I was sitting in a meeting the other day waiting for a meeting to start. A middle School principal asked me what I missed about being a principal. I didn’t have to think long.

The messiness. I miss the messiness of working with staff and students in the learning and growing process.

I miss how I messed up working with an autistic student (really could’ve helped more if I knew then what I know now). The funny thing is that the student’s mom was the sister of a friend of mine (I didn’t know the connection until toward the end of the student’s time with us). By the way, it’s not that I or we did anything really wrong, we just could’ve done a lot of things much, much better.

I miss helping a family navigate dealing with a seizure disorder. The family was going through some other trials and tribulations at the same time.

I miss working with students who were phenomenally smart but needed confidence that they could do great things. Many of our kids ended up going to college. Several went to Ivy League schools. Many went to the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), which in many cases were as far away as they were allowed to go.

I miss two parents learning from each other. In one case, we had a parent (Parent One) who also happened to be a FedEx driver with my school on his route. He was passionate about how African Americans were treated. There was an incident with another parent who was, well, let’s say a bit biased. Parent One happened to be delivering something when his child and the child of Parent Two were in a room in the office due to an issue. Parent Two arrived in the office. Generally, we wouldn’t have parents talk at this point (too many unknowns and we definitely didn’t want kids to see parents behaving badly). However, both parents wanted to chat. Parent One was extremely thoughtful, kind, and effective in clearing up many issues for Parent Two. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

Most of all, I miss the excitement and unpredictable nature of middle school. Our staff did amazing work with kids. I miss being a part of that.

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