Back to School

Now that school's about to reopen, I'm thinking about Amy Marshall. I met Amy this past June, when I was assigned to photograph her at the elementary school where she's the principal. More accurately: I was assigned to photograph her while she was ON the elementary school where she's the principal.

Amy had promised her K-6 students that if they read a total of 8,000 books in a four-month period, she'd sit on the roof of their three-story urban brick building for the day. That works out to a daunting 15 books per student.

They did.

Then she had to figure out how to get up there. So she called the fire department, who brought a truck with a ladder and a bucket.

Amy wisely made sure her students were far from the truck. A safety choice, to be sure, but she also worried that, should she fall out, she didn't want them to have a good view of her hurtling through the air and going "splat" on the pavement. It struck me that even though she thought that could happen, she was still going ahead with it. After all, she had promised them, she said. This is one dedicated principal. I liked her immediately.

Amy's courage inspired me. I quickly realized that there was only one way to depict Amy's adventure, to show the readers what Amy was risking. I asked the kind firemen if they'd take me up in the bucket, too. They said yes.

It became clear that, under the care of the firefighters, Amy had nothing to worry about. These professionals were calm, adept, and determined to have everything go smoothly. Amy was in good hands, as was I.

So they hoisted me up and planted me on the roof so I could photograph Amy as she was being hoisted up. Amy then handed the firefighters a lawn chair and a book bag and climbed in the bucket after them. After all, she said, she had work to do up there.

While we had been on the roof together briefly, I asked Amy how she had thought of this particular bet with her students. She said she needed to do something more spectacular than the previous year to motivate her students. What did she do last year, I asked? "I kissed a pig on the lips," she replied. It wasn't a good time to ask what she'll do next year. Whatever it is, I hope I get to be there again.