I had emailed him the night before, plastic keys loud against my heavy fingers, tense with the very concept of emailing the interim principal of Ludlow Senior High School: Jonathan Mitchell. He’s the interim principal, and the only authority figure I remember from my one in-person year at LHS.  

He used to play “today’s top hits” from a janky speaker for students entering the back door at the bus stop—now he stands proudly in the front of the school, tie done up high, greeting the students and staff as they enter the building. His office moved up too, but when I meet him, we’re off to the 9-10 house, not the main office where his office lies. 

He’s comfortable here, still glancing at the new decorations on the old walls, but relaxed. There’s two blue upholstery chairs in front of the desk, about two feet apart, separated by a wooden table. Instead of moving behind the desk—like I was near positive he would—Mitchell sits there, crossing his leg over his knee, exactly in the middle of his calf. 

I appreciate the gesture, it makes me feel less like a young, naive freshman, being dragged into the office by an obscure phone call, the eyes of my classmates staring into my soul; and more like a young adult—albeit one who spend the past forty minutes pouring over ten bulleted questions that I had painstakingly written in an old, fraying notebook.

So sure, maybe I wasn’t a “young adult,” but I never felt as close to one as I did then, setting down my recording phone on the table, and letting the blue front of my notebook hit me knee as I took my seat at the other side of the table. 

I cleared my throat and then glanced down at my phone, watching the red sound waves fluctuate as I slowly quiet. A sure sign it’s recording. 

Mr.Mitchell doesn’t seem bothered by me paying more attention to my phone than to him, and it makes me question: What experience did this man have that allowed him to respond to this situation as he was. Clearly still commanding the room without so much as saying a word.

I got my answer in an instant, Mitchell announcing that “[he] was the assistant principal for a couple years, and before that [he] worked as a teacher in the building for six years.”

Mitchell had started in the building as a long term sub, a speech pathology assistant, which he majored in at Springfield College. He then moved into the Special Education program at LHS, and worked as the life skills teacher, something he described as an “absolute blast.”

“As a life skills teacher, I worked with students who had severe intellectual disabilities. We worked on functional academic and real life skills. We got to take some really awesome trips like The Big E, shopping at the mall, going out to eat, grocery shopping, volunteering at the Senior Center and Survival Center, even swimming at the Boys and Girls club.” Mitchell says. 

He mentions that he adores the chance to continue his relationship with those students as he moved up through the years, and that he still sometimes goes down to meet with the students and staff in the program.

As I talk to him, the respect Mr.Mitchell has for his teachers becomes strikingly clear. 

“We have a fantastic staff here,” Mitchell says, “they’ve made the transition to this year much smoother.”

With almost every question the man sings their praise, leaving an overarching question in the air of ‘how did this man get his attitude towards teaching.’

As a child of a teacher turned principal, Mitchell grew up surrounded by education, watching his mother work on her classroom during the summers (frankly a descriptor that hit far too close to home of little ten year old me’s feet swinging back and forth under my mothers desk as she tidied her room for the next school year) 

Mitchell cherishes the close bond between him and his mother, especially now that they’re able to bounce ideas between themselves on how to run their schools. 

In fact, family as a whole seems to be a key point of Mr.Mitchell’s day. He gushes about his wife, Sarah, who he’s been married to for five years, and his sons Theo, who is just 18 months old, and Hoyt, a student from his wifes kindergarten class who they’re in the final stage of adopting. 

As he talks, Mitchell glances at the artwork on the wall, a soft smile on his face, clearly reminded of his family. The artwork isn’t even his children’s, but it seems as though he’s watching his sons craft the papers right in the office. 

Mitchell, always an avid sports fan, officates highschool and college football, and loves the opportunity to still interact with the game. 

This wasn’t a life Mr.Mitchell had ever dreamed of having—as a student at Springfield college, he had gone into sports biology, wanting to become a physical therapist. After studying “harder than he ever studied before” and still struggling with the course, he decided to move into the communication program, realizing that more than anything, he wanted to “work with people, and help people” and communications was the way for him to do that.