I was looking through some old pictures and sort of got in my feelings. Of course all that is compounded by the Covid-19 situation that we are dealing with. Someone shared of picture of Naaman Forest High School with me which caused me to go back through tons and tons of pictures that I captured while serving as principal there. I then went further and started looking at pictures of when I served as principal of Corsicana High School. As I looked at graduation pictures and pictures of dances and homecoming and prom I couldn’t help but think of all the many great times I had at both campuses. As I looked through the hundreds of pictures I simply smiled. I shared some of the pictures with some close friends and someone wrote back the following question: “Remember when you told me about those string of bomb threats you had to deal with?” What was weird about that question was that I had forgotten all about that. Once it was brought to my memory I recalled the situation vividly. It kept me up at night, caused me to have to come home from a conference, and pushed my young 31 year old leadership to the max. I was fortunate to have a supportive boss, and some smart more mature leaders that helped guide me through that process. I remember being down right scared…Questions that I thought about were: What would the community think? What would my boss think? Would attendance plummet? Would I be blamed? Would we ever get back on track? Whatever the question I thought about it. The good thing is that we did get back on track and came from that stronger than ever.

Writing this is more for me. I have been fortunate to be a two time high school principal. I was fortunate to work with some great teachers, and leaders that helped make each school have great moments. Sometimes it’s just good to think back and reflect.