This book is about school principals and the surprises they encounter in their work. Among these surprises is that educational leadership differs signifi cantly from what well-educated, well-prepared, and well-meaning professionals thought it would be. We learned this from the compilation and analysis of stories, anecdotes, and vignettes told to us by more than 200 principals from across the United States. The stories describe how principals successfully reconcile their expectations and hopes with the realities and disappointments they encounter in their work. The book describes the fl exibility and resilience of school principals who view themselves as instructional leaders but who spend most of their time soothing emotional wounds, attending extracurricular activities, completing paperwork, and fi xing physical plants. These principals strive to keep pedagogy at the heart of their work in spite of increasing personal demands and mandates from the federal, state, community, and district levels.