Please Interrupt Me

Please Interrupt Me

Written by Deb Brown

It happens nearly every day, all day long. A teacher pops their head into my office. A student catches me in the hallway. A parent stops me in the car line. And almost always, they begin the same way: “I’m so sorry to interrupt.”

On the outside of my office door, I have a sign that says, “You are not an interruption to my work. You are the purpose of it.”

I mean that. Not because I have unlimited time, or that all my reports are finished, or that we never have student behaviors that need attention,  or I have a magically empty calendar, or an inbox (even with AI!) that has somehow managed to answer itself.

I mean it because the work of school leadership is, at its heart, about service.  My job is to help create the conditions where teachers can do their best work, where children can grow into their best selves, and where families can know they are valued partners in their children’s academic and social-emotional growth.

When someone trusts me enough to bring me a question, a worry, or a problem, that is not a disruption to the “real” work. It is the real work.

Each inquiry is also a small piece of data about the school we are building together. Is a teacher comfortable telling me when something isn’t working? Will a kid believe I will listen? Does a family trust me that we can figure out the next step together?

An open-door policy is not really about the position of the physical door; it’s what happens after someone walks through it, when they cross your threshold physically or metaphorically. It means I listen, get the perspectives and the full story, figure out an accurate diagnosis before I try to prescribe a solution. And when I can’t give an issue my full attention right then, I say so honestly and make a plan to come back to it. People don’t need a principal who is available every minute. They do need one who follows through.

Of course, those reports still have deadlines. The calls still need to be returned. And if I treat every task as something only I can do, I won’t have the time or attention for the conversations that truly need me, need my experience, and need my insight as a school leader.  So sure, I protect some time on my calendar for the inbox, the paperwork, and the decisions that are mine to make, but just as importantly, I look for ways to make sure every decision doesn’t have to be mine.

I learned a version of that lesson while student teaching. One day, my supervising professor asked if I was ready for my class the next day. “I’m exhausted,” I told him. “I spent hours last night putting together a presentation on Shakespeare’s history, Elizabethan England, and the Globe Theater for my Brit Lit class in the morning.”

He asked, “Deb, who needs to know this? Don’t you already know this? When you do the work, the kids are not the ones learning. The work is where the learning happens.”

That question fundamentally changed the way I looked at my classroom and my lessons for years. What was I doing for students that they could be doing for themselves? How could I build leadership and resiliency skills in my students, to  trust them with independent tasks and teach them the skills they needed to complete them successfully?

Years later, now as a school principal, I find myself asking the same thing, but with a slight twist: What am I doing for our staff that they could be empowered to do for themselves? Dr. Tom Miller, founder of Leaders Building Leaders, has spent years supporting charter school educators here in North Carolina and across the country as they strengthen their teams, boards, and schools. He often reminds us, “Don’t delegate, empower.” There is a difference between just handing someone a task and investing the time to build up in them the trust, information, skills, and support to take the lead.

It’s natural to want to jump in and be the “fixer” for each problem that shows up at your door, but one thing I have to work against every day is my instinct to take charge of each situation instead of taking a beat and asking if this is a moment for teacher leadership. There’s a phrase called, “stealing the conflict,” where instead of facilitating a solution, we jump in as leaders to immediately fix it. As a parent, I saw this with my own children, that if I inserted myself into every argument they had, I was actually taking away a chance for them to grow in their conflict resolution skills. If a teacher is struggling with a kid, my gut reaction might be to take the child and handle it myself. (And yes, sometimes if safety is an issue and the student is disruptive or dysregulated, that may be necessary for safety’s sake.) But often, the more helpful move is to step into the classroom myself so the teacher can be the one to step out and talk with the student in the hallway or in my office.

Why does that make a difference? Over the years, some of the students I’ve come to know the best and who learned to trust me the most are the ones who initially spent the most time with me because something had gone wrong. As we worked through their issues, and yes, even as I assigned logical consequences, I got to see them grow in their decision making and self regulation skills. Every time I called or emailed a parent, that family learned to turn to me. That is a gift of this job, but it also makes me ask: Am I creating room for teachers to build those relationships, too? As school leaders one of our best moves can be to hold the space so the teacher can handle the conflict, and use that as the foundation to build the relationship.

Supporting a teacher, whether with a difficult student or a problematic situation, does not always mean taking over. It can mean standing beside them, helping them think through what happened, making sure they have what they need, and staying involved when a situation requires it. The teacher should leave that conversation feeling more capable and more supported, and not as though asking for help was a mistake. As my sign says, their need is not an interruption; it is the foundation of what I am building as a school leader.

None of us gets this balance right every day. Some days, my open door and my to-do list seem to be in a no-holds barred wrestling match. But the sign on my door helps me remember what that to-do list is ultimately serving. Sure, the reports, schedules, and emails matter because they support a school full of people and compliance requirements that keep the school running. But when someone in my community stops me to say, “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I want them to know: they never have to apologize for being the reason I do this work.