Posted on September 3rd, 2025 By: Christina T Henry
Incoming Gig Harbor High School Principal Bob Marshall fist-bumped students Wednesday morning, as a parade of cars and buses delivered their passengers. A gauntlet of cheerleaders and other students gave a boisterous welcome to their peers as they streamed through the front doors.
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Particularly this:
I am severely editing your post to remove most of what you posted.
ETA: I just became aware you’ve been admonished about doing this before. For that reason, I’m issuing you a Warning for failing to obey moderator instructions.
@melaniethewitch, Why do you think we should read this?
Is there a photo of the new principal running the “gauntlet” of cheerleaders?
What the hell is this about?
Jackmannii Guest cake
Is there a photo of the new principal running the “gauntlet” of cheerleaders?
Sort of. Adjust your expectations.
Best I can figure, the OP wants us to parse this guy’s use of the phrase “servant leadership.” That’s definitely a buzzword in evangelical Christianity, maybe the guy’s a devout evangelical who plans to use his position to proselytize?
Oh, that’s interesting. I had a principal once who used that term, and she was hands down the worst principal I’ve ever worked under. She eventually got so many complaints against her, from staff and parents, that they promoted her to central office.
That said, she never proselytized to me.
I’ve worked under other bosses who actually practiced what I’d call “servant leadership,” and they were phenomenal.
I think of the phrase in this way: leadership is there to meet the needs of the people doing the core work of the organization (in this case, the school). They hire good people, then they look for the barriers to effective work, and they remove those barriers. I think of the superintendent who realized that teachers were overwhelmed with the new regimen of mandated assessments, so she found funds to get each teacher a half-day sub who would cover the class while teachers completed the assessments. Suddenly everyone could do their jobs effectively. Servant leadership!
It’s also a buzzword of the Project Management Institute (PMI). I’m currently studing for the Certified Associate in Project Management, and there is an entire section about servant leadership.
Like all buzzwords, it means exactly nothing when used by the person promising it. Actual servant leadership is a good thing, but I’ll believe it when I hear this principal’s teachers and students describing them that way.
@melaniethewitch , is this your school? Do you have first-hand experience of this principal? How are they really? Those are all much better uses of a thread than just posting a news article about it. A news article about a principal in Gig Harbor isn’t of much interest to anyone outside of Gig Harbor, but with a topic of “I really like my new principal’s leadership style” (or “I really hate it”) means that we’re engaging with you, not some random anonymous person across the country from us.
It’s also periodically a buzzword in the DoD. To me it has zero connection to religion, but that may be my ignorance talking.
Two days, and no further word from the OP. Lock this one down.
Ha. I know nothing about the subject under discussion, but I’m posting to say that we’ve vacationed in Gig Harbor a couple of times. It’s a lovely little town with a snug harbor and it’s surrounded by forests. It feels like being in coastal Maine, but it’s in Washington state. I miss it and I’d like to go back.
Or even ‘I don’t know what this means, does anybody here know?’
And yes, @melaniethewitch, when you start a thread please do come back to it and do your best to reply.