Extra Credit

The job of assistant principal can sometimes be a pretty thankless one. In essence, your job is to make someone else look good at their job. In doing that, there isn't always a lot of praise or credit for the work that you do. Luckily, I had a mentor in my first years in administration that decided to change that. His thought was that while he had reached his career goal, he knew that I was just starting on mine. It was a powerful lesson for me, and one that I have tried to pay forward and not just to my assistant principals. There are so many people that make the wheels of progress move in education that don't have lofty titles. And while the system does not put these people with large salaries or anything like that for the things that they do that are above and beyond the call of duty, it's only human nature to feel proud when you're acknowledged for your efforts. 

As we start to wrap up the craziness of the year and set grades for student work, we have pretty clear guidelines from the state on what we must do. These guidelines have certainly come with harsh criticism and arguments that have merit on both sides. Our current situation in education has exposed great inequities in our society and how those inequities impact student learning. It has also exposed just how little some people knew of these inequities that have been present for a long time. Despite the criticisms, we have a path toward final grades and in that path, teachers can choose to improve a student's grade based on work done at home. For some kids this was easy, for some it was not. But in the spirit of giving credit where it is due, I want to ask that you adopt the philosophy of my mentor. Recognize and appreciate the efforts, even the small ones, of so many of our students that have made an attempt during this time.  Recognize that they have gone through the same frustrating feelings that we did about school. Give credit to the fact that their homes are not your classrooms. Understand that their efforts come from internal motivation, not a paycheck or in many cases, even a grade. So as you assign a final grade in the coming days, I challenge you to reach out one last time and give credit where it is due to the students that tried. It hasn't been easy for any of us recently, but their efforts probably deserve a little extra credit. 

Teacher Appreciation

It's Teacher Appreciation Week, and while I've been working all week on a light-hearted appreciation message to tell you all how important and valued you are right now, I was struggling to connect real meaning to it. My message changed this week as I, like many of you, learned about the sad case surrounding the death of Ahmaud Arbery. If you haven't learned about this story, you certainly owe it to yourself to learn more. While the events that occurred in Georgia on February 23rd speak strongly of the state of our society, I heard a story of education. It's a story that reminded me of myself and how different my life could have been as well.

I grew up like so many other white males in the South. I had two parents with decent jobs that put us in a place that in a rural area, you could call the middle class. We ate, paid our bills, and lived in a home, but also never had a lot of money for extras. Coming from a working-class family in the South, you are not often surrounded by college-educated people. Instead, you are surrounded by people that have worked hard but also often come with pre-conceived notions that were handed down in their homes and communities instead of through experiences outside their direct reach. Make no mistake about it, this is where bigotry lives.

I love my family and the extended community that raised me, however, if I'm being honest, racial slurs and prejudiced thoughts were commonly thrown around in my environment. Those thoughts and words were things that had passed down through generations. I would have been next and I can recall instances where that thinking had started to creep in. But luckily, there were people fighting that. My experience with African American teachers and teacher assistants in my schools left me conflicted. The words I heard outside of school did not match my admiration and love for these people. The more educated I became and the more experiences I had with people unlike myself, the more I learned about myself.

While we would like to believe that the incident in Georgia is something from generations before us, it isn't. And this is why we need to appreciate teachers now more than ever. Make no mistake about it, bigotry lives with ignorance. Our teachers (white, brown, and black) do damage every day to the systemic ignorance that allows these events to continue. I'm proud to say that I learned how to grow out of my past and my environment. And I learned that from teachers that cared about me. It was never in a book or in a curriculum. There was no multiple-choice test. No one got a bonus for teaching it well. But teachers taught me to be a better human.

Today, I don't have to deal with the words and ideas of my upbringing. It is something that has been lost in my family. My parents no longer condone it and my children do not even know about it. It's foreign enough now that when I heard about Ahmaud Arbery, it was a harsh reminder of reality for others. So as we end this year's Teacher Appreciation Week, on what would have been Arbery's 26th birthday, I want to say thank you to teachers for changing lives. Your love and compassion for children, coupled with the opportunities of education, will continue to work to erase ignorance in all forms. I just wish we had kids with us right now, because we still have some very important work to do.