A clear-eyed word for school leaders still in the game — and those carrying their plate into a new building
There is a moment in every school leader’s year — usually somewhere past the second board meeting and before the winter break that never quite breaks — when somebody asks how you’re doing, and you answer without thinking:
“Man. My plate is full.”
You say it the way we say we’re blessed. Automatically. Reflexively. Usually while reaching for something else to add to it.
I want to sit with that sentence, because I’ve said it too — through community tension that turned cafeteria forums into courtrooms, through political windmills that changed direction every news cycle, through the daily arithmetic of coverage, buses, budgets, and the email that lands at 9:47 p.m. flagged urgent. The year takes its toll. That part is true, and I will not insult you by pretending otherwise. But here is the question I’ve had to ask myself, with clear eyes and no small amount of humility:
Is my plate actually full — or is it just unexamined?
The buffet nobody plated
Here’s the thing about a full plate. When you sit down at a dinner someone prepared for you — plated with intention — everything on that plate belongs there. It was chosen. Composed. Portioned for the person it was set before.
That is not how our plates got made. Our plates got made at a buffet. In the dark. While we were walking. A committee here, a crisis there, a “can you just” from central office, an inherited initiative from three superintendents ago that nobody remembers starting and everybody’s afraid to stop. Some of it we chose. Most of it accumulated. And somewhere along the way, we stopped auditing the plate and started identifying with it — as if the weight were the work. As if a full plate were proof of a faithful leader.
There was a period in my life when I wanted the “plate”. I wanted the responsibility of leading, the gift of challenge, and the blessing of connecting with a community of learners. When they plate was handed to me, I did not realize the items that would be placed on it and the baggage each piece added. Soon, no one wanted to see, hear, and understand the weight of that plate. Some leaders might empathize with this…have you ever held your “plate” and were judged for what was placed on it by those who do not hold your best interest or the interest of our most vulnerable populations? Instantly, it’s your fault. Doubt sets in. Clouds form. Imposter.
For the leader carrying a plate into a new building
For those of you in transition. Some of you chose it — a new district, a bigger seat, a fresh start. Some of you didn’t. The board reorganized. The politics shifted. The windmill turned and you were standing in its path. You packed the office into a copy-paper box and you’re wondering what it says about you.
Hear this first: a moved plate is not a broken one.
Transition gives you something almost nothing else in this profession gives you: an empty plate and a running start. Nobody in the new building knows which sides you used to volunteer for. Nobody expects your old garnish. The habits that accumulated over years in your last seat are not in the moving box unless you pack them.
So before you walk into the new building — or back into the old one after the season that humbled you — plate with intention this time. Entrée first. Sides by choice, not by silence. No garnish you wouldn’t defend out loud. And other people’s plates back in their hands, with your belief in them stacked on top.
Grieve what you need to grieve. Then set the plate down, look at it in the light, and build it like somebody who finally knows the difference between a full plate and a faithful one.
The benediction
You want to stay in the game? Then stop measuring your leadership by the weight of the plate and start measuring it by the nourishment of the table. Because that was always the point. Not how much you could carry.
How well your people ate.
Pull up a chair. We’ve got work to do — and for the first time in a long time, it might actually fit on the plate.
Dr. Darryl S. Diggs, Jr. is the author of The Fire Within: When Purpose Meets Bureaucracy and the voice behind Table Sessions at diggsatthetable.com.