Brady Wald was raised by two educators in North Dakota — a father who taught for 37 years and a mother who taught kindergarten for 34. He followed them into schools and has spent 25 years there himself, most of it in leadership. Then his father visited one of his Arizona schools, sat in his office for a day, and told him he had to start writing about the work. Not long after, his dad died unexpectedly.
That conversation became The Principal Diaries, Brady’s first book — 15 years in the making, finished after the one person who asked for it was gone. In this episode he takes Erica through the whole arc: the upbringing, the mission, and a health crisis 12 years ago that nearly stopped him, when his body was, in his words, eating itself from the inside out.
Brady talks about what 25 years in schools actually looks like from the inside — why relationships have to come before learning, why he redesigned the principal’s office to feel like anything but one, and why he will fight to keep recess, art and music in the building. It is a conversation about education, grief and the kind of legacy that gets built one day at a time.
Executive Producer: Sara Glassman
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