Before Writing the Next Chapter

Every new school feels like a new beginning. As new leaders, we often arrive with the feeling that we are opening a blank page. In reality, the community has already been writing its story long before we arrived. We are not the authors of the first chapter. We are invited to write the next one. Before we do, we need to spend time reading the story, discovering what gives it meaning, and recognizing the people who have shaped it.

For many years, I believed that experience would help me navigate a new school with greater confidence. Curriculum, assessment, homework, student behavior, technology, and parent expectations were conversations I had encountered many times before. Experience helped me recognize familiar patterns. What it could not do was reveal why those conversations mattered so deeply within that particular community.

What began as a conversation about homework ended up changing the questions I began asking.

It Was Never Only About Homework

Concerns about homework gradually found their way to my office from different directions. What began as conversations with parents soon led to meetings with teachers and members of the leadership team. Each group approached the topic differently, but everyone cared about the same thing: students.

In the elementary grades, the conversation focused on family routines, children's wellbeing, and the importance of play. In middle school, teachers emphasized responsibility and the gradual development of independent learning habits. In high school, homework was closely connected to academic expectations and preparation for university.

At first, I thought we were discussing homework. As I listened to different perspectives, however, I realized that homework had simply opened the conversation. Parents were talking about their hopes for their children. Teachers were sharing their beliefs about learning and responsibility. School leaders were trying to balance different expectations while remaining faithful to the school's mission and values.

What people were really talking about was the identity of the community, and I left those conversations with a different question: If I had misunderstood something that seemed so familiar, what else was I missing?

What Was I Really Missing?

The conversations about homework eventually came to an end, but the question they left behind did not. If I had misread a conversation that seemed so familiar, what else could I be misreading when joining a new community?

That question gradually changed the way I approached important conversations. Schools move quickly, and leadership often requires making decisions with limited time and incomplete information. Over time, I realized that the greatest risk was not making the wrong decision, but reacting before I had taken the time to understand what might be shaping the conversation. Some decisions improve processes, while others touch the identity of a community, and learning to distinguish between the two gradually became part of the way I worked.

One practice became especially important. Whenever I found myself trying to make sense of an important conversation or decision, I deliberately created space before reaching a conclusion. Sometimes that meant writing after a meeting or returning to a conversation several days later, once the urgency of the moment had faded. I was not trying to document events or keep a record of decisions. I was trying to separate what I had observed from the meaning I had immediately attached to it.

That distance often changed what I noticed. Conversations that had seemed straightforward revealed details I had overlooked, while comments that had initially seemed secondary took on a different meaning. My first interpretation was not necessarily wrong, but it was often incomplete.

Making Sense of What I Was Seeing

Years later, while reading Karl Weick's work on sensemaking, I found a language for something I had been practicing without naming it. Weick (1995) describes sensemaking as the process through which people interpret events before deciding how to respond. His work helped me understand why creating space between observation and action often changed my understanding. The pause was not about delaying decisions. It was about giving myself enough time to question my first interpretation before acting.

Edgar Schein's work on organizational culture added another layer to that understanding. Schein (2017) argues that policies, programs, and routines are the visible manifestations of a much deeper culture shaped by shared assumptions, values, and experiences. I gradually realized that the conversations I was hearing were rarely about a single issue. More often, they reflected beliefs, histories, and expectations that could not be understood from a first impression alone.

That shift did not eliminate uncertainty, nor did it prevent mistakes. I still reached conclusions too quickly at times, overlooked important perspectives, and occasionally realized much later that I had misunderstood a situation. What changed was not my ability to see everything more clearly, but my willingness to question my first interpretation before acting. Instead of reacting to what I thought I understood, I became more intentional about responding to what I was still learning.

Only later did José Saramago's words take on a different meaning for me: "Blind people who can see, but do not see." For many years, I understood those words as a reflection on human nature. Leadership made me read them differently. The greatest risk was never arriving at a new school without experience. It was arriving with enough experience to believe I already understood what I was seeing.

Honoring the Roots

Perhaps the best way I can explain what I learned is through the image of a tree. Every season brings new growth, some branches require pruning, and others continue to flourish. The roots require a different kind of attention because they quietly sustain everything that grows above them.

The same is true of school communities. Programs, structures, and schedules naturally change, while the beliefs, relationships, traditions, and shared experiences that shape a community's identity develop much more gradually. They are not immediately visible, yet they influence how every new initiative is understood, embraced, questioned, or resisted.

That image changed the questions I carried into every new school. Rather than beginning with what needed to change, I learned to begin by understanding what people valued, what stories they shared, what traditions they protected, and what experiences had shaped the community they had built together. Only then could I begin to distinguish what deserved to be preserved, what was ready to evolve, and what simply required more time.

The roots are not there to keep a tree from growing. They make healthy growth possible. I eventually came to see school communities in much the same way. Meaningful change is far more likely to take hold when it grows from an understanding of what already gives a community its strength, its continuity, and its identity.

The Questions I Kept Returning To

Those reflections eventually became more than personal notes. They became the questions I returned to whenever I joined a new school. I never intended them to become a framework, nor did I expect them to produce quick answers. They simply helped me slow down my own thinking and remain aware of the assumptions I might be making before deciding how to act.

Some questions became more important than others depending on the context. Some remained unanswered for months. Others changed completely as relationships deepened and I came to understand the community more fully. Their value was never in producing certainty but in reminding me that meaningful leadership begins with curiosity rather than conclusions.

Figure 1 presents the questions that continue to guide my thinking as I enter a new community. They are not sequential, and they are certainly not exhaustive. They simply represent the areas I have learned to explore before helping write the next chapter of a school's story.

Figure 1. Questions I Return to Before Writing the Next Chapter

These questions are not intended to diagnose a school or evaluate its effectiveness. They simply help me remain curious long enough to understand the community before deciding how I might contribute to its next chapter.

So, Where Does It Begin?

Every new community continues to teach me something I had not expected to learn. While my understanding continues to evolve, the four areas represented in this reflection have remained remarkably consistent. They continue to orient my attention, even as every new experience reshapes the way I approach them.

Over the years, I have realized that what I carry with me is not a map, but a compass. Maps assume the route is already known. A compass serves a different purpose. It keeps us oriented when the destination is clear, but the path toward it is still unfolding.

Perhaps that is what Before Writing the Next Chapter has come to mean for me. Leadership is not about arriving with the right answers, nor about believing we have understood a community too quickly. It is about choosing curiosity over certainty, listening before interpreting, and recognizing that every community deserves to be understood before it is changed.

That is the compass I hope to keep carrying with me, wherever the next chapter begins.

References

Saramago, J. (1995). Blindness (G. Pontiero, Trans.). Harvill Press. (Original work published 1995)
Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage Publications.