Why You Took This Job

A Personal Reflection

It’s late July. You’re organizing your office for the new year. In the back of a desk drawer, you find a card. It’s from a student. Eighth grade. She graduated two years ago. She wrote it the week before graduation. You don’t remember reading it the first time. You sit down and read it now.

There is a version of school leadership that is entirely administrative. Budget codes, compliance reports, facilities tickets, discipline logs, personnel files, board presentations. You can spend a full year doing only those things. Many principals do.

And then something small happens, like a card in a drawer, that reminds you why you came to this work in the first place.

Summer is the right time to revisit your why. Not in a motivational-poster way. In a practical, grounding way. Because the urgency of the school year will return fast, and if you don’t have clarity on what you’re doing this for, the administrative weight will fill every corner of your leadership and crowd out the human part.

Ask yourself the question directly. Why did you become a school leader? Not the answer you give in interviews. The real one. Maybe it was a teacher who believed in you when no one else did. Maybe it was a school that failed a kid you knew and you decided you’d run one differently. Maybe it was something harder to name than that.

Write it down. Put it somewhere you’ll see it in February when the state assessment pressure is climbing and the personnel situation you’ve been managing for four months has gotten worse and you haven’t slept well in two weeks.

Your why is the thing that outlasts every bad season. Keep it close.

TRANSFERABLE PRINCIPLE

A leader without a clear purpose is just a manager with a bigger title.

School leaders who stay connected to their original purpose for entering this work sustain themselves through the hard seasons that would otherwise break them. This summer, write one clear sentence that answers the question: why do I do this? Not a mission statement. Not a professional goal. A true answer. Revisit it in January. It will cost you ten minutes and may save your career.

Until next time — the chair is yours.