“Hey, why aren’t you guys in class?” the teacher shouted down the hall as he saw us come out of the bathroom.

“It’s ok, we’re seniors!” I replied as mouth muscled judgment aside.

My friend snickered, ducked around the corner, and flew down the stairs two at a time. I didn’t run. I figured the teacher would chuckle and shoo me off to class. But as he got closer, I realized I had stepped in it. He didn’t think I was clever. I knew most of the teachers in my large public high school of 2,000 students, but not this guy. He must have been new. I couldn’t rely on charm, or history, or connection to talk my way out of it. He took me down to the principal’s office and had me wait outside while he went in to talk with Mr. Essler. A few minutes later, he emerged with a self-satisfied smirk on his face and bid me into the room.

“John!” Mr. Essler exclaimed, “What the heck are you doing here?”

The teacher’s smug look drooped into constrained rage as he witnessed a greeting much warmer than he had expected.

“It’s ok Mr. So-and-So; I’ve got it from here,” Mr. Essler said as he stood and stepped out from behind his desk. He dismissed the teacher and closed the door behind him. “So, how are things looking for college? Is it Boulder you’re heading to?”

John Essler was my high school principal, and he lived around the corner from me. That made it convenient for us to TP his front tree on Halloween – we only had to sneak through one neighbor’s yard to get to my friend Phil’s back door and down to his basement undetected. And my dad was a member of Mr. Essler’s faculty. They had known each other for a long time and worked closely as my dad was the school’s union representative.

As a kid, I remember wanting to be a lot of things when I grew up, but I don’t think I ever imagined becoming Mr. Essler. He was a decent guy, so it was nothing against him. I wasn’t particularly rebellious as a teenager; this was as close as I got to being in trouble through four years of high school. I just never imagined myself setting foot in a high school after I got out of that place. I didn’t have a bad time there. School was fine. It just wasn’t for me.

I went on to college, and eventually I fell in love with school. But it was the ideas that hooked me. It was 20th-century Russian Literature and Deviance in U.S. Society that pulled me in. Then it was anthropology, Latin American history, Marxist revolutions, and the nation as an “imagined community” that lit my fire. When I finally found my way back to high school, I was a history teacher, full stop, and I didn’t really want to be anything else. So how did I end up as a high school principal? I ask myself that question pretty frequently.

It was a journey, for sure. But my work has come to mean a great deal to me. I find enjoyment, fulfillment, pride, and meaning as a school leader. I have learned to value more and more of the school experience, like the people I’ve come to know deeply, and the lessons buried deep within myself: the hidden curriculum.

This is a portfolio of an educator becoming. I have never stopped learning and growing, though my trajectory has shifted many times.