Do what you love — in the service of people who love what you do — with the ones you love.
When I decided to go into school administration, I knew it would give me the opportunity to work with more students and support them in ways I couldn’t as a classroom teacher. But I also knew it would come with a cost — time away from my wife, Jennifer, and our children. So I made a promise to myself: if I was going to be fully committed to this work, I also had to be fully committed to my family. That was easier to say than to do. One non-negotiable I set early on was coaching my kids in soccer. Coaching brought us closer — but the real magic happened during the car rides to and from practice. That’s where we’d talk about school, friends, life... and belt out our crazy songs. It started with my oldest, Jamison, then Jordan, then Jill, and finally Jacob. Wanting to coach all of them despite my increasingly chaotic schedule, I came up with a system: I’d rent a full field, schedule practices two nights a week, and coach two or three teams at once, with help from some amazing parent assis...