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Introduction
“If, at some point in your life, you should come across anything better than justice, honesty, self-control, courage . . . it must be an extraordinary thing indeed” Marcus Aurelius (2003, p. 30).
Glenn
I showed up to the school board meeting already filled with a sense of dread. I knew it was going to be a tough night. Already a crowd was gathered to tear us apart.
I had tried to prepare the board members for what to expect. As the superintendent, I had been through this before, but for most of them, it was their first time being on the receiving end of the community’s wrath.
And why were they angry?
It was an unfortunate situation; the district had lost some state funding, through no fault of our own, and we were forced to let some beloved staff go. Many in the community were furious.
The meeting went just about as bad as expected. It felt like we were lined up for the firing squad, and there could be no firing back. The people demanded an answer—but our hands were tied. Everything we did say was misconstrued and misinterpreted.
“Don’t you have any empathy?” someone asked.
I breathed deeply and pictured a rock being pounded by the crashing waves. I felt my fellow school board members squirming in their discomfort, their temperatures rising under the onslaught. I would have to be the rock.
Stillness in a World of Chaos
The world around us is volatile; it changes constantly. Our schools are a microcosm of that chaos; they are touched by disorder, trauma, and turmoil on a daily basis. All of us have our stories—we’ve seen Machiavellian maneuverings amongst staff, kids suffering in poverty and abuse, unfair policies that hurt the most vulnerable, great intentions foiled by lack of funding or support, and a host of other problems.
Meanwhile, many of our colleagues are jumping ship—and who could blame them? A survey from NASSP (2022) reported that school leaders’ stress levels are so high that over half of them are planning to leave the profession in the next three years.
No matter how noble your intentions, it’s hard to continue when you feel constantly at the mercy of everything around you. Like a ship being battered by the waves, you wonder how you can ever recover your balance, let alone get where you’re trying to go.
Most of us respond reactively. We can’t help it. We’re a product of the people we learn from, and most of us haven’t had great mentoring. At best, we’ve figured out how to be leaders on our own. At worst, we’ve witnessed or been subject to political infighting and backstabbing that’s made us cynical and wary of each other.
Many of us don’t know how to trust our teams and delegate. Our own ego, reinforced by dozens of bad experiences, tells us that we are the only ones who can get a job done “right.” And when we pile up responsibilities on ourselves, imposter syndrome takes over: I’m a fraud; there’s no way I can do all of this on my own. And yet, our ego and fear of humiliation keep us stuck.
We all face challenges in our daily role as leaders in education. We want to meet those challenges with poise, confidence, groundedness, and flexibility. We want to take a stand for our students when we need to, respond to aggravations with kindness and forbearance whenever possible, recognize the good in the people around us, and know what the appropriate actions are for each circumstance. Most of all, we want to feel the sense of inner peace that comes with knowing we’ve done our best and the assurance that no matter what comes next, we have the inner tools needed to navigate these waters.
Thankfully, many leaders before us have faced the same challenges. Our goal in this book is to equip you with the mindset and timeless practices that have served leaders for centuries. We want to introduce you to an ancient philosophy that has provided leaders an incredible foundation of wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice—sustaining them with an unshakeable equanimity through every storm.
This ancient wisdom is found in Stoicism.
Why Stoicism?
When most of us hear the word “stoic,” we think of a person devoid of emotions, someone who represses their natural urges and builds a wall between themselves and the chaotic world. Actually, a Stoic is a person committed to the practice of managing and appropriately regulating their emotions, so that they might respond in the best way no matter what the situation calls for. This ancient school of philosophy was pursued in ancient Rome and developed over hundreds of years by a group of unlikely philosophers, including a shipwrecked merchant (Zeno), a crippled slave (Epictetus), and one of the greatest emperors who has ever lived (Marcus Aurelius).
