When I was in high school, people often asked me what it was like having my dad as the principal. At the time, I didn’t know what to say since I didn’t know the alternative. However, being in college has given me a new perspective on how being so closely surrounded by my family in the community has affected my life.
From a very young age, before my dad was a principal and I was at his school, I was frequently confronted with questions and comments about him from classmates whose siblings were students of his 8th grade history class. Clearly he was well-established in the community (which was very school-centric), enough to where I was recognized as a kindergartener because of my relationship to him. It didn’t affect me much at the time, although I did receive a lot of positive feedback on his behalf; if anything, it just made me curious as to what it would be like to take his class (which, unbeknownst to me at the time, would never happen).
When I got to middle school, my dad was still a teacher, so while he had little power over me, his presence surely affected my experience. In 6th grade, I definitely wasn’t popular, yet I was never bullied despite my many qualities that other students would have been bullied for. In 7th grade, he became the assistant principal of my school, which was pretty much more of the same for me except that he had lunch duty more often. It was during my 8th grade year that he became principal of the high school.
As a principal, my dad was a lot busier than he was as a teacher. I’m still not 100% sure what a principal does, but he had to attend board meetings, manage hiring, and go to sporting events. Since I still couldn’t drive, my mom would drop me and my brother off at his office before work (since students weren’t allowed to enter the school yet), and we would wait there for a while and walk to the middle school. I also waited there before school during my freshman year since I still couldn’t drive.Â
Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t know any exclusive gossip about the students or teachers from my dad’s position. If I knew any top-secret info, I only learned it shortly before the rest of the student body. I didn’t get preferential treatment from him, either; I tried countless times to convince him to raise the temperature in the school, but he always either ignored me or refused. The reason why I didn’t get in trouble was because I didn’t cause any. However, he actually dress-coded me a few times during senior year after the dress code changed. While it was pretty embarrassing to be dress-coded by my own father, I had a different relationship with him than the other students and wasn’t afraid to protest him. However, there was a degree to which I had more pressure to follow the rules to protect his reputation.
I don’t believe that my dad being the principal affected me too much, but obviously I don’t know what it would be like if he wasn’t. I don’t know if I didn’t date or get drunk in high school because I didn’t want to, or nobody invited me to parties/asked me on dates since they were afraid of getting in trouble with my dad. Likewise, I don’t know if people were nicer to me (or at least less mean) for the same reason. Based on my experiences in college, those things are probably true, at least to a degree. While these changes might also be attributed to a change in culture from high school to college, I know for a fact that plenty of people were up to all kinds of questionable activities in high school that I was not included in. I’m sure that if my dad was the chancellor, I would be treated differently, too.