“’I’m giving you my baby,’” a parent once told Penny Schwinn, then a principal. The Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner didn’t quite understand what she meant until Schwinn became a mother when she adopted her first child – something that shapes her decisions as a commissioner. “’I love this baby, but I cannot give her what she deserves; I cannot give her what she needs, so I’m giving you my baby,’” the birth mother told Schwinn. “In that moment, becoming a new mom and hearing that responsibility… for the first time, it clicked for me like it never has before: parents give us their babies every single day, and there is a responsibility that we have in education to care for and nurture. There is a love that comes with that kind of work.