My Story

My story is a detailed one. I am not going to break it up into parts because I want to get this out and move forward. My story began at the beginning of the year. I was very excited in my professional life because my campus had reached “recognized” status in my third year of leadership. Of course I did not do this alone and with my health requiring me to be gone for long periods of time obviously I had great people working with me. I had a lot of pride in what we had accomplished. When I stepped into my campus 3 years ago there were several areas that needed to be addressed. It does not matter what areas for this story just know that it required ATTENTION. I hired a young lady, A as my counselor. I had worked with A in a previous district and she was exactly what I was looking for. Someone young, beautiful, energetic, great with kids, but if she had to she could work with anyone in any area of instruction. We spent a lot of time together and she and I were on the same page. Year two I was allowed to hire an AP and I knew who I wanted there as well. I interviewed others but the person I hired was on my campus as a teacher. Her name was E. She had the same characteristics as A. Put the two of them together and you have a very powerful leadership team. All I had to do is tell them what I wanted to have happen and they just did it. Mistakes were made, don’t get me wrong but the second year went pretty darn good. Then year 3 started. All I had to do was point them in the right direction and they just did it. It was AWESOME!!! My job was easy. I had to leave due to a relapse but these two ladies NEVER MISSED A BEAT! I was involved in decisions but these ladies did all of the hard work.

Then this year started. Almost everyone in my office staff was promoted. First, A to AP in another campus. Then I found out E had to leave because her husband got transferred. No problem I thought. I can do this. I can train new people. I will find good people again and guide them just as I had before. In the back of my mind I knew that my doctor had told me 15 to 24 months before my energy level would come close to normal after my second transplant and I was 4 months out at the time. But I felt good and I was ready to roll. I found good people to fill all of my vacancies and while I was putting in some pretty long hours 60-70 a week I knew once school started things would slow down.

It is here that I started to see cracks in my foundation. For some reason I was seeing people that had slid back into some habits that were not good. Not bad mind you but they had slipped. My experienced teachers, ones that I had gone into battle with, were not stepping up and taking charge and guiding the new folks. This fell to me. Then my new administrative team who are good at what they do I realized could not guide the new teachers as well because they were afraid they would lead them in the wrong direction. So I found myself spending more time with them because they always wanted to run their decision my me before they did something. 99 percent of the time I agreed with them but still it took time to do it.

Then this year a group of parents came in who are very high maintenance. Their kids are a challenge and for the most part these parents refuse to address the fact that MAYBE just MAYBE some of the blame rest with their kid. At the moment it is all us. I was warned by their outgoing principal at their elementary but wow she could not do these people justice. I can’t count using both hands and both feet how many times I walked into the building at 7:15 to 7:30 (we start at 8:30) and I would have multiple parents wanting to see me.

I started spending more and more hours at work just to keep my head above water. As I have mentioned before Tracey was pretty much a single mom and doing everything at the house because I was doing everything I could to keep things going at work. The problem was it did not seem to make a difference. So I put in more time. Still, no difference. It got to where my energy was getting exhausted each day and my immune system started to be affected. I started having Stomach problems and then the infamous cough. It became such a beating to get through the day that I literally had nothing else to give when I got home. I would come home, eat, play with the kids for a little bit and then off to bed I would go. My thought was that I would get refreshed and get a good nights sleep and hit it again tomorrow. It would be better tomorrow. The problem was it never got better…it got worse. I started spending more time at work trying to take care of everyone and I began getting more run down. I started going to bed earlier. Getting dark earlier did not make it seem so bad. Going to bed at 6:30 sounded good to me. It was dark for an hour already.

This is when I started getting depressed about my situation. I got so run down that I ended up in the hospital for two days. I started to think…what am I going to do? I can’t give any more than I am giving. I am literally killing myself. I started thinking….how do I approach the district and let them know that I am not meeting my own set standards as principal? If this does not get addressed the school will digress. I can’t seem to get this ship righted completely. We were taking on water…fast.

I had to address my health. I needed something less stressful and with less time commitment . I needed to take care of the school but my health had to come first. What can I do? Many things ran through my head. Finish out the year and resign. Ask to be reassigned in another capacity. Go into another line of work where I had little pressure. I had to do something to get my health in order.

While all of this is going on Tracey has growing resentment towards me on multiple fronts.. She is getting fed up with her doing everything at the house but she realizes that I am physically breaking down in front of her so she lets me gets my rest and does not say anything. She is however resentful that I am breaking down and the doctors are not giving us any answers as to why.

Luckily the district stepped in and approached me about this new opportunity I have now. I LOVE it. I am still getting to do what I love to do and the hours are WAY LESS. Sure there will be busy times but the stress level I have is WAY LESS. I am getting better sleep and my energy level is getting better each day. I am actually starting to help out a little in the home front and this eases things for Tracey.

I feel like I was caught in a fog for 5 months and I am just now coming into the clearing and things are looking much brighter. My job is better, my home life is better, and my doctors actually have a plan to get me over this lung issue. Things are looking up.