A Long December

Twenty-five years ago, I was a high school kid in the 90s, and in most summers, I used whatever money could manage to save from working to get to as many concerts as I could. I first saw Counting Crows in the summer of '97 and I was hooked. I liked how their style incorporated parts of lots of different types of music. I learned to play a few of their songs on the guitar and quickly found that the lyrics could hook a teenage girl's attention as well. Adam Duritz is the lead singer and songwriter for the band and after visiting a friend in the hospital that had been hit by a car one night, he scratched out the lyrics to Long December on a napkin on his way home. The song is a melancholy ballad that looks back at a tough year but also embraces the idea that the next "year will be better than the last." How appropriate. 

I'm not usually one for thinking that things magically change on a New Year's Eve or that the number of a year brings more luck than another, but somehow this December does bring about a bit of optimism that others haven't. Maybe we are turning a corner, but not just going back to the way things were. We learned a lot about ourselves and about each other. We learned what makes people tick and what makes them give up. We learned when we could be strong and when we've had enough. It's only the 17th, but it's been a Long December, and we've all had the feeling "that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls." Maybe it was full hallways and fights or phone calls to parents that were sometimes tough that made it difficult to get through, but as things started to get back to normal I started to feel better about what I was doing again. And while I know we all have our tired days of figuring out how to make things work again, we are all starting to see glimmers of hope as kids figure out how to get to where we know they can be. 

When I first came to Greene Central nine years ago, I had delusions that I was going to fix everything that I thought was wrong overnight. Six years later I started to see some of the changes happen that I expected. Change didn't happen then as quickly as I wanted it to and the same is true for right now. It takes work. Hard work. But there is optimism when we see things go the way that we want them to, and this time around I can see it coming. Thanks for showing up and for doing the hard work. I genuinely appreciate you all. "It's been a long December, but there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last."

(I realize that I'm getting older and that a lot of our staff were children or may not have even been around in 1997. If you're young or just unfamiliar with the song, here's a link to it and a glimpse of the summer of my freshman year in high school.)

Why Do We Do This Job - Part 3

Kristin White is a loud teacher. That's why Emily Lahr tells her kids that they will learn her curriculum at the same time. You can't help but hear her if you teach across the hall. Her natural enthusiasm is intensified by her passion for what she is teaching and that comes out as loud and exciting. So why is she that excited? The answer lies in a decision that she made years ago and she had me hooked in the very first sentence of her story. "I wanted to do more in life than be a doctor." 

For as long as she could remember, Mrs. White dreamed of being a doctor. She worked hard in school in Kentucky where she grew up. She finished high school there with an aunt when her family moved to North Carolina. After graduating she moved to be with them and continued to work toward her goal of attending medical school. Along the way, her father contracted the West Nile virus and became permanently epileptic. Maybe it was family events that changed her mind, but somewhere along the way, she was miserable in school. She came to the realization that if she was going to be a doctor, focusing on school and school alone was all that she could do. Kristin White had a lot more to offer than that so she told her parents that she had decided to be a teacher. Like good parents, they were worried and even made her talk with a counselor. Kristin wanted to help people and she had a passion for science and while being a doctor would let her pursue both, Kristin had found a way to follow her passion while making an impact in so many other ways. 

Kristin did her student teaching at Greene Central and never left. When she was the young teacher in her department she contributes a lot of help from teachers like Kathy Wegmann and Lisa Wilson. They had been at the school for a while and decided to take her under their wing. As she stayed the science department underwent some turnover and she continued to make connections beyond her hall. She learned that a good teacher doesn't have to be strong in every area, but the school collectively has enough strong teachers to be great overall. It wasn't long before she wasn't the youngest teacher anymore and she found herself supporting new teachers in the same way that she was helped. 

Today, she's still helping everyone with the many talents that she has. Her husband, Stan, joined Greene County Schools as a teacher as well and everyone knows their children. So I asked her if a young person today told her that they were considering becoming a teacher, what she would tell them. She had another great quote,  "Make the decision that feels right for your life." Kristin's life would be very different if she had not made the decision to be more than just a doctor. And if you know anything about her, you know that our school would be very different as well. 

