Tag: Life as Principal Page 2 of 4

No Worries

On October 5, 2019

There has been a lot in the last several weeks that has not gone right in my world. And that’s kind of an understatement.

The school where I serve, Haven of Peace Academy, has been hit with a number of major blindsides. We have suddenly been faced with circumstances that are completely out of our control, yet have huge implications for our school. We delayed the opening of school for two days, then for four days. Finally we opened a week late, thinking that the problems had been resolved, at least temporarily.

Except they weren’t totally resolved. And now, as a result, I’m teaching third grade for the next several weeks….while still being principal.

I was born as a Type-A, high achieving, task-oriented, determined person. Strong Willed should be my middle name. Just ask my parents. If I was told not to call people “stupid,” I would look my mom straight in the eye and say, “Stupid.” I knew the taste of soap in my mouth from a young age. If they told me not to get out of bed, they would have to hold my door shut until I fell asleep on the floor, exhausted from screaming. James Dobson’s Strong-Willed Child didn’t work on me. You could say that that being tightly-wound was built into my DNA.

God bless my long-suffering parents, who managed to help me channel that Strong Will into more constructive outlets. But I’ve always envied those people who have the ability to let things slide off their backs, seeing the bright side and staying optimistic in the most stressful of situations. Some people seem to be born that way (my eldest daughter being one of them), but that has never been me. Anxiety is often a nagging companion, ready to hijack my emotions when the slightest thing deviates from the plan. And if not Anxiety, then Stress stands ready and waiting to take her place. The temptation is there to resign myself: Well, that’s the way I was born. I guess I just have to live with it. Or rather, I guess everyone around me has to live with the implications of being around a tightly-wound, stressed out person.

Except, that source of Truth tells me otherwise:

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

whose confidence is in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water

that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

and never fails to bear fruit.

Seriously? This is possible? People can actually have no worries in a year of drought? This passage, among hundreds of others in Scripture, tells me that finding my confidence in God will bring me peace. Maybe that’s true for others, but not high-strung people like me. Right?

Except.

A little over a week ago, as I sat up late at night and wondered what on earth I was going to do with third grade, the thought emerged that I needed to be the one to teach it. There just weren’t any other viable options. And remarkably, despite what I would have predicted about my reaction, I was okay with this idea. Not thrilled, but okay. It was so unlike me to not freak out. Weird.

I thought, I don’t know what the heck God is doing, but I know he’s got this. And I actually believed it. Like, my emotions believed it. It wasn’t just head knowledge, but it was a fully developed belief. I was shocked.

The thing is, I always have known this. In the midst of seasons of Anxiety, I have told myself these things repeatedly, but it was like telling them to a brick wall. And as anyone knows who is in the midst of a Big Emotion, that emotion feels forever. Like it will never change, never back down, impenetrable to reason.

Yet I am fascinated by brain research on the concept of neuroplasticity–the ability of the brain to change. Like, the neurons of our brains can actually be rearranged by how we change our thinking. How utterly astonishing. Being anxious and stressed out might be programmed into my brain, but I can actually re-program it.

And that’s what I’m seeing in myself. Whoa. It actually works. Lo and behold, if I tell myself the Truth enough times, even during those times when my emotions yell and scream and overpower that Truth, eventually the Truth starts sinking in. Those overpowering emotions don’t have enough leverage to take over. Romans says: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Huh. What do you know? Science and the Bible are actually friends.

I wrote once that my emotions are like untamed horses. Yet those horses can be tamed. Of course, it would be stupid to think that I’ve arrived, that I’ll never fall apart again, that I have become impenetrable. Haven of Peace Academy still is facing huge challenges. Many, many things are uncertain. I don’t know how long I’ll be trying to do two jobs. I don’t know how many more blindsides are coming. But at least for now, my leaves are staying green in drought.

Well, at least green-ish. And that’s something new.

