This week on Monday Matters, Will Parker and Jen Schwanke take some time to talk about the challenges and emotional burdens faced everyday by school leaders. They highlight the importance of self-reflection practices and finding hope in trying times, and emphasize the importance of keeping challenges in perspective. This post was inspired by a blog post written by Will, you can read it below.  Every One of Them Is Worth It The first time I ever saw a student banging his head against a locker, I was completely perplexed. Even with eleven years of teaching, I had never seen a student engage in self-harm in such a public way. This was my first year as an assistant principal. The boy had been placed in the hallway for disciplinary reasons and, for reasons unknown to me at the time, was so distraught that his way of coping with being in trouble was to hit his head over and over again against a metal locker. Thankfully, my assistant principal partner at the time was well-trained in trauma and had a background working as a mental-health professional. She helped guide the student back to a place of calm and reason. It was an eye-opener for me. Moving out of the classroom and into an entire school setting would confront me with situations that were novel, different, and far more challenging than anything I had seen in my own classroom. The first time I met a student with schizophrenia, I was also perplexed. He began pulling his hair out while sitting in my office and admitted to me that he could see someone sitting in a chair nearby. After consulting with his parents and getting to know him more personally, he would open up about the times he was frightened–scared of others appearing in rooms and unsure whether they were real or not. Then there was the time a student became so upset after an argument at lunch that he slammed his head into the window frame of a door, shattering the glass and bleeding from his head. He lay on the office floor, growling and angry. When he was finally able to regain control, the residual effects of his meltdown were felt deeply by other students and staff. Even though my responsibility was to define an appropriate disciplinary response, that behavior still perplexes me to this day. There was also a student I didn’t work with directly, but one of my assistant-principal friends did. She learned his story over time: during his traumatic early years, his father abused him by locking him in a cage throughout the day when he didn’t want to tend to him. The emotional scars from those memories made it incredibly difficult for him to cope with the everyday dramas he encountered at school. Over time, he learned better self-control–but it came from a place of deep pain. As I think about these things today, I am sometimes amazed that educators can teach math, reading, and science–or coach sports–never knowing the underlying situations children face. Even students from well-adjusted families, or those who seem to have all the support they need, I have seen end up in facilities needing inpatient therapy because of self-harm or suicidal ideation. The statistics around trauma for young people–especially in my own state–are pretty compelling. Psychologists use a measurement called ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), and Oklahoma is among the states with high numbers of children who have experienced significant trauma. Because of that, they come to school desperately needing stability, consistency, and predictability. They need a place that holds them to high expectations while also providing high support. A good teacher knows this. But if a teacher has a classroom with multiple students who may melt down, over-respond, or lack the coping skills needed to regulate their emotions, it can be overwhelming. Even one student with those needs can make a classroom difficult–now imagine if half or more of your students came in with those kinds of backgrounds. This is why teachers, to me, are heroes. You can’t predict what kinds of students you will get. Some schools can try–those with placement applications or tuition-based enrollment can deny students whose needs they know they cannot meet. But public schools, in particular, take them all. That should be even more reason for every community to want their public schools fully resourced, well-trained, and staffed with teachers who are supported to meet children wherever they come from. The idea of creating a school where no bad things happen, where students never see others in crisis, where children are never exposed to difficulty–that is a fallacy. It is only possible for those with enough resources to insulate their children in carefully constructed environments. And even those environments are no longer sealed off. Phones and social media have proven that outside forces can invade anywhere–often faster than parents or schools have the capacity to respond–especially when algorithms backed by billions of dollars are designed to capture the attention of our children, and of us adults. So the question becomes: how do we create daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly routines that reintroduce the civility and consistency necessary for good learning, good outcomes, and healthy, flourishing lives? This is why the best schools I work with understand that children are complex, adults are complex, and environments and communities are complex. And three things must be present for schools to succeed. First: people. Schools must be full of people committed to high expectations and high support. Second: systems. Schools must commit to creating policies, procedures, protocols, and curricula that guide students toward better outcomes while providing support along the way. Third: belief. An unwavering commitment that all students are worth our investment–our time, our creativity, and our care. None of them is expendable. None is disposable. For those of us who are veterans in education, these have become familiar refrains we must revisit again and again. For those new to education, the fresh perspective and vision quickly reveal the truth: the work is as hard as it has always been–but with the right people, systems, and beliefs, it is still deeply worth doing. Because we also know the flip side of these stories. There is the orphaned student who sat across from me one day, clutching a book to her chest–so excited to be reading, asking permission to take it home for the night. There are the bright voices of students discovering their talents in the school choir, standing for the first time in front of friends and family, singing at a Christmas concert. There is the amazement and awe in the eyes of students doing a science experiment for the first time. Or the pride of a young girl standing beside her groomed heifer, showing it for Future Farmers of America. The list could go on and on: the exhilarating moments of watching children learn to read, listening to their curious questions, enjoying their laughter on the playground, watching them wrestle for the ball in athletics. No one goes into this profession without a love for kids. And over time, I think we all realize something else–everyone is still a kid at heart. So whether you are working with a student, a fellow teacher, or a community member, we are all someone’s student in one way or another. How we treat the people right in front of us–whether they come from backgrounds of deep trauma or from more stable settings–matters. They all deserve the same attention, the same intention we would have wanted to receive at any age. The same grace and compassion. The same forgiveness and correction. Humanity has been on this planet a long time, and the traumas of our present age are not always as new as we think. But they are still painful. Still profound. So let’s keep perspective. Let’s be people who show up with high expectations and high support. Let’s build systems that provide students with the stability, consistency, and outcomes we know they deserve. And let’s hold firmly to the belief that every one of them is worth it. Further Reading: If you would like to read some of Jen’s thoughts on managing struggles, check out her newsletter, linked here. As always, thank you for doing what matters! 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