Word: Responsibility

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Sentence:

Responsibility begins the moment you realize what has been placed in your hands.

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Passage:

A note before reading: This week’s passage includes gun violence and the loss of a student.

When I was an assistant principal, each fall I was handed a list of student names.

We called it the Hot 75.

The names came from work connected to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. They had used data and an algorithm to identify young people who were most likely to be impacted by gun violence.

But it was never just data on a page.

It was 75 kids with stories. Families. Pain. Potential. Humor. Anger. Dreams. Lives still unfolding.

My job was to help make sure the prediction did not become their future.

We matched students with mentors. We connected them with clinicians. We pulled them into clubs, sports, jobs, and anything that might give them one more reason to stay connected to school.

We checked in.
We followed up.
We paid attention.

It was the first time I understood that leadership was not just about managing a building or running a program.

It was about carrying people.

I worked hard to learn their stories. I tried to know their situations. I tried to see them before the data did.

One of those students was Cedric.

He was a quiet, stocky 10th grader who played football. As we were getting ready for spring break, I remember walking past the lunchroom and locking eyes with him. In that moment, I felt that familiar pull. I needed to check in with him one more time. I needed to ask about his plan for break. I needed to make sure he was safe.

But the day moved fast.

The bell rang. Students left for spring break. And I did not get to have that conversation.

The first day of break, I received a call from our police officers. There had been shots fired in the neighborhood. A student may have been hit.

I went straight to the scene.

What I saw has never left me.

Cedric died that day.

There are moments that do not leave you. They stay in your body. They change the way you see the work, the world, and yourself.

That day changed me.

Not because I believed I could control everything. Not because leadership means carrying the impossible alone. But because I understood, in a way I had never understood before, that this work was never going to be only about meetings, policies, spreadsheets, and plans.

It was about lives.

Cedric remains with me to this day.

When I became principal at Sullivan, there was no Hot 75 list waiting for me.

But Cedric had changed how I saw the work.

I knew there were still students who needed more than a schedule, a classroom, and a set of rules. They needed adults who knew them, looked for them, checked on them, and refused to let them disappear.

So we created a list of our own.

We called it “Kids We Love the Most.”

These were the young people we knew needed more support, more attention, more connection, and more people paying attention to them throughout the day. Not because they were problems to solve, but because they were children to know.

And we made it everyone’s responsibility.

Staff members who did not teach classes each took one or two students they had already formed a relationship with. They became that student’s go to person. They checked on them in the morning. They asked about grades. They helped them get connected to sports, clubs, activities, jobs, and anything that could help them feel rooted in the school.

It was simple.

One more adult noticing.
One more adult asking.
One more adult refusing to let a kid disappear.

That became part of how I understood leadership.

Cedric’s life pushed me to hold the work differently.

He made me understand that responsibility is not only the weight of what happened.

It is what we build because of what happened.

Most people will never be handed a Hot 75 list. But all of us are handed people. People who need us to notice. People who need us to ask one more question. People who need us to care enough to stay close.

Responsibility is not about carrying everything alone.

It is about realizing what has been placed in your hands and choosing to hold it with care.

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Your Turn:

Who or what has been placed in your hands to hold with care?

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If this word brought someone to mind, send it to them.

Sometimes the right reflection finds us through someone else.

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