It's Not Political

One of the job hazards of being a principal is that people often recognize you in public and want to ask you questions. At a register this week, the person taking my money gave me that look and asked, "Where do I know you from?" Politely, I responded, "I'm the principal at Greene Central." "I thought so," he responded. That led to a full-blown conversation about "schools today." I chose to engage in the conversation because I've always thought that if you're not promoting the truth about your school, you're letting others promote the version that they believe and this was the perfect case. The clerk at the register had not set foot in our school (or any other) in a long time. Like many people, their understanding of schools today is based on what they hear. The store clerk told me that he was worried about what kids were learning in schools and if they were being "indoctrinated." 

I know that the media, politicians, and Facebook posts love to pick schools apart right now for the same things that the store clerk was worried about. But for those of us that work in a school every day, it's a little hard to figure out what they are even talking about. While we do teach the curriculums that our courses require, the real progress that I see every day involves teaching students how to be better people and how to figure out what they want to do when they leave us. There's no room for indoctrination in college prep, career development, or motivation against apathy and those things are what is really being pushed in schools today. And while it's hard sometimes to see your progress, just think back to the first month of school and compare it to now. It is working and politics or political ideology had nothing to do with any of it. Being an educator rises above those things if you're one that truly cares about kids and their development and success beyond your classroom. 

By the end of the conversation with the store clerk, he told me that I had restored his faith in the local education system. Maybe that's one win. Maybe we can think of it as growth for the public. Because at the end of the day, it's not political to grow a teenager into a productive young adult. It's just education.

Soccer Games and the Lady in the Pink Dress

Last week I traveled to Ohio for a national conference to speak about the research I did with ECU for my doctorate. Many of you know that my research involved finding pathways to college for undocumented Hispanic students in Greene County. I'll quickly admit that until I came to work in Greene County ten years ago, I was unfamiliar with the problem. It wasn't until I met the students and learned of their stories that I decided to try to do something to change the situation locally. In my presentation last week, I was joined by two other colleagues that also focused their efforts on supporting Hispanic students. Our message was mostly well-received with the exception of one participant in the crowd, a lady in a pink dress. This participant was critical that we had not done more to push political activism, and even went as far as to criticize us for not directing our staff on how to vote. It initially bothered me a little but I brushed it off at the thought that she just wasn't aware of the restrictions of K-12 schools versus her own world in higher education. 

The thought of the lady in the pink dress came back to me this week as our soccer team celebrated on Tuesday night. If only she could see just how far our community has come in embracing our Hispanic students and families. Teachers volunteered roles and stepped up in a major way to help run various functions of the game and so many unseen functions before and after. Our stands were filled with a mix of English and Spanish-speaking families, all there to support the same group of students. While the soccer game gave us a reason to all be in the same place at the same time, these are the same people that are always supporting this community. They know the students, their stories, and their goals for life after high school. Our staff supports these students in ways far beyond what is asked and long after the bell rings. When we are called upon to celebrate or help students of any background, we know how to step up and we do, time after time. 

The lady in the pink dress does not know our school or our community. My presentation talked about fancy research methods and didn't fully convey the stories of the human beings that love one another enough to give their time, money, and energy to see others that may not look or speak like them celebrate. Effort and care for others are very hard things to quantify. They don't fit into neat little paragraphs in a dissertation and even less into PowerPoint presentation slides. But if the lady in the pink dress could have been with us on Tuesday night, she would have felt it. If she could see the work of the new Juntos program that Mrs. Galue has been leading, should would have to be impressed. If she can see the relationships that happen in our classes and hear the discussions in our hallways, she would understand. Thanks for embracing this community and for all that you do to support students whose background is different from your own. What you do is much bigger than any dissertation that I can write. 

(Still) Making Do

In 2019 I wrote a blog post entitled "Making Do" where I talk about our state budget and a difference of opinion I had with a state politician. My grandmother used the phrase "making do" a lot to describe how she grew up. She was the second of seven children in a sharecropping family that had a definition of poverty that I am not familiar with. Making Do means figuring out how to get by with what you had. We haven't adopted a state budget since that conversation with the politician and in many ways, we are still making do throughout our state. 

But this post isn't about a state budget. It's about the state of education right now. I work with principals from throughout our state, many of which work in much more affluent school districts than ours. They are used to having resources and the money to acquire them. Principals in high-poverty schools often joke that we do a great job training the teachers that more wealthy areas are happy to steal from us later on. As I talked with some of these principals over the past few weeks, a different perspective hit me. But you'll have to indulge me in a bit of a history lesson and a relation to my grandmother. 

