Honouring Roles: The Story of a Principal and a Student

The importance of the teacher-student relationship in educational practice is well established, as is the idea of principal leadership in relationship to staff. Even though principal leadership is regarded as a factor in student success, the principal’s effect is usually assumed to take place via the teaching staff. There is an absence of research about the “lived experience” of direct principal-student relationships that shed lights on the ways in which these relationships play a role in student success and principal transformation. This paper presents two narratives written about a particular set of principal-student interactions experienced by the researcher (principal) and participant (student). The analysis uses a narrative inquiry approach to explore both the individual and collective meanings of this principal-student relationship. The stories and their derived meanings have the potential to enliven and influence educational practice as they explore the subtleties of the principal-student relationship.