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So the other day, at a staff meeting, our producer Rosie mentioned something she had just heard on NPR that really hit us all hard.

It was a chat between host Rachel Martin and reporter Corey Turner about school superintendents, all of whom are trying to figure out how to keep classrooms open amid the latest COVID surge and no matter what they do, they just can't win.

You know, I was talking to Dan Dominic yesterday, he talks to superintendents all the time as head of the National School Superintendents Association, and he told me he's heard something from a few superintendents personally, these never heard before, and I should say this might be a little hard to hear.

Superintendents calling me telling me that they're ready to commit suicide, that I've never ever seen a period of time where I had to deal with that.

Oh my gosh, Corey, I mean, that's, that's just amazing, awful to hear that that school leaders would feel this way.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a pressure cooker right now, this debate around safe schooling and school leaders and educators feel like whatever they do, they're going to make somebody angry, and that is a huge difference between now and say where we started this thing almost two years ago.

As a journalist who covers conflict, I have heard things just like this for the past six months, from leaders all around the country, pastors, politicians, really any one task with leading large groups of humans right now is really suffering, all of which reminds me of an episode we did last year with a school superintendent called how to succeed when everyone's mad at you.

The bad news is this episode is currently more relevant than ever before. The good news is our expert Gary Friedman had some counterintuitive suggestions for leaders that were really refreshing.

There is no magic bullet at a time like this, but I think anyone who is the boss of anyone, or who has kids in school, or is just trying to navigate this new maddening phase of the pandemic, we'll learn a lot from his advice.

So we're going to share this episode with all of you again this week as a sort of emergency conflict first aid episode. Let us know what you think and of course we'll be back with a new episode next week.

So John, looking back, what was one of the lowest moments would you say as a superintendent during a pandemic for you?

Wow. I'd say seeing the seeing the first semester grades, seeing how many how many classes got failed. That was probably the lowest point for me.

Welcome to How To. I'm journalist Amanda Ripley. We all have to make difficult decisions from time to time, where to live, what to study, whether to go on a second date, or a last date.

But today we're talking about really impossible decisions, ones that could cost you your job or jeopardize the health of others, decisions that just don't have an obvious right answer.

The kind that somebody will inevitably hate, no matter what you do.

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