All I Knew Was That I Didn’t Want to be Michael Scott

By Amy Medina

On July 7, 2019

In Other

I’m so used to processing my thinking in this space. These past two years, It has been odd for me to do a job for 45+ hours a week and yet write so little about it. And now that I’m in America (did you know that? I’m in
America for the summer–surprise!), people ask me, “So how is it being
principal?” And I open my mouth and I smile and nothing comes out. How do I even start? How do I begin to describe an experience that I haven’t really processed yet?

I think I watched way too much of The Office before I became an administrator. Michael Scott gave me the impression that bosses just prowled around all day, looking over people’s shoulders and distracting
them from doing their jobs. I knew I didn’t want to be him, but I wasn’t
exactly sure what a good boss did do.

I had spent almost 20 years involved in education, so I had worked for principals before, of course, but I really hadn’t the foggiest idea of what a day in the life of a principal actually looked like. How would I figure out what I was supposed to do all day? It’s probably a good thing I didn’t admit this two years ago. You might have wondered why on earth I was qualified for the job. I actually wondered that myself, honestly. I just blindly trusted the people around me who assured me that they knew I could do it.

It took me approximately five minutes to realize that I didn’t
need to worry about figuring out what I was supposed to do. It’s like a
game of Whack-a-Mole. The first mole popped up, and as soon as I whacked it, five more took it’s place. And from that first day, I just kept whacking moles for the next two years. They just never stopped popping up. If this had been Chuck E. Cheese’s, I definitely would have earned 20 bazillion prize tickets. (Don’t worry; no children are actually whacked.)

So. Other than being really busy, how is it being principal?

I love it. Yes, I love it. I say that with no hesitation. This is a school that Gil and I helped to build, how could I not love it? I get to be a part of the 100+ staff from all over the world that make up Haven of Peace Academy. I supervise about twenty of them and work alongside the rest. The level of love and trust we have for each other, despite occasional conflicts, is extraordinary. We are not just a work place, we are a community.

I love these kids. Oh my gosh, I love these kids. Some of them crack me up. They come up to talk to me and I start laughing before they even
speak, because I know it will be hilarious. Lots of them make me
cry. There’s the ones who are struggling to read but then win every race
on Sports Day. The ones who are struggling to speak English but create
masterpieces in art class. And the ones who are very familiar with my office. I think those ones hold the deepest places in my heart.

I read and commented on 150 report cards during the last week of
school. It made my head spin and drove my stress up to an unhealthy level but I felt like a proud parent. So much progress evidenced on those ordinary pieces of paper. Evidence of teachers who poured their very souls into
children–countless hours of energy and love. Evidence of children who read and calculated and imagined for 180 days, who allowed their minds to be expanded and their responsibility to be stretched. I’m so proud of
my school.

That’s the easy part to talk about. Yes, I love it. But this job, these past two years, have been so much more complex than that. I love it, and it is intense. That intensity is the part that I haven’t really processed, nor can I really write about in detail. Teachers struggling through anxiety or depression. Kids with learning disabilities that we don’t know how to handle,
nor are there better options available in Tanzania. Kids coming to school with emotional needs that we can’t meet but suck us dry. Countless parents desperate to get their kids into our school, and I have to break their hearts.

And the recruiting: Not enough teachers. Never enough teachers. A teacher who says yes and then has to back out due to medical concerns. Will God provide? He always does. Somehow. But still I am anxious. It all is a weight I fight to cast off my shoulders and onto His.

And then there’s me: Will I be enough? Can I be enough? Every time
I think I’m ahead, another five moles pop up. I’m a task-driven person, and
this is a job full of tasks, but I worry, constantly, that I’m choosing tasks
over people. In working with teachers/parents/students, I straddle the line between grace and policy, forgiveness and law. Am I getting it right? I second guess myself often. Did I say the right thing in that email? Did I handle that discipline situation correctly? Well, no time to ponder that, because I’m off onto the next thing. Make me enough, I pray. But I won’t ever be. It’s only God who is enough. So let the stress go, Amy.

