Lent – March

Tackling another Sunday afternoon, I am not sure if I should fold the laundry or do the bills first. I have completed my lesson plans and the school newsletter draft is in its final stages. The pasta sauce is simmering on the stove and I think I just need to water the plants inside and outside…then, relax. Maybe. Whatever happened to Sunday afternoons? When I was a child, those hours between church and dinner were the most creative afternoons of my life. I remember spending hours during my “artist” stage carefully drawing in my sketch book. At other times, I filled journals with little girl dreams. If the weather was nice, my sisters and I would join our neighbors in heated games of marbles or riding bikes to our fort under the lilac bushes down the street. We would glue sequins to crafts, bake oatmeal cookies, read library books. 

I also remember quality time on those days with my parents. Dad might watch football or putter in the yard. I am sure Mom made the sauce and prepared for our dinner, but I remember her taking time to play Monopoly with us or help us to sew clothes for our Barbie dolls. Some Sundays, we would take a family day trip to Washington D.C. After Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, we might go to a Smithsonian museum or grab sub sandwiches and chips for a picnic at one of the parks. To this day, I crave pistachio ice cream – a special treat we enjoyed when we visited the National Zoo. 

This was before we plotted our days via electronic calendars, before our telephones buzzed with reminders and notifications. I miss those Sundays.

Principal’s Ponderings – Scheduling Time for Lent

To some of us who track the liturgical seasons on our Google calendars, Lent often appears as a transparency superimposed over work schedules, sporting events, and academic semesters. We assign colors and notifications that pop up on synched devices. Chimes and banner messages remind us to get to meetings on time, pick up our children, and pay our bills. But not once have I set up an alert to remind myself to get to morning prayer at school or to avoid meat on Friday! The purple of Lent seems to get lost in the orange of a weekend barbecue and the red of weekly meetings and upcoming events. 

Not that He has to, but God has proven to me once again that He has our best interest at heart! During this time of year, the calendar honestly gets so overloaded that I often choose not to look at it, knowing that whatever I must do will eventually cross the threshold of my office. This week, however, it felt like time slowed down – if only during our scheduled daily all-school chapels. And for that, I thank God and I thank the school community.

“Your goal is not always your destination,” our social studies teacher recently shared with the students. As chapel leader, he talked about his own journey and how he eventually landed in his teaching position at St. Augustine. Although he said he is convinced that he is meant to be here, “it was never part of the plan.” His best story was about how nervous he was during the interview process that included teaching a sample lesson in front of students he had never met. He shared “stomach-wrenching” details that do not require further description.

That made me think about my own life and the lives of the teachers and the students who have come together one way or the other to create the family of our school. I am fond of saying that I believe every single person at our school, to include myself, is destined to be here. 

I felt that connection later in the week when we did the Stations of the Cross. As a teacher in a Catholic school for the past many years, the Stations have always been part of the Lenten routine. But for some reason, this year’s reflections seem to have hit a chord with the school and with me personally.

Using the best in technology, the words are projected on the front wall of the chapel and everyone participates. When I noted to our school’s deacon that the reflections seemed especially relevant, he nodded and said he wrote them. At first, I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. He told me he adapted them, using the more traditional writings as a guide. He did this when the students seemed to be facing some particularly challenging trials. When he shared this with me, I felt blessed in two ways – one that Deacon gave us the gift of this resource and in another way, so thankful that I had been shaken a bit out of my routine and could see the Stations from a new perspective. I think we all felt that way. Here is an example from the seventh station when Jesus fell for the second time. I believe everyone listening to these words during what was the end of a very hectic week, was touched in meaningful way.

“This is the second time you have fallen on the road. As the cross grows heavier and heavier it becomes more difficult to get up. But you continue to struggle and try until you’re up and walking again. You don’t give up. Sometimes things get me down. Others seem to find things easier to do or to learn. Each time I fail, I find it harder to keep trying.  I find myself wanting to just give up, to quit instead of continuing to work to the end.  Sometimes I think I should know more than I do. I become impatient with myself and find it hard to believe in myself when I fail. It is easy to despair over small things, and sometimes I do. Help me when things seem difficult for me. Even when it’s hard, help me get up and keep trying as you did. Help me do my best without comparing myself with others.”

Deacon Andy Corder

 …and help us Lord, to remember that Lent is not a time to “fit into” our schedules, but a reminder of who sets the calendar of our lives. Amen!

