Reflections

Sometimes, you have to buy your own flowers. Sometimes, you have to find the good and celebrate it all on your own. Work like ours is slow and steady. We might see gains in small pieces and sometimes shortchange that view by focusing on what is still left to be finished.  In many ways, that's unfair. Incredibly unfair, in fact.  The to-do list never gets any shorter. I once had a mentor who'd counsel me..." You keep trying to make this a sprint. That's not the kind of race you're in. It's a marathon. "  He was right except the part that implies a finish line. Sometimes there are competing forces that slow down our pace. The trick is in learning how to get through them. On some days, our results are better than other days but staying in the race still counts.  The work we do in our schools and for all of our children (and our teachers!) is too important and too big to allow the race to stop, the efforts to weaken, the climb to stall, or the pace to ...

When I was a middle school principal, we often hosted visitors to our school. One of the best compliments I ever received from them was about how the school "felt". Time after time, people were impressed with the interactions they had witnessed and would ask me how we created that culture. When pressed to quantify it, I 'd cite student attendance rate, teacher attendance rate and discipline data. But, I was always missing concrete data for how it "felt". Eventually, I gave up trying to quantify it and relied on the impressions and feedback from those within our school and those coming to visit. I was (and will always be) proud of the climate in that school.  Earlier this week, my sister in law took my nephews to their Kindergarten Orientation. I happened to notice what she wrote on Facebook, " Going to be an exciting year for these two!! They have great teachers, and the atmosphere here is comforting!!!"   There it is again. That feeling...from a Mo...