Two years down. Have I succeeded? Well, at least I know I’m not
Michael Scott. At least there’s that. And that’s something, right?

My core Primary (Elementary) teachers this year. We’ve been through thick and thin, we seven. I am so grateful for them.

HOPAC Primary Team

My “other” team….the office staff: Principals, operations, procurement, finance, counseling and other admin

Our brand new beautiful Performing Arts Centre

This is why I love Primary: First grade teacher asked her students to copy down their favorite Bible verse….and this is what one of them gave her. Now I just made your day, didn’t I? You’re welcome.

My heart.

The Big Bad Wolf

By Amy Medina

On March 15, 2019

In Other

I keep a list of things that inspire me to write, but the list just keeps getting longer but the ideas don’t get crossed off. My head is at HOPAC for nine hours a day and what’s left goes to family and cooking and other exciting things like trying to navigate the US immigration system so that we can get Johnny his US citizenship.

I get brilliant flashes of inspiration but no time to work them out, and for a person who has grown accustomed to processing my thinking by writing, this has created a massive traffic jam in my head.

In my old life, the one where I would sit at my computer and contemplate the intersection of my American-ness with Tanzanian culture to the soundtrack of Dora the Explorer, I used to get sleepy all the time. I would constantly find myself nodding off, and it didn’t matter how much sleep I had gotten the night before. I think I was bored. I know I was bored. Bored and restless. But I also had time to bring meals to new moms and bake 100 cupcakes at a time and have people over for dinner every weekend. And I had time to write.

And now I am often exhausted but I don’t get sleepy, even when I am supposed to, because my mind is so full of so many bazillions of details that I can’t shut it off. I feel like a kid digging a hole in wet sand right where the waves stretch, the kind of hole where no matter how much sand you pull out of it, the hole never gets deeper. You can even have a giant pile of wet sand next to that hole–sitting there as a monument of all you think you have accomplished–but the hole never gets dug. I keep waiting for the day when I will finally feel like I am on top of everything, but I’ve been at this job for 19 months now, and that hole still has just as much sand in it.

My eye started twitching the other day, which is always a sure sign of stress, which I’m pretty sure was instigated by the United States Department of Immigration, which has, I believe, a secret plan to drive me over the edge. All I’m trying to do is complete the process of getting citizenship for my son who has been in our legal custody for well over three years now, which seems like it should be simple (since it was relatively so for our other three children), but as any good American knows, immigration to America is no longer simple. These days I’m picturing US immigration as a doorless, windowless, impenetrable bunker that refuses to give anyone any shred of useful information other than one guy who growls through a peephole, “You want information? Use your children’s college fund to hire an immigration lawyer! Now go away!” and maybe “Not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin!” just for good measure.

There goes my twitching eye again.

Maybe this is why I was the Big Bad Wolf for Book Character Day last week. I huffed and I puffed, but in the end I ended up roasted in a pot.

Your hunch is probably right. I am losing it. You might want to just walk away slowly at this point.

What I really want to do is sit here and write a good long essay exploring the role of stress in a Christian’s life. When is it good? When is it burnout? When was my life more glorifying to God–during those days when I made people happy with my cupcakes, or these days when I spend most of my days writing people emails that I know will make them unhappy?

That’s an exaggeration, of course. Not all of my emails make people unhappy. But I can think of at least a dozen this week that did. There’s a reason why principals have a bad reputation. (Like I said, Big Bad Wolf.)

But the problem is that I am too stressed and my brain is too full to be able to do any evaluating; all I can do is hang on for dear life and keep frantically scooping sand out of that hole.

I know I need to actively search for more rest and I know that after one more week, I’ll have a break from school, so things will look different at this time a week from now. But I also want to somehow figure out how to live fully and gloriously and fearlessly in the middle of the stress, because this is where I think I’m supposed to be. If I’m looking around and it really seems, from all I can tell, that I’m living in the will of God, then there’s got to be a way to do it without eye twitching. So if you’ve got that figured out, can you let me know? Because I don’t have time to think about it.

