Principal: A Personal History

Serious and bookish, Caroline Tompkins never imagined becoming an elementary school principal. Her memoir reveals an improbable fifteen-year journey running two schools in her hometown, a place where the American Dream meets the social politics of the borderlands. This principal’s personal story exposes the inner workings of a job crucial to our nation, but a job in turmoil just below its hearty and earnest surface. Principal brings to life the swirl of a single day in the spring of her final year on the job, a day in which conversations and crises, children and adults, missteps and small victories, all compete for the principal’s attention and outrun the available minutes. The story also detours backward in time to explore why the job got harder with experience rather than easier.