Some gifts just keep on giving. Nearly a decade ago (nine years to be exact), my husband presented me a package wrapped in paper emblazoned with bright yellow sunflowers. Tucked under my pillow for me to discover on the eve of my fiftieth birthday, I was rather underwhelmed to find a paperback book extolling all the rules and tools I would ever need as a manager and leader. I had just accepted a job as the principal of St. Augustine Catholic High School after having spent the better part of the last decade as a teacher then principal of Immaculate Heart elementary in our Diocese of Tucson. I was excited and nervous about my pending transition from kindergarten hugs to freshmen bravado, from junior high anxieties over pre-Algebra to seniors counting credits and writing college essays. Still, did I really need a treatise on leadership skills for such a career progression let alone a milestone birthday?

Today, I glance up from paperwork on the desk in my office and there it is…that book, tipped ever so slightly as it braces two other books on that shelf – the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the New American Bible. Slightly worn by time rather than use, those three books are probably the most important in my office if only as reminders of the profound opportunities I have every single day as a parochial school administrator and even more importantly, a forever student of life. The Word of God will always nourish my soul, the Catechism goes beyond the school handbook when I need the foundation of our church’s policies, and the other book…let’s just say school principals always need resources.

My husband redeemed himself when he also surprised us with a family trip to Italy to celebrate my half-century birthday, but I have to admit that the book on leadership skills has become one of my most treasured gifts. I can’t recall the number of real-life scenarios I have tackled over the past several years that have required objective yet empathetic, sound yet thoughtful, and difficult and often heart-wrenching decisions that often remind me my job is not defined by Monday to Friday and hardly constrained to hours between 9 to 5. I can build all the consensus in the world, but I stand alone with a final decision. 

Dinner time conversations have been lively, sometimes filled with laughter, other times tears and frustration.  My husband bears it all as he listens to my emotional cadence. “Just remember your rules and tools,” he reminds me with a smug smile.  “By the way, where is that book?”

 “Would you like to borrow it?” I reply.

There is absolute joy in what I do. I am sincere in saying that I always look forward to going to school. I work with an amazing faculty and staff all dedicated to doing what is best for our students. I tell friends that I am enjoying high school more now than when I was a teenager. I love the noise, the basketball games, the bake sakes, student council meetings, dances, brainstorming, faculty meetings, daily chapel, morning announcements, theater productions, fundraisers, and free dress days. 

I first wrote about my husband’s prophetic gift in (Extra) Ordinary Time, Ponderings of a Catholic School Principal, which I self-published in 2013. That short book of essays within essays was a compilation of experiences I gathered as an elementary principal. Before I ever became an educator, I was a journalist. Compelled to document the stories richly born in the classrooms and hallways, I began then what I continue to do now – write, not for publication in a newspaper, but for our weekly school newsletter aimed at offering students and parents a glimpse into the everyday happenings in school. When I was “promoted” to high school, I knew I had to continue this practice, so I created my own newsletter, the Wolf Prints, where my audience has now expanded to nearly 500 readers ranging from freshmen to school benefactors and personal friends who allow me the privilege of sharing my high school Principal’s Ponderings with them each week. 

In 2015, I proudly handed out diplomas to the first group of students who entered St. Augustine when I did. While I still have not graduated, I am planning for the next chapter in my own life. Will that be retirement or a slight turn into a new area of my career? What I am sure of is that it is time for me to gather my stories of this decade and create the next edition. I have always loved the rhythm of our church calendar – a journey that takes us from the ordinary to the extraordinary each and every year. 

So here goes… Still (Extra) Ordinary, Ponderings of a Catholic High School Principal. I share these experiences not because they belong to me, but because I have discovered that most educators tell the same stories from different vantage points. My desert landscape is someone else’s city street, my school Mass might take place in a gym and another’s in a chapel, my electronic textbook is another’s torn paperback. Just as our God gives us the same sun which rises just after the alarm clock buzzes each morning, our collective words gather to become the gift of stories that we most certainly must unwrap and share with one another.

A Note to Anyone Reading This:

My first and still only book,(Extra) Ordinary, “Ponderings of a Catholic School Principal,began in Ordinary Time” – in August when the academic year begins. Since I am doing things a little differently this time by “drafting” my next book through a blog, my goal is to post an update each week with a short essay and a Principal’s Pondering. If I don’t start now (during Lent), I am afraid I will never begin! Eventually, it will be August again, and then I can rearrange everything into a true draft of a “real book” once I catch up next year.