The best part of my work week was spending 40 minutes with a principal in my church’s school district. Her school has no church partners and I was there to see if we could be a potential partner for them. She’s been principal for 11 years and is a solid leader.

She told me a ton about her school. They have adopted 1-to-1 technology where every student gets a laptop, chromebook or iPad. She told me about older teachers embracing the training needed to use the new technology in the room. She spoke at length about self-care for teachers as well as the ethos that teachers ought themselves be continual learners. She does a great deal of caring for teachers so they can care for their students. The school is also embracing project-based learning where outside experts come it to teach their expertise in a multi-disciplinary setting. Somehow that included Dutch Brothers coming into mix drinks. They are teaching meditation to students so students can not only learn information, but they can know themselves well (Socrates sheds a happy-tear).

I was in awe of the many hats one person wears. And I am continually floored with the immense responsibility we as a society are placing on schools. The whole Maslow thing makes sense. But the logistical task it presents is overwhelming.

Our time was full but ended abruptly: “Riley’s outside!” Riley looked to be about 6 years old. She was outside without a coat waving a flag used by the crossing guard. The Principal joined 2 other staffers who were trying to corral this cheerfully unruly child. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, they had her somewhat constrained to a corner of the building away from traffic. They were all using great amounts of patience in deescalating the matter.

The Principal also spoke at length about learning to understand the challenges facing children and their parents. Her school is relatively low in the free and reduced lunch, but she thinks there are whole neighborhoods where the parents just don’t return the form. She sees them hungry and feeds them. I asked her about ‘Breakfast-after-the-Bell‘ legislation that recently passed in Washington state. She was very matter-of-fact that she’d been doing that for years. She spoke about teachers frustrated with out-of-control, even violent kids. She would point out to such teachers kids who were like that but had improved dramatically. She and her staff work tirelessly to understand the challenges and provide solutions so that kids can get back to learning. They successfully navigate numerous obstacles and kids with challenging lives actually learn and thrive at this school. This school’s leaders have immense belief in people: both themselves as educators and the kids as learners.

The default setting for gifted educators like this principal is patience, understanding and optimism. Expecting them to be ready at a split second to shoot an intruder armed with semi-automatic weaponry and body armor is to not understand the gifts of educators. It is to demand they put down their best instincts and most gifted attributes to solve a problem the rest of society is not willing to even talk about. By the time this society-wide problem reaches that teacher’s door, so many fail-safes have either been removed or failed altogether. It is gross negligence to expect such a grisly task, especially when no other fail-safes are even considered, when even trying to learn about a problem isn’t allowed or embraced. Placing the solution in the hands of teachers is to a) not understand teachers and b) to not understand the problem.