Day One

By Amy Medina

On August 30, 2018

In Other

I stood in front of the class of kindergarten students on the first day of school, really confused. I had been the one who had invited these children to join the school, but something was wrong. They were much older than I remembered; some of them even had facial hair. Way too old to be in kindergarten.

Plus, their parents kept hanging around in the classroom, and flat out refused to leave. I kept trying to tell them that I needed them to go, but I had this enormous wad of gum in my mouth that prevented me from talking properly. Every time I would try to take some of the gum out, more would take its place.

Then I woke up. And it really was the first day of school.

Thankfully, despite those infamous “teacher nightmares” that have plagued me most of my life (even during the years I wasn’t teaching), our first day of school was wonderful. (And, just for the record, the kindergartners were actually the appropriate age and their parents graciously left the room–with only a few tears–when I asked them to.)

Is My Life Just Getting Started? Thoughts on Fulfillment

By Amy Medina

On August 25, 2018

In Other

2010

Back in the summer of 2005, when Gil and I were making plans to return to Tanzania, I got a phone call from the man who had been hired as the new director at Haven of Peace Academy. The elementary school principal had just stepped down, and the director wanted to know if I would be interested in the position. I thought about it a couple of days, sent a few emails back and forth, but never really seriously considered it. We had plans to start our family. I wanted to be a mom.

Now that I actually am a principal at HOPAC, I’ve thought about that phone call a number of times this year.

These days, I pinch myself because I can’t believe that I get to do what I am doing. In some ways, it feels like my life has just gotten started. So this is what fulfillment feels like. I could have been doing this for the last thirteen years. Why did I wait so long?

I think over the previous ten years when I spent the majority of my time with my kids, and how restless I felt during those years. I wasn’t the kind of mom who delighted in coming up with crafts and treasure hunts for my little ones. The days often felt like they would never end, and I would count the minutes until nap time so that I could write a blog or work on an on-line class. Being patient and attentive was a deliberate, moment-by-moment, conscious decision. It usually didn’t come naturally and I often failed. And to be honest, it didn’t feel particularly fulfilling. A lot of the time, it just felt long and boring.

This isn’t about the whole debate between working moms and stay-at-home-moms, because I fully understand that it’s a nuanced discussion, and for many women, they don’t have a choice. But I do wonder–how hard should we run after fulfillment? It’s amazing to get there, but is it everything? Should I have said yes to being principal thirteen years ago? Would I have been happier those thirteen years?

Maybe I would have. Adult conversations and building up a school is a lot more fun than wiping spit-up and listening to Dora the Explorer or wrangling a two-year-old while trying to grocery shop. It’s a lot more satisfying to tell people I’m a principal than trying to explain that my profession is “mom” or “I help my husband with his job.”

But is it everything? Should I have put a greater value on seeking my own fulfillment? That’s the question. Was there value in being relatively insignificant and invisible all those years? Was there significance to what I was doing even if it didn’t feel that way?

I look back and I think there was. Bringing my kids home was practically a part-time job in itself during those years. In those days, my labor pains happened through hours of Dar es Salaam traffic as I made weekly trips to social welfare offices. It was arduous, but it was worth it. And once they did come home, giving my kids the stability that they craved, spending hours, days, months bonding–all of it was worth it.

And I did do more than just stay home with my kids. I baked endless cupcakes for teenagers, I had the time to help new missionaries get settled, I helped to build up HOPAC–even if it was just behind the scenes. And in those years of restlessness, I learned that wrestling with contentment can be more valuable than years of fulfillment. That in dying to my own desires, I learned to live.

I want to remember that, because I also know that fulfillment is fleeting. Our future in Tanzania is uncertain, and despite how much I love what I am doing, I don’t know how long I’ll get to do it. It’s quite possible that someday in the near future, I’ll end up as a stay-at-home-mom again, needing to homeschool my kids. And if that happens, I don’t want the thirst for fulfillment to cloud my vision of what is more important.

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