It's family time

After two years at back in the States, for a mix of family and professional reasons, I am ending my tenure at Sacred Heart School.  The move back to the Rogue Valley was the right one, and well timed with extended family (they needed us).  And I have been honored to lead the school, and we have made positive progress on a number of fronts at a challenging time for the organization.  However, it is time to make another change.  I am looking forward to taking a quiet year, professionally, a long promised and anticipated sabbatical, albeit a self financed one.

Since early in my career, I have been saying, I'm not going to wait for my eventual retirement, but take a year here and there to focus on family and leisure and hobbies and growth and learning and fun and my relationship with God and travel and adventure and all those things we wait for until "someday."  My last attempt was in 2003, while I was completing my masters.  I lasted five months before I had fallen back into full time employment.  This time, I am completing my doctorate.  So some of that learning time will be diving deep into my dissertation, and really being able to focus on it.  I may sub a bit, or teach music lessons, or even find a part-time teaching or admin post, but I am going to resist falling into a full time gig, until the next academic year, when I will be on the market for school directorship or superintendent position.

In the meantime, I am going to try to get to know my wife and sons again--to give them each the kind of sustained and focused attention they deserve.  At the same time, I will attend to my mother, currently in nursing facility on hospice, with sustained and quality time, and to my mother in law, who is suffering from a pretty severe dementia, adjusting (poorly at present) to the loss of her husband and her recent move to an assisted living facility.  It's a wonderful, truly sumptuous setting, with a caring staff, but she keeps calling and wanting to be picked up from "this hotel."  As a family, we are reeling from the illness and loss of my wife's father, and the weight of responsibility managing the trust and the estate, and the care and best interest of my mother in law, and on a separate caption, my mother.  Add our own financial lives, and that starts to sound like a full time, though unpaid, accounting job on its own.  I am looking forward to having the time and attention for these things, and more importantly for these people:  my own family.

I'm worried about reentering the job market after a year of, well, I can call it what I like but it is unemployment.  I'm worried about making ends meet as we dip into our savings to meet living expenses for the next year.  I'm worried about health care.  I'm worried about the impact this will have on my eventual retirement, notwithstanding the early career promise I made myself.

Despite that worry, I know in my heart that this is the right move for my family.  We came back to the states to care for our parents, and it is time to get serious about that.  I have had my nose to the grindstone working 60 hour weeks for the last eleven years, and shouldering the responsibility of being "the principal," that does not go away on weekends or vacations.  I'll be honest, I've enjoyed it, and I've accomplished much good for the institutions I have served.  But, for at least a little while, I'm ready for a break!  This year is going to be a coarse-grained way of achieving work-life balance.  I've approached my career as service to others.  This year, I'm going to serve my own family, and yes, my own heart, soul, and self as well.  It's time for that.

Wish me luck!

A New Year

My last post, months ago, acknowledged technological complexity. Like so many others (I read about it on my Facebook, Flipbook, SmartNews feed, Yahoo News and so forth), one of my New Year's Resolutions is to simplify and declutter.  I actually cleaned out my desk drawers yesterday, for example, even though I don't have time for that sort of thing right now.  It feels good to have clean drawers.  Hmm.  Didn't the Rain Man say something to that effect once?

I'm drawn to the tiny house movement, at least in spirit and concept.  I'm all too aware of the Pareto 80/20 principle, and would love to pare down to the 20%.  Materially, and digitally.  Socially.  Spiritually, even.  The catch is, even if you need something only occasionally--you still need it on those occasions.  And in the meantime, you must store it, carry it, and feel its weight and presence in your life.

I'm also looking to keep a positive focus, and to be and stay energized.  I have some strategies:  prayer, journaling, exercise, and simple force of will.  I do love new beginnings.

To all: a blessed and prosperous and successful and peaceful and productive new year.  Let's make it so.

Complexity.

I'm not even sure I understand what is going on anymore.  I have multiple Google Accounts, multiple identities in Chrome,  email accounts with gmail, yahoo, and at work (which runs through exchange), iPads, an iPhone (it's a 4; it's in mint condition, it has limited functionality in today's online environment, and I'm told it's worth $16 as a trade in).

