My Quest for Happiness in the Superintendency

Landing in a state of flow and engagement to counter the overheated personal challenges

Happiness in the superintendency is not intended to be oxymoronic although it may currently feel so because of COVID-19. Our role as superintendents has expanded and become increasingly stressful and demanding over the past 2½ years.

Like other educators, I have experienced the gravity of our leadership work, including overheated school board meetings riddled with unsubstantiated personal attacks on school leaders, distractions of social media and false information, public health-related decisions that required immediate action with little historical experience and the difficulty of communicating to a frustrated public why neighboring districts took contrasting COVID-19 mitigation approaches.

I always considered myself a successful leader of O’Fallon School District 90, which serves 4,000 students in central Illinois, and I’ve prided myself on my optimistic attitude and my decision to choose to be happy. I believe happiness is a choice individuals make. Yet as the pandemic wore on, the constant stress led to sleepless nights and restless days that impacted my wellness and the health of other school leaders. At several points, we reached our limit, leaving no capacity to cope with more pressure.

Superintendents who lead through one crisis after another find themselves emotionally drained and physically exhausted from the time spent managing, as opposed to leading. Creative planning and innovation must take a back seat, and happiness and personal job satisfaction from holding a highly regarded leadership position ebbs. Turnover rates in the superintendency illustrate the weight of it all, and the effects on many have been widely reported in the news.

As superintendents, we spend our careers making difficult decisions, often guided by prior experiences or field research. But even seasoned superintendents like myself found ourselves lacking the beacon of prior guidance or experience during a crisis of this magnitude. Not once were we able to exclaim, “I’ve got this under control. I’ve got it all figured out!” The uncertainty of the path forward, and the struggle to see when our learning environments would again feel normal frustrated and alarmed us.

Leaders experienced a self-imposed pressure to keep staff, students and families informed, upbeat and safe. It weighed heavily on our minds every day. Happiness felt as distant and elusive as the end of the pandemic itself.