All Hearts On Deck
— David Henderson
Having been the principal of this small, rural high school in Montana for two years and having come from the teaching/coaching ranks of the school, I was finally beginning to feel like I had some clue how to be in a position that demanded so much on so many levels.
Our community was like so many other Western towns that had ridden the economic waves of resource extraction. The local mine had closed and logging was on the wane, unemployment was high, and poverty was on the rise fostering despair on a fairly wide scale. Our school was changing as well reflecting this darkening community context. Kids were hungry and depressed; they leaned into numbing their pain with all the intensity that their parents were modeling.
That morning James sat in “the chair” next to my desk. I knew him well – had him in class – had dealt with him too many times in my office for “discipline referrals.” And here he was again, sent by a teacher who thought James was lazy and disrespectful, that he refused to do his homework to personally defy him. I had tried to get this teacher to meet James halfway while also asking James to cross part of the divide between them. No such luck.
I knew today had been a bad day for James from the get-go. I’d heard that James and his dad had an altercation that morning. James was on edge, he was pissed, his teacher had crossed his path at the wrong time. So, here he sat.
At first he just stared out the windows of my office. I began to talk to him slowly, quietly, trying to understand his life which was so different from what I’d known growing up and yet had come to understand somewhat from having taught and coached kids like him in this little town.
I was reminded of something a master teacher had once said to me, “David, you know when these troubled kids act out in your class that they are asking you a question? You know this don’t you? You know they are simply saying, ‘You gonna love me now? Or are you gonna betray me too?’”
I stumbled a bit saying how much I cared for him – how many of the teachers cared for him – even this teacher did. He nodded and grunted, “Oh yeah, Mr. Henderson, he cares.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and held his face in his hands; his hair flopped forward over his hands. Then something shocking happened; he started to cry. James was a tough, tough kid. He had played football for me as a freshman and quite literally terrified the other kids with the reckless ferocity he brought to tackling. He seemed to know pain as a friend he’d gone hunting with. It was a level of toughness I’d never known.
I got up and walked over to my door and quietly closed it. When I sat back down, he lifted his head from his calloused, dirty hands and looked at me. He sputtered, “Mr. Henderson, you know my dad – what the hell chance do I fucking have?”
Now, when someone in James’ circumstances asks you a question like that, you better damn well hear him and stifle every platitude or “best practice” you learned in your school leadership courses. When a James pulls you into his nightmare, your heart better be on deck.
He looked at me for a moment and knew all too well, I didn’t have a damn thing to say. Embarrassed for me, he looked back down at the floor. I looked out the windows into the trees hoping maybe something, some God, might shape the trees into an answer. There was none.
Then I thought of my own dad and the struggles we’d known, the pain we’d visited on each other, and the holding I was doing now with him as he approached death. Finally after a few moments, I said to James from my own broken heart, “James, I believe there is a way you can accept the truth of your dad’s story, honor it, love it and him, and not have that be your story. Somehow, I believe you have the kind of heart that can hold that complex reality – that you can love your dad and his broken heart and yet not be your dad. All the while knowing you have your own broken heart too. I believe this because I have seen the capacity of your heart too many times not to believe it.”
We sat there in silence for a bit. After a while, he looked up, smiled a very small, crooked smile, and stood up, “Thanks, Mr. Henderson.”
“No. Thank you, James. I needed this and thank you for your question. You helped me love my dad better today. James, you’re a good man; hope your day goes better.”
He turned and left; he made it through high school. It was never easy and I don’t know for sure where he is today. But that day I began to think that what we ought to be doing in school is helping kids embrace their current stories wholeheartedly while all the while helping them find their own new story.
Dr. David Henderson currently teaches Educational Leadership at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT, and facilitates Courage to Teach, Courage to Lead and Circles of Trust retreats. He has been involved in pre-K-12 education for over 20 years. He continues to study and research the intersection of the inner life of leaders with their practice of leadership grounded in a heart striving for integrity and authenticity.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Send your story for the Principal’s Reflections or Teacher’s Reflections blog posts to Megan Scribner at teachingwithheartfirepoetry@gmail.com.
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