A day in the life of a high school principal is full of surprises.

The afternoon that I spoke with Marcus Beelan, he was running a bit late because he'd been drafted into duty as a replacement substitute teacher.

So in the life of a principal, you never know what's going to happen any given day, but I had to sub in a classroom. We needed a

teacher. Sometimes just getting in and just making it happen. I love it. So at what point did you

find out like there's no teacher in the classroom? Usually you just watch the emails. Some emails

are floating back and forth between our sub-coordinator who will put out an email that just says, hey, these classrooms are open during this time, still looking for some subs.

And then when somebody doesn't pick it up, I'm like, hey, I will never ask my staff to do anything that I won't do.

So I'm like, cool.

I got a free moment.

So let me just hop in and do it. Wow. And so what

class were you subbing for today? It was math, algebra one, freshman. How did the students feel

about having the principal be their substitute teacher? We'll get back to that in just a second.

But in the meantime, welcome to the show. I'm Dan Heath, and this is what it's like to be.

In every episode, we profile someone from a different profession, a mystery novelist, a forensic

accountant, a criminal defense attorney.

Today we'll meet Marcus Beelin, a principal at Huntley High School in Huntley, Illinois,

a school of 3,000 students.

We'll learn about the path blazed by Marcus's family that led him on this journey,

and what social media has done to the high school experience, and also what

it's like dealing with all those parents and the weird emails they send, stay with us, folks.

So Marcus, when you subbed this morning, were students freaked out to see the principal teaching?

No, not at all.

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