From a Barnyard to a Schoolyard: My Journey as a High School Principal

What’s a principal to do when forty-one snakes are turned loose near the lockers, a perky cheerleader gets pregnant, star athletes fail English, and one teacher tells students God is dead and another begins each class with a prayer?

Terry Cummins spent most of his life in schoolhouses. In this book, Cummins, nicknamed Top Cat by his students, explains why the hearts and minds of teenagers are mysterious, why parents fail more often than students, why school boards don’t have a clue, why teachers go batty, and how principals try to maintain their sanity.

A good school can be judged by its gross happiness quotient, not just the test scores, Cummins writes. It is hard, though, to educate those with broken or breaking hearts and dreams. There’s a lot of mending to do.

After two years in the navy, Terry Cummins taught and coached for two years, followed by thirty-one years in administration, primarily as a high school principal in Kentucky and Southern Indiana.

After retirement, Terry began a second life following Helen Keller’s creed: Life is an adventure or nothing. His adventures have included running marathons, climbing mountains, trekking through many parts of the world, and his compulsion – writing. At age sixty-nine, he published the first of his six books and has published more than 750 newspaper columns.

Now in his eighties, Cummins plans to pursue other new and excitingadventures.