For thirty years, Dr. Jim Sebert has lived a life entirely in education, as a student who genuinely loved school, then as a teacher, principal, and superintendent across communities in Wisconsin. Going to School is the story of that journey: shaped by parents who taught him kindness and reliability, and a coach who walked up a driveway one summer afternoon; an act of attention that changed the course of a life.
It is a story that passes through classrooms and superintendent's chairs, through a global pandemic, a tragic boat accident, thirty-seven community meetings about facility consolidation, and a Halloween party where a young man met the woman who would become his wife. Along the way, it asks questions every educator and every leader will recognize: How do you make hard decisions when there are no good options? How do you hold the line when the community is divided? How do you stay the kind of person you set out to be when the work tries to change you?
Going to School is honest about the moments that tested him, and about how each one made him a better leader. It is open about failure, gentle about grace, and clear-eyed about what it actually takes to run a school district in the modern era.
It is a book for educators at every level, but it is also for anyone who has ever been shaped by a classroom, a gymnasium, or a hallway conversation that changed the way they saw themselves or the world. It is for the teacher who wonders whether the work is worth it. For the principal in a difficult year. For the superintendent at the end of a hard week. For the parent who wants to understand what is happening inside their child's school. For the new board member trying to make sense of an unfamiliar world. And for the reader who simply loves a good story about a life well lived in service of others.
Throughout, Dr. Sebert reflects on the people, decisions, and moments that have defined his career: the coach who came to the driveway, the woman behind everything, the difficult conversations he learned to have, the standing ovations and the late-night phone calls, and the superintendency as a lifestyle. He writes with the warmth of someone who has loved this work every day, and the candor of someone who knows that loving it is not the same as being good at it; that those two things have to be earned each and every year.
This is Dr. Sebert's first book. It reads like a long conversation with a trusted colleague nearing the end of a long career, full of stories worth carrying forward.
"I have been going to school my entire life. It has been an incredible gift."
