I want you to come with me, into a classroom. Not as a consultant, not as a reformer. As a witness.
Find a quiet posture. Close your eyes, if that feels right for you.
And picture a teacher’s desk. It’s not neat. There’s a stack of papers waiting to be graded, a half-empty mug of coffee, a drawing from a student taped to the corner of a monitor.
Now, stand behind that desk. Feel the worn surface beneath your hands. Look out.
You see thirty faces looking back at you. Thirty different worlds in one room. In the front row, a child who didn’t have breakfast. In the back, a student whose parents are fighting, their silent worry a wall around them. Near the window, a brilliant mind bored to tears, and beside them, another who is trying desperately to keep up, the letters and numbers swimming before their eyes.
Feel the clock on the wall ticking. Each minute is precious. You have a lesson plan you spent hours on, but today, it isn't landing. The energy is off. A disruption bubbles up in one corner, a quiet sadness emanates from another. You are not just a teacher; you are a counselor, a motivator, a referee, a cheerleader.
You have standards to meet, tests to prepare for. You have emails from parents, demands from the administration, and the constant, nagging feeling that you are not doing enough. That you are failing someone.
Breathe in the scent of chalk dust and dry-erase markers. Feel the weight of those thirty lives, the immense responsibility of shaping their future, one hour at a time. This is not a line item in a budget. This is the front line. This is the ground where policy meets reality.
Just stay here for a moment. Feel the exhaustion, the passion, the quiet hope that today, you might just make a difference for one of them.
The Principal's Office
Now, let the image of the classroom dissolve.
Walk down the hallway. The bell rings, a sudden flood of noise and energy. You pass the busy lockers, the hurried conversations. You arrive at a door that says: Principal.
Step inside. The air is different here. Quieter, but no less heavy.
Stand behind this desk. Look at the calendar on the wall. It is a mosaic of overlapping meetings. Budget committee. A parent conference. Teacher evaluations. A disciplinary hearing. A call with the superintendent's office about district-wide mandates.
Feel the phone buzz. It’s a bus driver—there’s been an incident. A teacher emails—the Wi-Fi is down in their wing, derailing their entire lesson. A notification pops up—another new state policy you need to implement, with no new funding to support it.
You are the fulcrum. The point on which every pressure pivots. You hold the well-being of your staff, the safety of your students, the demands of the district, and the expectations of the community. You are called to be an instructional leader, but you spend most of your day putting out fires.
You want to innovate, to create a culture of trust and inspiration. But you are caught in a web of constraints—financial, political, logistical. You have to advocate for your best teachers, support those who are struggling, and make impossible choices about which programs to cut and which to save.
You are responsible for everything, but you don't control all the pieces.
Breathe into this space. Feel the immense weight of that responsibility. The loneliness of it. The constant balancing act between what is ideal and what is possible. This isn't bureaucracy. This is a person trying to hold it all together.
The View From Here
Now, gently, let that office fade.
Come back to your own space. To your own body, in your own chair. Feel the solid ground beneath your feet.
Take a breath.
You have stood at two other desks. You have felt the weight of two other worlds. The teacher in the classroom, the principal in the office—they are not obstacles to your work. They *are* your work. They are the individuals you seek to serve.
Your plans, your strategies, your solutions—they are meaningless until they can land on that teacher's cluttered desk and make their day more possible. Until they can ease the burden on that principal’s calendar and create more space for them to lead.
The goal was never just to change the system. It was to serve the people within it.
So, what changes now? As you move forward, carry this simple question with you:
Whose shoes must I stand in next?