When I was fifteen, I worked behind the soda fountain at Conrad's Confectionery in Westwood, New Jersey, a Norman Rockwell kind of place where the regulars gathered on Saturday mornings: the jeweler, the shoe-store owner, the undertakers from the funeral home, and the boy I had a crush on from the record shop. I knew their orders by heart. I could pour a perfect egg cream and keep the dishes washed even during a rush. I was on my game.
My boss was a jolly man named Jimmy, who ran the shop with his wife, Irene. One rule mattered above all the rest, and I drilled it into every new hire. At the end of the counter, beneath the cash register, was a trap door down to the basement where the ice cream was made. When someone knocked from below, you opened it, took the bin, and shut the door before you did anything else. Always close the trap door first. That was rule number one.
One busy Saturday I heard the knock, lifted up a bin of mint chocolate chip, and set it in the freezer—and then a regular walked in and greeted me. Proud that I knew his order by heart, I headed straight for the coffee pot. We chatted as I poured. Just then Jimmy came from the back of the shop, chatting up everyone at the counter as he strode backwards toward the register. My heart leapt. "Jimmy! Stop!" I shouted. Too late. He dropped through and got wedged between the basement and the first floor, saved by his Santa's belly. Two customers vaulted the counter and hoisted him out. As he sat on the floor breathing hard and in pain, I stood over him, solicitous and dying inside.
I caught Irene's eye and braced for the reprimand I knew I deserved. Jimmy motioned her over to his side. She bent down, and he whispered something in her ear. Irene paused, and something softened. She crossed over to me and said, "Karen, I need to leave you in charge of the store. I'll be back as soon as I can." Irene grabbed her keys and took him to the ER.
That night I called Jimmy at home to apologize. There was a silence on the line. Then, "Thank you, Karen. I know you know what to do," he said. "I have confidence in you."
That Saturday has stayed with me for decades, not because of my mistake, but because of what followed. Irene had every right to be furious. My boss was bent over in pain. Customers around the counter were stunned. And there I stood, the knuckleheaded kid responsible for it all. Yet they saw me and trusted me. I had blown it, and they left me in charge of the shop.
Somewhere along the way, responsibility got conscripted into the language of scolding and rebuke. So it's worth asking what we actually hope to grow. Our idea of it often fails in one of two directions. There's the perfectionist, who carries everything herself and quietly resents everyone who doesn't. And there's the compliant box ticker, who trusts that once the checklist is complete, the work is done. Neither captures what responsibility actually asks of us: the freedom to act, a worthy aim, and the judgment to see what a situation calls for.
Responsibility comes from the Latin respondere: to answer, to respond. Strip away the scolding, and what remains is simple. A responsible person can respond well to the person or problem before her, with an eye for the full context of the situation.
Here's the difficulty: we can require that an assignment be turned in; we cannot require that a student care whether it is any good. When we think we are teaching responsibility, we are often managing compliance. By trying to enforce responsibility, we can starve the very agency it depends on.
The power to respond cannot be assigned, nor can it be summoned on command. It has to be awakened. Like every virtue, it grows only by being exercised. For school leaders, the question is what we can entrust to students and colleagues that is genuinely theirs to carry.
Think of learning to drive. You can read the manual and ride alongside others, but none of it becomes yours until your own hands are on the wheel, and you feel the full weight and power of the car. We grow in responsibility as we assume it. Kids need to be needed, and so do the adults in our buildings. To be genuinely counted on is among the deepest of human goods. To feel needed by no one is one of the quietest forms of neglect.
Two things make this hard. We often place responsibility badly, handing out tasks to tick off a list rather than giving someone real work, with the support to carry it out. And young people fear making mistakes so deeply that many will not try at all. I once told a room of young professionals about the trap door, and afterward they confessed how frightened they were to admit any error, as though not knowing, or getting something wrong, were a verdict on their worth.
What I didn’t know that Saturday, and learned only years later, was that Jimmy had served as a Master Sergeant in Patton's Third Army and earned a Bronze Star. He had been trusted at a young age with more than I could fathom. His trust in a fifteen-year-old who had just put him in the hospital wasn't naïveté. He was helping me to see who I could become.
I didn't need a lecture on rule number one. I had taught it to every new hire. Jimmy and Irene corrected me by trusting me more. They handed me the store instead of my hat.
By the end of September, someone in your building has left a trap door open. A new teacher has not returned a single graded assignment. A colleague has dropped the ball on something you entrusted them to manage. Frustration, anger, the urge to take the job back and do it ourselves: those first reactions are human. What matters is what we do next.
Before I respond to that colleague, I try to pause and ask: What do I know? What do I still need to know? Who can help? What am I aiming at–for this person and for our school community?
So here's a question for this week: who in your building just left a trap door open, and what might you entrust to them next?
Adapted from Karen E. Bohlin, "The Power to Respond: Reclaiming Responsibility in Professional Formation," originally published in Virtues & Vocations: Higher Education for Human Flourishing, Fall 2026, Institute for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame.