Taking My Medicine

After hitting the submit button on my blog each week, I read it one last time in the same format that you see it. I like to make sure that the layout looks right and check one more time for errors. When I read last week's message about having a hook and making your message interesting, I asked myself how I was practicing what I was preaching. You see, just like you, I complain about things that I sometimes think are beyond my control. I rant about laws and policies that I don't agree with and about parents that I cannot get to see things my way or engage at all. I am really always looking for that second part. I genuinely want our student's parents to support the school, you as teachers and their children's education. Just like you, I run into barriers and I complain.  It's tough when you hold a parent meeting and three to five parents attend. So when I read my words about making my message interesting, I realized that I was not doing that for parents. I needed to take a dose of my own medicine and I needed a hook.

This reflection prompted the insanely silly snow day message that went out to parents through phone calls and through Facebook and Twitter. I spent a morning writing the lyrics and Mr. Hazzard gave me a crash course in Garageband and I was off. I had no idea how well it would work. After over 100,000 views, 1,300 shares and a lot of texts, calls and comments in stores, I realized just how powerful a hook can be. I managed to get parents and the community to pay attention. While I don't intend on sending out every message from the school in the style of old-school rap, we do have plans for more creative messages that promote school events or important information that needs parent involvement. We have their attention, now we need to say something worth hearing.

The end of the semester is the perfect time to reflect on your practice as well. Take a minute and think about some of the great advice that we give to our students and how that can be applied and modeled in what you do. We preach attention and get distracted ourselves. We want creative solutions and problem solving and we give up on things we feel we cannot change. We are all guilty of it. We're human. But sometimes when we take a minute to try to see things in a different light we get a silly little idea that just might work.