaching positions, internships, staff, paraeducator, specialists, and teaching positions of all kinds. And as part of district-wide hiring teams, I even interviewed others for principal, asst. principal, district-level, and even cabinet level positions. When I ended my career, I came to realize all other interview questions, though maybe important to some, were insignificant when compared to this one question. Because hidden within the depth of the question is a profound yet simple truth. But, again, it bordered on a fear we have to use a specific four letter word. And so, because of that fear, I never heard the answer I was looking for. Fortunately, as one grows in skill and experience in working with humans of the adult kind, one can begin to have a feel for the kind of people who embody the “right answer,” or are at least capable of reaching its lofty standard, even when they have a hard time articulating it within the span of a job interview.

“Do you want your students to like you?”

When asked that question, you can literally see the minds of the candidates sitting in front of you racing. And, expectedly so, almost to a person, almost every single time, I got the same answer. Not the one I was looking for, mind you—instead, I typically got the safest answer because that is how we’ve raised ourselves to be inside the school walls and inside teacher school. Most answers went something like this:

Well, I’m there to be their teacher, not necessarily their friend so I think it’s important my students respect me as their teacher. I want them to know I will work hard to be their teacher and that I want them to work hard as my students. I want my students to know I will acknowledge when they are doing well but that I will also hold them accountable when they aren’t and sometimes, I know, students won’t like that. So, yeah, I think I most want my students to understand I’m their teacher and they need to respect my authority. There will probably be times when some won’t like me because I’ll hold them to high expectations.

Okay, um…no.

Here’s a true story: when I interviewed for my last principal job for the school and district from which I resigned to take care of my dad, I remember saying distinctly there was a word we didn’t use enough of in school. That we educators were scared of this word and so had banished it from our language—much to our detriment. But I wanted to change that on day one. I went years without this word being any part of our reason for doing what we were doing every day at school when I worked for my own various principals and superintendents. I cannot guarantee that one part of an hour-long interview, facing what must have been upwards of 12 staff and parents from the school and the district who were tasked with trying to find their next principal, had any bearing upon their decision-making, but I was fortunate enough to have been chosen by them anyway.

I remember saying: “We don’t use the word LOVE enough in education.”

boy in green shirt holding red paper heart cutout on brown table — Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash

“Do you want your students to like you?”

Here’s the answer I always wanted to hear:

“No, no I don’t. I don’t want my students to like me. I need my students to love me!”

Period.

When a student loves their teacher, they cannot wait to get to school in the morning. When a student loves their teacher, the teacher can lead them anywhere, and teach them anything—trust is a synonym for love. When a student loves their teacher, the student feels safe enough to sometimes be at their worst—because they know they will be loved anyway (more on this in a bit). When a student loves their teacher, they become so excited about school and learning. When a student loves their teacher, the student can hear sometimes difficult things from the teacher when the teacher is trying to teach a lesson—whether that lesson is about reading, math, behavior, or life. When a student loves their teacher, the teacher can have exceptionally high expectations, and the child will do their level best to meet them knowing the teacher as well will do their level best in service to realizing those expectations. When a student loves their teacher, the child may forget a lot of the things that were taught, but the child will never forget their teacher. “Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!”

When a teacher wants their students to love them, the teacher won’t stop until that happens. They will remove all barriers, seek the right tools, gain the necessary knowledge, practice the appropriate skills, create effective plans, become an expert in that child as a learner, and collaborate with whomever is necessary to break down all walls (some the students themselves self-impose) in order to build all bridges toward compassion, growth, and learning—synonyms for, and outcomes of, love.

All THIS, by the way, is the definition of magic.

Why? More Love.

Here’s the thing that brings it all home—see, the kids, themselves, also come to school everyday with one question and one question only, and they ask it of each adult in the school. Actually, they come with one question and one demand. But it’s all of the same piece:

Their question?
“Will you love me?”
Their demand?
“Love me please.”

I had a quote on my wall that served as one of my main mantras when applied to some very special students. It was a quote my superintendent love to read whenever he visited (making me believe two things: 1) he didn’t have the quote on his wall (telling me a lot about him), and 2) no other principal he visited had the quote on their wall (telling me a lot about them):

“Those children who need love the most will ask for it in the most unlovable of ways.”

