The Knot

In which I leave school, and retire this Substack

It’s been 44 years since I first stepped into a public school classroom, Thermos and crayons on my back; 20 years since I first began teaching. Seven years since I assumed the keys to a principal’s office here in Washington, DC; and four years, this very month, since a crisp October morning when I realized that, after a near half century ensconced in the peculiar institution of school, it was time for me to get out.

It happened in a flash, this realization: I was commuting by bicycle to my principal’s job in Washington DC, pants leg tucked into my sock, laptop jammed in my pannier, mind racing through a bottomless list of to-dos, when I felt a knot in my chest.

I pulled my bike to a stop. I was in my mid-40’s, cancer was a thing, fearing the worst I lifted my hand to my chest, performed some amateur palpations. I found nothing.

But the knot was there, undeniable. It felt like the fist of a baby, clenched tightly, embedded just under the skin at the base of my ribs.

Believe what you want about bodily sensations, but standing there on that DC street, I understood what that knot was about. My body was sending me a message, in the only language it knew: “Get out, Seth,” quoth the knot. “Get out of school before it kills you dead.”

Dramatic, I know. But this was 2021, a dramatic time in human history–we were just clawing out of the global pandemic, the hospital beds emptying, the economy creaking back into gear. In schools everywhere, mine included, the rallying cry was “back to normal,” which you’d think would inspire hope in a long-time educator like me.

But it did not. In fact, I was every day more and more filled with dread. I did not want schools to continue droning into dark bedrooms via Zoom, but getting them “back to normal” felt just as bad.

Since high school I’d been repulsed by the “normal” of school, experienced by so many of my own friends as little more than a series of exercises in the absurd and artificial, a jumble of arbitrary tasks unattuned to the natural rhythms and pulses of human learning. I dedicated my life to education intending to shake up that normal, and make way for new, more reasonable approaches to learning. Here and there, as a teacher and principal, I made headway, as have thousands of other educators. But it was always a slog–a ship as enormous as public education changes course slowly, when it turns at all.

And then along came the pandemic. Tragic and terrible in many other areas of life, when it came to education, the pandemic actually presented an opportunity. Perhaps, I felt, it would accomplish what so many of us education reformers could not. As teachers felt how intrinsically unengaging their conventional lessons could be, as parents watched their children’s heads nod in sleep over their screens, society would finally be stirred into action. Once the pandemic subsided, we would come together to declare that at long last, school had to change, had to step off its 19th century pedestal and somehow put learning, real learning, into the hands of children and families and communities.

But now the pandemic had ended, and no such declaration had been sounded. Exactly the opposite: for the rest of this year, and perhaps for years to come, it was clear that my job was going to be focused squarely on hammering schools back into that absurd “normal” I’d so longed to change.

Standing on that DC street, the knot pulsing in my chest, I saw it plain: The misalignment between intention and action was taking its toll on my spirit, my soul, my very body. If this job didn’t kill me outright, it would deliver me into a premature and bitter old age.

Since high school I’d been repulsed by the “normal” of school, experienced by so many of my own friends as little more than a series of exercises in the absurd and artificial, a jumble of arbitrary tasks unattuned to the natural rhythms and pulses of human learning.

I got back on my bike, finished my commute, and that very week informed the Head of School I was going to leave my principalship at the end of the academic year. Within days the knot left my body, its mission complete.

It has not come back.

It has now been over three years since I turned in the keys to that principal’s office. It’s been a year and half since I started writing this Unprincipalled substack, which–with your generous readership and comments, even financial support–has helped me make meaning of this half lifetime I spent embedded in schools, and figure out what I’m going to do next.

My original dreams of creating spaces of learning more attuned to childhood have not died, but they don’t burn as hot as when I was twenty. That’s not a bad thing: the flame now feels more steady. More durable. I’m casting about, carefully, for a next project with education and children. I’m certain, as much as one can be, that such a project will take place outside of school.

The Substack has also helped me in another way. Through it, I have leaned into my passion for writing, not as a hobbyist, but with the discipline and seriousness of an aspiring pro. I’ve begun staking claim in new territories, writing on topics beyond the pale of education. In the good morning hours I work with diligence on a novel. A friend and I are finishing a screenplay. And I’ve just launched a new Substack, 50 Books, which explores what I’m learning by reading, in my 50th year, 50 books that changed the lives of family members and friends.

The Unprincipalled substack has served its purpose: You’ve just read the final post. My agent and I have pitched a book version of these anecdotes to a few publishing houses—if any of them take up the project, one thing’s for sure: The paperback version of Unprincipalled will need several pages for the acknowledgements, because you’re all going to be in them.

Special thanks to Todd Lopez, for giving me the idea to share stories that show what really happens in school; and to Aaron Mann, who cheerfully shared insights and edits on every draft.