The second story is that of a student who got hit in a head with a rocket they built in his class (disclaimer: the student was not injured at all since the rocket was made of styrofoam and the student also wanted to see the video). Trevor came to my office - with a scheduled appointment - and asked me if I could help him get some footage from the security cameras. I asked him if everything was okay, and he simply said “I want to get this video of a student getting hit in the head because I think I want to enter it into a video contest and win some money. It is worth gold." So I went to the security office and asked the security guard to check to see if the camera in the back had captured the student getting hit in the head with a rocket and, after a strange look from the guard, he set out to find the footage. After about 1 hour of trying we realized that the camera did not capture the magic moment; we came up empathy handed. I went to talk to Trevor, with the upmost formality reserved only for those moments when a principal talks to a teacher about the most important work going on in schools, and told Trevor that we were, unfortunately, unable to locate the footage. For the first time during the three years I had worked with him, he looked at me with, what I can describe, legitimate disappointed in my leadership abilities. Trevor was funny in a way we all want to be funny and he was joyful in a way we all would want to be joyful. I will miss his humor dearly.
The second story is that of a student who got hit in a head with a rocket they built in his class (disclaimer: the student was not injured at all since the rocket was made of styrofoam and the student also wanted to see the video). Trevor came to my office - with a scheduled appointment - and asked me if I could help him get some footage from the security cameras. I asked him if everything was okay, and he simply said “I want to get this video of a student getting hit in the head because I think I want to enter it into a video contest and win some money. It is worth gold." So I went to the security office and asked the security guard to check to see if the camera in the back had captured the student getting hit in the head with a rocket and, after a strange look from the guard, he set out to find the footage. After about 1 hour of trying we realized that the camera did not capture the magic moment; we came up empathy handed. I went to talk to Trevor, with the upmost formality reserved only for those moments when a principal talks to a teacher about the most important work going on in schools, and told Trevor that we were, unfortunately, unable to locate the footage. For the first time during the three years I had worked with him, he looked at me with, what I can describe, legitimate disappointed in my leadership abilities. Trevor was funny in a way we all want to be funny and he was joyful in a way we all would want to be joyful. I will miss his humor dearly.
