Lessons

With the onset of Spring, I've found myself immersed in Spring sports. I am always nostalgic this time of year when I go to a home track meet. I coached track for several years and was fortunate enough to have some very successful teams and individual athletes during that time. Just visiting a track meet brings me right back and I can't help but talk to athletes and start coaching them. That was fueled this week when I read an article (you can find it here) about the life lessons that the author learned from her high school track coach. There are so many things in this article that I remember teaching my athletes and so many of them that translate directly to the classroom for students and that I still try to instill in us as educators on the same team. Out of the 12 lessons mentioned in the article, I found 2 that I think are pretty applicable to us this time of year. 

Lesson #7 - Take a Rest Between Seasons - 

"You'll come back stronger; I promise. This one was really hard for me. I'd eagerly ask my coach every year if I could compete in cross-country finals on Saturday and start track season on Monday. But he'd always make me take a solid week off and away from the team, with zero exercise. This one was hard for me. Learning how to rest is not easy, but it's so essential to avoiding both injury and burnout."

Many of us are at the point of saying that if we can "just make it through next week, we'll be fine." I get that, and trust me, even as the principal, I feel the same way too sometimes. I strongly encourage you to use next week wisely and set yourself up to fully relax during Spring break. Even if you can have your copies, grading and lessons ready to go for the Monday that we return ready, it will give you that full week of rest that can be worry free. Set yourself up to rest and then do just that.

Lesson #12 - When it's hard, try to laugh -

"A little humor can ease up any hard practice and make it fun. For my coach, it was his self-deprecating jokes that had us in tears during chilly interval workouts. So crack a joke when the going gets rough, because we could all use a little bit more laughter in our lives."

Sometimes, even when you are trying you're heart out, things don't go as planned. It's at that point that you really have 2 options to respond: complain or laugh. Complaining won't make you feel a bit better, but laughing always will. If you can practice this with your students, it will help them just as much. So in the spirit of laughing at self-deprecating jokes, enjoy this picture of an 18 year-old me. A track-ready, 130 lbs, skinny-necked kid that thought he was the coolest thing ever. He definitely wasn't.

Luck of the Irish

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and that is a holiday that my family celebrates proudly. Growing up, I was always told about my Irish heritage and how we came from Irish immigrants that came to America in the first migration. In the past year, I took one of those DNA tests that you mail in and found that I'm about as much African as I am Irish. (2% each) But St. Patrick's Day is one of those days that everyone gets to be Irish. With that, we think of the phrase, "Luck of the Irish." Historically speaking, that phrase has nothing to do with luck at all. It came from the days when gold and silver mining in America was done predominately by Irish immigrant labor. In those time, mining was more of a guess as to where these precious metals were located. When these Irish miners would find them, the owners used the term Luck of the Irish condescendingly to mean that it was their luck, not their brains, that led them there. While the phrase was meant to belittle the group, I think it speaks more about how hard work leads to luck.

People often think about luck as just good fortune that follows certain people. I've come to think that lucky people are often persistent and determined. When the big play happens for an athlete, we forget the countless hours of practice. When someone wins the lottery, we forget the hundreds of times they lost. So in honor of tomorrow's holiday, may the luck of the Irish be with you in finishing out this school year. It may not be brains that makes it through, but determination and hard work can get us there.

Together We Will

This weekend's state championship basketball game has certainly changed the atmosphere of the school. It feels like that has been almost all that anyone wants to talk about. The community is excited and anxious, but more importantly they are supportive. So many people have come out to buy tickets or t-shirts and to offer their hopes of a win. On Wednesday, the team sat down after practice to eat pizza and listen to a message from Michael Jenkins, a speaker with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The heart of the message came back to three words: Together We Will.

Michael has spoken to the team several times throughout the season and his message has not changed. He wanted each of them to understand that they are not perfect. They make mistakes. We all fall short of what we plan to do from time to time. And while you should be personally accountable for your mistakes if you want to be better, being a part of a team also means that there are others there to pick you up and support you. Alone you may not achieve your goal, but together we will. Being a part of a team means sharing responsibility, sharing celebrations and sharing blame. No one player loses a basketball game. No one teacher achieves school growth. These things happen when everyone works together. It is not always easy or timely. There are a ton of people that thought that we should have been at this game last year. There were fans this year that stopped supporting when we had early losses to South Central and Kinston this year. But somewhere along the way, the messages of grit, determination, teamwork and mutual accountability that so many of you have resonated in your classrooms over the past few years stuck with these young men. They understood that together we will get there.  These lessons became a mentality and they will extend far beyond a basketball court. I hope that each of you know that you are a part of this team. You contributed to this mentality. You held them accountable when they failed to meet expectations and you celebrated their successes. Saturday's game is as much your championship as it is theirs. It is all of ours. Thanks to all of you for putting in that work.

We Need More

I'll admit that I can easily get passionate enough about a topic that I can go to great lengths to argue my point. I can easily get frustrated when people don't automatically see things my way and it is something that I sometimes have to check myself on. Being patient does not come naturally for me. Last week I wanted so badly to espouse my thoughts on guns in schools, our mental health system, failing parents and failing legislators in an effort to deliver what I thought was a common sense approach to school and student safety. But my temper wasn't ready to put that out there yet and I had to be patient. Being combative and argumentative toward others that are a part of the process, often alienates them when we should being finding common ground instead. So in my attempt to regain rationality, I look to positive people that are up lifting.  This week's voting for Teacher of the Year told me that many of you may have been feeling the same way.

Michelle Galloway has always been the same. Her ever-positive, bright smile is infectious. I first met her when she was still teaching for a Pitt County school and she arrived with a group of people that were interested in starting a church and needed a place to host others on Sundays. At that first meeting, I had no idea if she could teach or not (but trust me, she certainly can). I saw someone that cared. She knew many of our current students and that same positivity shined through. I knew right away that I needed her here. Despite working with some of our most needy students, that positivity has been unwavering. It's just hard to have a bad day when you're in her classroom.

The world needs more people like Mrs. Galloway. We have enough hot-tempered ones that are ready to argue all of the time. And while I don't see myself losing those character traits anytime soon, I am also smart enough to know that there are many times when a bright smile and a helping hand will achieve so much more than criticism ever could. We need more of that.