You Never Know Who’s Watching

He never knew I saw what he did.

It was long after the school day ended. The winter sky was already darkening, and the teacher parking lot was empty, except for my car. I was working late.

From my desk, I saw the superintendent carrying a stack of paper from the middle school across the parking lot toward his office in the administration building. These were pre-computer days when everything in education—teacher evaluations, lesson plans, board minutes, long-term planning—all this and more generated mounds of paper.

The surfaces in Dr. Froning’s office might have been lined by stacks of paper, but he hated litter. He bought into the Keep America Beautiful campaign. He installed trash bins around school buildings. And he sent a clear message across the district: Be part of the solution, not the pollution.

Just as he passed the bus garage, a gust of wind blew a piece of crumpled paper across his path. It caught at the edge of a curb.

Dr. Froning stopped and stared at the paper. He took three more steps toward his office and stopped again. He turned back. Balancing the stack of paper he already carried, he bent to pick up the litter. He carried it to a trash bin and tossed it in.

I had watched Dr. Froning stick to his principles as he wrote policy and led meetings and addressed teachers in school-opening convocations. Decades later, I remember few of these public words. But I do remember this private act of integrity. And I recognize its call to me as a young teacher—to take the high road, even when no one watches.

In many ways, we become what others teach us at odd moments, when they don’t know they’re teaching. We’re shaped by bits of wisdom people drop along the way.

And little do we know that while we watch, others are watching us.