Burn the Ladder
Careers in education were never supposed to be linear
Too Important to Practice
I think one of the most dangerous things that can happen in education is becoming too important to practice.
I mean really practice—covering lunch duty, walking a kid back from the edge of a meltdown, or just helping a first-year teacher survive sixth hour.
Lately, I’ve been asked to cover schools when principals or assistant principals are out. And I suck.
I don’t always know the procedures. I’m asking where things are. I’m accidentally standing in the wrong place during dismissal. I’m trying to help while simultaneously slowing everyone down.
At first, I felt embarrassed by that.
A district leader should be able to jump in seamlessly.
There’s that word again.
But the truth is, I had spent enough time away from the daily rhythm of buildings that I had lost some sharpness. Instead of hiding from that realization, I started paying attention to it. And I’ve increased my reps, significantly.
Years ago, someone gave me feedback that has followed me ever since. She said I demonstrated what Daniel Coyle calls “muscular humility.” Coyle uses that phrase to describe a leadership posture that looks for simple ways to serve the group and send the signal: we are all in this together. Muscular humility is the ability to say, “I can lead from here too and I am not above practicing.”
But many of us have adopted the mindset that we are just too important to practice.
The Lie of the Ladder
Teacher.
Instructional coach.
Assistant principal.
Principal.
District leader.
Superintendent.
Up.
Up.
Up.
Every move away from students is treated as advancement. Every move closer to students is treated as regression.
We ask teachers when they are going to “move up.” We describe central office roles as “next steps.” We treat returning to a school as if someone must have failed elsewhere. We build entire identities around titles, offices, salaries, and how far we have moved from the bell schedule.
The ladder does something dangerous to our imagination. It makes movement feel like failure unless the movement is upward.
But schools are not stable enough for that lie anymore. Roles shift. Budgets collapse. Superintendents leave. Grant funding dries up.
And still, somehow, we keep acting like permanence is the prize. But permanence can make us brittle.
When your identity only works in one role, one salary band, one version of importance, you do not become more secure. You become easier to threaten. And threatened people do not usually become more honest. They protect their title, their image, and the illusion that they still know what is happening. And that is exactly how people become disconnected without noticing it.
The ladder rewards distance and then calls it expertise.
The Out-of-Practice Problem
The farther people move from schools, the easier it becomes to confuse distance from the work with mastery of it.
You can become very smart about systems and very disconnected from the actual system. You can know the strategic plan and not know how fifth hour feels. You can know the theory of adult learning and forget what it feels like to give a direction to thirty-two seventh graders who have already decided you are not serious.
Schools don’t change through bullet points and theory. We have to practice.
And this is true for leadership, too. Leadership is not a title you earn and then permanently possess. It is a set of muscles. And muscles decay when they are not used.
That is why I have started sitting in hallways to work on projects instead of hiding in offices. And sometimes, yes, I am probably more distraction than service. But I am practicing close enough to notice. I am practicing being useful without needing to be impressive. And I am practicing not letting my title protect me from the work.
Education would be healthier if more leaders were willing to practice publicly again instead of protecting the illusion that they have mastered something they no longer regularly do.
Careers Are Jungle Gyms
Careers in education are not ladders. They are jungle gyms—messy, lateral, adaptive.
A ladder only lets you move one direction.
A jungle gym lets you move where the work requires you to move.
Sometimes that means stepping into a bigger role. Sometimes that means stepping closer to students. Sometimes that means leaving a role before it destroys you. Sometimes that means returning to direct practice because you need to remember what the building feels like.
It’s a circulation.
The broader workforce has language for this. Career development experts often contrast the traditional career ladder with a “career lattice,” where people grow through lateral moves, cross-functional experiences, reskilling, and varied pathways—not just vertical promotion.
Education needs its own version of that. Schools do not need more people trapped in roles they are afraid to leave. They need people who can move. They need people who can teach a lesson, coach a teacher, cover lunch duty, facilitate a meeting, talk to a parent, read data, write strategy, calm a child, calm an adult, and admit when they are rusty.
