intoxicating

 So I am walking through the school halls at noon.  The sun is streaming in on the scrubbed floors.  The students are all in the lunch room and there is a happy buzz coming from that direction.  As I round the corner to the main hall,  I see a 6th grade student round the corner running at top speed in my direction.  All lean and graceful.  And then he screeches to a halt.  I look behind me to see what made him stop.  Then realize it was me.  That kids aren't supposed to run in the halls.  And I am the enforcer of that.  I see fear in his eyes and don't like that that is his reaction to me. I greet him by name and walk past him.  Today.

I had no idea how much I would be disciplining in this job.
I will get called to speak to a whole class, or a group of girls, or two guys tussling on the field, or a row of wiggling 1st graders after assembly.  Speeches, concerns, expectations, raised eyebrows.  This is so not me.  I don't like being strict, or serious, or intimidating.  I don't like that when asked to speak to a student their first response is to check their skirt length or ask "what did I do wrong?" I don't like this part of principaling.

I had no idea how much I would be disciplining in this job.  
And yet I do it, day after day.  I try to make it reasonable and redemptive, building and not shaming.  But it is still hard and uncomfortable and sometimes tear inducing.  And afterwards I often flop in my principal chair and say to myself "How on earth is this your job Erin?"

I said this out loud one day to my mom and she reframed it for me.  She said "Wouldn't you rather it be you?  It could be someone angry and quick to judgement.  You love these kids and you are as gentle as you can be with them."  And that helped.  Now I try to say to myself "Erin, I'm so glad you get to meet with them right now and not some mean person with an eye for hell fire and retribution." 

It takes a lot of talking to myself to get through a day.

The dictionary defines discipline this way:  Training expected to produce a specific character or   pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement:

We are all "in training" aren't we?  I hope for all of us the truth of this Simone Weil quote becomes indelibly clear.

 "Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring; Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating."

I also hope you don't run in the halls.