Unsettled years

The next ten or eleven years my life was unsettled. I tried marriage again, but it didn't really work since it was in many ways a repeat of the first one. So for many years, I remained single. I taught at the University of New Mexico for four years, San Diego State for one year and finally decided to return to the field of secondary education which was my love. The publish or perish atmosphere at the university level had little interest or value for me. I even wrote a book that no one ever read. I re-entered school administration on the Navajo Indian reservation as principal for elementary through high school and left there after a year as acting superintendent. I felt strongly that Native Americans should be administrators of their own schools and left that job with Native American administrative replacements.

The Albuquerque Public Schools hired me, and I completed the next fourteen years working in several capacities but always in administration. I helped open a new high school, which was a delightful challenge, and here I met HW2. We became good friends and several years later, married. My final administrative challenge was to be principal of Valley High School, a position I held longer than any other previous principal. This school was a school in crisis with a high dropout rate and a school shunned by neighborhood families. The changes that occurred at this school were to prove to be the high point of my entire career in education and deserve a section in their own right.