I've blogged in a separate space, a year ago now, for a technology class, where I indicated we had better "ride the wave," or crash against the rocks, with mobile computing.  I stand by that.  I'm excited to be leading a school that is eager to move ahead, and implementing a 1:1 mobile computing initiative, a new student information system and community communication solution that is cloud-based, and a spirit of "let's move ahead and learn together."

A far cry from the "locked down" environment of my previous position.  A little scary, though, and a little confusing.  Today, I am waxing nostalgic for my paper Day-Timer.  At least I knew which "me" I was.

Nonetheless:  onward.

It's good to be home!

Question:  what's more important money or happiness?  Over the summer, I traded about $25,000 a year of income (and gave up a benefits package worth more than that) for a "better fit" job.  It's still a high responsibility, high-stress, long-hours job, but one aligned better with my biases, beliefs, and strengths.  We are certainly making some lifestyle adjustments to compensate.  (My timing is not that great on this--a son starting college, and me still in the middle of a doctoral program--with big tuition bills every few months).

Well, I remain above the threshold described by Kahneman and Deaton (2010), at which positive impact on emotional well-being ceases to accrue with income increase.  While more money might increase my subjective self-rating of life satisfaction, according to that study at least, it won't make me any happier.

I'll tell you what:  having autonomy in leadership (e.g., the license--indeed the expectation--to employ my own good judgment in decisions that impact my organization), enjoying the expressed appreciation of my publics--my bosses, my staff, parents and students in my school, feeling a part of a worthy and worthwhile mission, and feeling genuinely and positively impactful is worth trading some net pay for, in my book.

So is being closer to extended family.  As only children, my wife and I are enjoying being 5300 miles closer to our parents these days.  As parents ourselves, we are enjoying being in the same country, and same state, as our college freshman.  That was part of them if trade as well.

There were some, in my prior work organization, many, in fact, who stayed on, for the wrong reasons.  They called the sum compensation package the "golden handcuffs."  I do understand what they meant.  While I wish all my former colleagues (those who feel shackled and those who are loving every minute, and all those in between) the very best in their endeavors, I am glad to have taken the leap of faith I did, and escaped wearing those handcuffs.  I am glad I was there, when I was, and I am glad I left when it was time for me to leave.

In my work, in my faith life, and in my physical location, I have come home.  And it is good to be home.

Yeah, and here is an APA citation of the study I referenced, a symptom of dissertation-related compulsion.  I know.  You don't have to do that in a blog.

Khaneman, D., & Deaton, A.  (2010).  High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well being.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (107)38, 16489-16493.

I told you so

I hope the title doesn't sound too smug, or self satisfied, or sanctimonious.  But, in my previous post, I described a leap of faith. I said, "It will work out, I know it will."  Well, it has worked out.  I am so pleased and excited about the way in which it has indeed worked out.  Here are my two recent Facebook announcements on the subject:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10202870558059280&substory_index=0&id=1061889405

Having just handed my son his diploma (how many dads get to do that!); having maintained a 100% graduation rate, and positive achievement trends; having ushered in some exciting 21st century teaching and learning innovations during my four-year tenure; having bid a fond farewell to students and teachers for the summer; having announced my erstwhile assistant principal as returning to take over leadership; and having just received my travel orders; it is time for me to say goodbye to Bitburg High School.  Though, as we are fond of saying, "I'll always be a Baron."

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10202870558059280&substory_index=1&id=1061889405

Goodbyes are bittersweet, but the bright side is that they do make way for exciting new "hellos!"  Or, "hello agains."  With our parents aging, with Jeshua starting college at Oregon State, and (having lived, worked, travelled and played on four continents) with our wanderlust well sated, we are so happy to be returning home to The Rogue Valley in Oregon.

I am pleased, proud, and excited to begin service as principal at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Medford, officially on August 1, but already working towards a smooth and successful in-transition.  I am impressed by the school's high quality staff, strong commitment to excellence, and embodiment of Catholic values--it feels like such a good fit! 

