God brings some people into our lives for a season; He brought this woman into my life for several reasons, but I will share just one here publicly. She is my most immediate former principal, and even though I retired, I still cried yesterday when we as a faculty told her goodbye as well as on my way home.....and I cry now as I type this. I cried because I could have returned to visit her, but she is leaving the area. As I told her yesterday, words can not express what she has meant to me. In the last three years, she brought me out of the desert and restored everything in my teaching life that had been ripped away: my dignity, my worth, my value, my autonomy....literally everything.
In my 29 years, I have worked for 8 principals. As my bff would say, "Most were not worth two dead flies." In fact, only two of the 8 were what principals should be: Roger Hudson (an interim at Ruffin High) and Nicole Thomas Holloman. When Ms. Holloman came to my school, she had to straighten out one helluva mess....That is the best, most succinct way to express it. AND, this is telling; the then-new Superintendent changed the leadership of my school before any other. There is a MAJOR problem when year after year, the average number of teachers who leave a 6-8 school is 18 or so. Ms. Holloman had to rebuild the culture in the school from one that was oppressive, disheartening, and tyrannical, ( and I am being kind). She led by giving teachers autonomy (as opposed to micromanaging every move out of distrust) and treating them with the respect they deserve to make decisions for what they knew to be best. A dark cloud lifted when God put her there. That's the best way to sum it up. And.....make no mistake......God put her there. I know that beyond any doubt.
I will always be grateful for what she has done for me in these last three years. May God give her grace, wisdom, and protection in her coming assignment.
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