I have the unusual honour to run two schools, both of them quite unique. I’ve had that privilege for a dozen years now. While my title has changed, I’m the only principal in the district that has stayed in one location for this long. Partly because I haven’t wanted to move, partly because there aren’t many other principals raising their hands to say they want to run two schools, one of which has a program in every high school.

I’ve been an executive member of the BC online principal’s association since 2014, and in that community we recognize that we have far more in common with each other than we have with principals in our own districts. We literally do things completely different than our regular ‘brick and mortar’ (as opposed to online) colleagues. We have different rules and compliance, and we accept students to start new courses throughout the year, with every student on their own timelines.

My other school, Inquiry Hub, is a ‘regular school’ but it is tiny. We still have people in our district, 12 years in, that think we are an alternate school. We are not. And then we run the school like a speciality program, but we are a school, not a program. It’s a unique and odd duck of a school that works with self-directed students, with all the interesting passions and quirks they bring.

Now as I look ahead to retirement, I have the unusual task of thinking about succession. I only know one principal who would be interested in my position and she’s probably going to retire within a year of me, so she’s not a great candidate, (although she’d do an amazing job). Since I don’t know anyone else who would actively be shopping for a move into my position, and even if I did, I couldn’t guarantee that district leadership would agree with me, I’ve got to make sure that whoever comes in can easily get all their ducks in a row.

Part of this will be done for me because I’ve got two great teams of educators, and awesome secretaries, who care about the direction and success of the schools. However, this year I really need to do my part in ensuring the unique aspects of the two jobs have a scope and sequence that is tracked, and all the nuances of running these two schools are shared with the new principal.

It’s not easy to replace an odd duck… the new odd duck might be completely different. But hopefully I can make the transition as smooth as possible so that the incoming principal can enter the role quickly. I’d like to give them the tools and resources to take over with minimal disruption, and also with opportunities to put their leadership skills to work, rather than just managing things while on a massive learning curve.

I hope this new principal will fall in love with the role as much as I did. The challenging thing is that I also hope it’s their last career move, because I think it’s really hard to move back to the ‘regular’ system after being an odd duck.