Kids will express who they are in many ways—most of which is by their behavior (since their pre-frontal cortexes, the brain part that controls executive function and rational decision-making, aren’t fully formed until their mid-twenties!) Behavior is a form of communication and it’s up to the teacher to learn each child’s unique love language. I would council many teachers, when their students were really challenging them, “you don’t always have to like your students (ie, their actions), but you do always have to love them.” This kind of love is hard—it is demanding, persistent, honest, forgiving, raw at times, healing, and compassionate. Kids MUST know that love is unconditional—they need do NOTHING to have to earn an adult’s love. This love is given freely—even when love demands some pretty hard lessons get taught.

But when this love is present, well…did I mention magic?

“The day will come when our children are truly first as measured by our love and caring. The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness the energy of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”

~ paraphrased from Pierre Tielhard deChardin (I mounted a poster of this quote in one of my schools that was newly built as a permanent monument to our truest mission).

How Love Can Work

How Love is manifested in school (How the adults express it, and how the kids experience it):

Every child is greeted, by name, in the halls and at the school and classroom door every day. When I didn’t have meetings, I was at the front of the school greeting every student with high fives, fist bumps, hugs, smiles, and jokes.
No child eats or plays alone (unless they want to as a way to take a break from overstimulation—but this means the adults must know the needs of every child).
The adults know the needs of each child. (See what I did just there?)
Hugs heal and are given amply and freely—I hugged my elementary students but always took my cues from them. Typically, they always initiated the hugs and the hugs always respected bodily autonomy, dignity and respect. If a student was over-aggressive or inappropriate in their hugs, that was simply a time to teach, never to shame or admonish. When I taught jr. high, students there still craved connection and contact but the physical manifestation of that tended always to be high fives and fist/shoulder bumps.
The adults live with joy at school—everyone can see the adults LOVE being there by their joy, friendliness, enthusiasm, happiness, and smiles. And those same adults know they don’t teach content—they don’t teach reading, writing, math, science, history, social studies, or the arts—they teach kids. And they believe in kids.
When the children are at their worst, the adults are at their best. All behavior is communication. ALL behavior. Because one of most important things young students are learning is the ability to accurately and calmly communicate their needs, sometimes their behavior, their misbehavior, their unskilled behavior, from their raw and under-developed nervous systems, is how they communicate. The adults need to know how to interpret that behavior into the unmet needs the child is communicating, while maintaining the child’s dignity. This requires compassion—a corollary of love.
Kids are held accountable to high standards they have the capacity to reach—this is, btw, unique to each student. If I lower the bar of achievement for you, to make it easier for you, or so your feelings don’t get hurt or that you don’t fail and get overly frustrated, that sends a powerful and inappropriate message that I don’t believe you can do any better. If I keep the bar of achievement high for you, at a height I know you can reach with effort and support, it communicates to you my confidence you can meet and exceed that bar. And that we’ll get there together.
Staff communicates to parents we know who their kids are, we know their interests, their friends, their talents, their abilities, and their areas of growth. If a child is not doing well in any phase of the curriculum, the teacher is able to clearly communicate how they are working together with the student to support their progress. In other words, without using the word itself, the teacher is able to show parents their love of their child.
And teachers also say “I love having your child in class. I love working with your child. I love your child.” None of this is weird or should be made to feel so—it should be sought as the ideal needed in every single classroom in our world.
And at the end of the day, somehow, in some meaningful way, each child leaves knowing their adults cannot wait to see them again.

[Special note to parents of school-aged kids: if your child expresses the belief their teacher doesn’t love them, or care for them, or like them; if you feel something’s amiss because your child doesn’t want to go to school, speaks negatively of their teacher, gets phantom stomachaches, throws morning tantrums every morning, or otherwise is indifferent to, if not actually “hates” going to school, then you have some work to do. Lean into that by engaging school staff to help you understand what might be happening for your child. Because, in those cases, school isn’t working for your child—and it’s not up to them to make it so. It’s up to every adult at school, especially the classroom teacher, to make school work for your child. To be the place of sanctuary all kids deserve; and to be a place of magic where love is felt if not actually spoken.]

But it’s okay to speak of it too. Naming it for our kids gives them one of the greatest lessons of all: the true meaning of Love.

We still don’t use the word Love enough in schools. But we should.

In fact, we should actually create it.

Live, Laugh, and Love—with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts,

Always and Ubuntu,

~ kert

And with Ahimsa!

🙏🏼

Postscript: I was inspired to write about this this week because of three things: 1) the way schools are being talked about at the national level during this presidential election year (more on this in coming weeks); 2) because of this poem from the 14th Century mystic Hafiz:

With That Moon Language
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to
them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us
to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full
moon in each eye that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language, what every other
eye in this world is dying to hear?
~ Hafiz