My conversations with the parish and the school, as well as conversations with my mother, and conversations with my in-laws, and comments and "likes" and support of friends and colleagues...in fact just about every metric, and every indicator, reinforces the "rightness" of this decision, and this move, for me, and for our immediate as well as extended family, at this time.  

The Voice that began as a whisper ("make a change") grew louder and louder--I am so glad I listened.

And now, onward.

Another leap of faith

I quit my job.  While successful, while well-respected by my supervisor and my organization, while very well compensated, while privileged to operate in a very well-resourced environment, and to live in a hub for travel and exploration in the middle of Europe for the last several years, I have nonetheless turned in my resignation effective at the end of this school year.  While in the middle of a targeted job search, I don't as of now have another job lined up.  In other words, for now, unless something changes, I am effectively unemployed in these tumultuous times and in this challenging economy, come August.

My colleagues have described my action and choice as "gutsy," "bold," "brave," and "crazy."  Sometimes that last was preceded with an unprintable adjective.

I think of it as a leap of faith.  We (my family and I) made it after much reflection, discussion and prayer.  Here's the thing:  discerning and doing what is "right" after analyzing the sum total of input data, seems to always work out for the best.  For this choice, this year, the pull home to Oregon, this spring, just ended up out-balancing all the other pieces of the puzzle.  My wife and I are both only children, and our parents in Oregon deserve and increasingly need our proximity, attention, and care.  My son has chosen Oregon Statue University for his next step, as he graduates from our DoDDS high school this June, and being closer to him, as well as qualifying for resident tuition, has its appeal.  I am at the dissertation stage of my doctorate, and easier access to US schools for research will be helpful.  Emotionally, with thirteen years of our married life spent abroad, my wife and I are again ready for some time "at home."  Professionally, I am ready to make a change to a higher level of leadership, ideally to my constitution in a somewhat smaller educational institution than is DoDEA, and while the international schools hold appeal, the Pacific Northwest calls as a best case scenario.

Leaving a "perfectly good" home/school/employment situation without clear "next step" prospects is par for the course in the international school realm where Arlee and I spent our early careers.  When "moving on" feels right, announcing that, and only then beginning a search for the future (e.g., signing up for an international schools job fair) is the norm.  That is not the norm elsewhere, and it is not the norm here.  Thing is, our background has taught us to trust that leap of faith.  When it's time, it's time.  Things work out as they are meant to.  All will be well.  "Sometimes you have to close one door to open another..."  We have lived it numerous times.  (Hong Kong, to Manila, to Saudi Arabia, to Oregon--each move, in our wonderful global journey, a leap of faith).

Call me gutsy, or call me crazy.  I will grant that the time of uncertainty ("Where will we live, in August?") is difficult.  But, we hold to the certainty, in faith, that "all will be well."  Either, the "right fit" job will come to fruition (for me, and/or for my wife), or, perhaps I will take a year or so to focus on my doctoral studies and dissertation in-depth, maybe do some consulting and ad-hoc work, and re-enter the market later with my Ed.D in hand.

It will work out.  I know it will.

Character

I want to be cautious about moving from the process, here, of creating content, to that of simply highlighting it (sharing and re-posting seems like more of a Facebook kind of thing, not that I do much of it there, anyway.

If I link, or embed, articles or videos or other content here, I hope to at least synthesize, analyze, or evaluate, adding value to and not just bandwidth, to the virtual world.  Just like I strive to do more than take up space, in the physical world.

I don't have much to add, right now, to this piece, and I am posting it here mostly so I can find it back easily next time I want to show it to students or teachers.  The idea that character is vital, is important, is central, to our meaningful existence as humans, well, that resonates with me.  I like the idea that there is a periodic table of character strengths, and will be digging deeper into that idea--possibly even for some tie-in to my dissertation (the topic of which remains disconcertingly fluid right now).

I will say this by way of analysis:  this piece by Tiffany Schlain and the Moxie Institute is worth the eight minutes it takes to watch.  Mobile devices without Flash, click the link here.