Movement creates empathy, exposes blind spots, and keeps your current position from hardening into your entire identity.
Leadership is not where you stand on the ladder. It is whether you are still useful when the ladder disappears.
The House Is on Fire
I keep thinking about schools like houses on fire. If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes in a school recently, you can understand how I came to this conclusion. There’s unstable funding, impossible expectations, kids carrying more than children should have to carry, and adults running on fumes while pretending this is sustainable.
When a house is on fire, you need different people in different places. You need people next to the house, pouring water on the flames. You need people running to the river to gather more buckets. You need people organizing the line. You need people checking on the people who collapsed. You need people yelling, “This way.” You need people noticing when the wind shifts.
But eventually, the people closest to the fire need water too and may need to rotate, breathe, and clear out the smoke to remember they are human.
And the people closest to the river need to remember what the fire feels like. The point of being farther from the flames is not comfort. It is perspective. It is designing better bucket systems that actually get water where it needs to go.
But perspective only matters if it stays connected to the heat.
Change Happens at 8:05
I am glad some parts of the system are crumbling.
I do hate the instability, the fear, and watching good people wonder whether the work they gave their lives to will give anything back.
But I am not sad to see some illusions collapse…the illusion that titles equal wisdom. The illusion that strategy equals change. The illusion that the people closest to the work are somehow the least qualified to understand it. The illusion that a central office memo can transform what a child experiences at 8:05 tomorrow morning.
We love making change so big that nobody can actually touch it.
We say literacy crisis, culture crisis…achievement gap. And then everyone freezes.
But change does not happen in the abstract. It happens during bellwork in Mr. Washington’s class at 8:05 tomorrow morning. It happens when the assistant principal knows the hallway well enough to prevent the pattern before it becomes a fight. It happens when the superintendent sits in the front office long enough to understand the difference between a policy and a Tuesday.
The moment is small. The work is not.
The Leaders We Actually Need
The future of education does not belong to the people who can protect their image the longest. It belongs to the people who can stay useful.
And useful leadership is not always glamorous. Sometimes it looks like covering a class and fumbling the MVP directions, or listening to office chatter to understand what people are carrying. It looks like admitting, “I don’t know this procedure. Teach me” even if you have “doctor” in your title.
As I considered the next move in my career, I started with a couple of core questions. 1) What problems do I want to solve? and 2) What I am uniquely positioned to do?
The research on principal leadership is annoyingly clear: school leadership closest to practice matters. Principals shape teacher retention, school climate, instruction, absenteeism, and student learning…which meant I could not keep pretending that moving away from the building was increasing my impact.
My Own Jungle Gym
So here is the part that makes this less theoretical. I mentioned that I had been increasing my reps. What I did not mention is that some of those reps started at the school where I will now serve as an assistant principal.
A friend of mine was covering there and called me over a couple of times to help. And because I was apparently in my “say yes to practice” era, I went.
At first, I thought I was just helping. Then the kids had the audacity to make me fall in love with them.
Fast forward: a different friend was offered the principal position. And when the opportunity emerged to join her, it felt less like a career move and more like the next honest step.
Several weeks ago, I committed to listening to the signals of the universe. Well, I am listening.
I am moving from a central office role into an assistant principal role and I have had to confront all the weird feelings that come with that. Because the ladder story is loud.
Is this backward?
What does this mean about your career?
What does this mean about your book?
What does this mean about your identity?
But I do not want a career that only works under perfect conditions. I do not want a leadership identity so fragile that it cannot survive movement. I do not want to become someone who writes about practice but avoids the discomfort of doing it. No one is too important to practice.
Burn the ladder. 🪜
Build the jungle gym. 🛝
Mission, not position. ✌️
Love the line about how permanence can make you brittle. I think that's so true, and it's such a great practice to step into another role for a day!