First, whatever you do, make sure no one calls the New York Post. He
took to heart Mr. Brown’s admonition to “cherish obscurity.” In the crazy
world of the Board of Education, if you do nothing to rock the boat, the
powers that be will forget you exist and you will be free to do your job—to
educate children.
“Always remember what’s important” also meant that what may seem
important to teachers and school leaders may not be so important to children
and their parents. Howard helped us to remember that their needs were more
important than ours, and it is our job always to serve those needs.
“Always remember what’s important.” It’s not the yearly fads or peda-
gogical jargon or extra trappings. It’s simply teaching and learning, helping
students on the road to their futures. Howard lived by his own words. He
did not care about the trappings—little things like observation reports—
but he deeply cared about teachers and children. Practically every day, he
stopped in to visit most of his math and science teachers, just to see what
was happening in their classes and ask if they needed any help. Frequently,
he would stop in to see me to tell me about a great lesson he had just seen
in Josephine’s or Efraim’s or Angela’s or Stu’s class.
Howard was the peacemaker at cabinet meetings—yes, the assistant prin-
cipals often had some donnybrooks. What can you expect when Marcia and
Mike were forced to sit in the same room for three hours? Whenever things
got heated, Howard would intervene with a smile, a joke, and a reminder—
we’re all here to help the children.
His tiny office was crammed with students, usually students who would
be in the dean’s office if he had not adopted them. Many he found cutting
class while he roamed the hallways. He brought them to his office, spoke to
them, called their parents, mentored them, intervened for them with all their
teachers, and helped scores of potential dropouts to graduate.
While many others, myself included, devoted time to looking at how the
school as a whole could help students, Howard always remembered that the
help given one-on-one to individual children was the most important.
When I retired, along with most of the other school administrators,
Howard decided to remain an extra year, then two, then three—he wanted
to make sure the transition to a new generation of school leaders went
smoothly and he knew that he was, literally, the bridge between the past and
present of the school. He realized it was important that the school remember
its roots as it moved into the twenty-first century. Howard physically retired
three years ago, but in his heart, he never left. Whenever we spoke, he knew
everything that was going on. His school family was always on his mind.192 Chapter 14