When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression began, many wealthy areas throughout the country and the world suddenly went from rich to poor and struggled for several years to come. On the contrary, rural parts of the south and midwest did not feel the immediate shock. These areas had been poor for a long time. They were used to small houses, families where everyone worked on the farm and worked harder to stay one step ahead of hunger and bankruptcy. This is the life that my grandmother was born into and grew up in. Making Do meant stretching meals, sewing dresses from flour sacks, and contributing to the family as soon as you were old enough to help.

Rural schools were making do long before we did not have a budget or before COVID brought about staff shortages. More affluent districts are realizing a way of life that we have been accustomed to for some time and to be honest, we are better at it than them. We know how to help support others in ways beyond our classrooms or our traditional roles because, quite frankly, we have always had to. That doesn't mean that it isn't difficult but it does mean that we know that we can beat it. In the same way that my grandparents learned to live without many luxuries and could save money and provide a better life for their children, we are doing the exact same thing today with our students. While the state and nation gripe about shortages, I am seeing teachers in our building that roll up their sleeves and get things done. We are still Making Do and we are doing a great job at it. 

No Refs

Our Fall sports teams have done exceptionally well this year. When so many teams do well, along with the other after-school events, it's hard to attend everything that you want to see and support so the administrators usually try to divide things up. Luckily this week, Mrs. Willis was able to come and watch tennis, which is something that I usually cover alone. Throughout the match, I was having to explain the rules and how the game works to her. Her boys are mostly football and track athletes, so she hasn't watched much tennis over the years. As I explained the game to her, she was impressed by the fact that there are no referees in high school tennis. The opponents call the game themselves. If your opponent says that your ball was out, it's out. If you think theirs is in, you play it. It's an honor system that is part of the game. You can question a call, but ultimately it's up to the opponent to do the right thing. Mrs. Willis thought this should be a blog post.

There are a lot of times in life when we want a referee. There should be someone to apply justice as we see it. Someone to make the call for us or someone to blame when we don't like the call. There are a few of those in life, but let's be honest, not many. More often in our personal and professional lives, we make a call on how to treat one another. We make decisions about equity and fairness. Sometimes the judgment calls of others that we interact with are questionable, but just like in tennis, we can't always change how someone else sees things. I wrote a couple of weeks back about trust and I think this is another example. We have to trust one another to make the right call in their dealings with us and in turn, we have to honor the system to make the right call with them, even if we don't like the outcome. It forces us to think about what is right and what is wrong instead of having someone to do that for us. And thinking about how we impact others is never a bad thing.

Respect

Winning Principal of the Year comes with the daunting task of completing a portfolio with a list of your accomplishments and your thoughts on several different questions. As I started working on it, I took notes on those questions so that I could come back and turn those notes into paragraphs later. One of the questions stumped me and I moved on to the next one without any notes. The question reads: How does your school leadership foster an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect within the school? As I continued to work on the portfolio, I kept coming back to this question and it wasn't until yesterday that I could even start to articulate an answer. 

So why did I struggle with this one? It's because I don't think there is any schoolwide policy or agenda item on a Leadership Team meeting that can address it. Trust and mutual respect are a cultural phenomena, not something that can be decreed or set in policy. This is something that is much harder to define, but on Thursday afternoon, I had it. I got called over the radio because Mrs. Edwards heard two students running down the hallway using profanity loudly. I found out that they came from Ms. Best's room so I went to talk to her about it. We have tried several things to manage the two students over the past few weeks with marginal success and my patience with them was quickly running out. But despite the string of issues, Ms. Best (a first-year teacher) was calm, polite and so collected about it. She was still focused on the fact that they missed the directions for their next assignment. Her focus was teaching them. My focus was on trying to help her and the students should have been focused on doing their part. That's how you define mutual trust and respect. In a school, it means being willing to uphold your part in the agreement, even when another member may not uphold theirs. You respect the role that you play because it impacts others and the role that they play. We have boundaries, but we also give grace because students, teachers, and principals are all still learning every day. We trust and respect each other because we have a mission to grow young adults the very best that we can. Without that, it makes it harder for any of us to succeed. 

Now if they will just let me link a blog post in my application...

Why Do We Do This Job - Part 2

Kathy Dail, our school nurse, is the only current employee that has been working at Greene Central longer than Dana Hedgepeth. So technically, Ms. Hedgepeth holds the title of the most tenured teacher. The "Queen of Graduation" attended our school as a student and graduated in 1991. She went to Pitt Community College to become a nurse but quickly learned that she didn't see herself doing that. Against the advice of her family, she decided to become a teacher and came right back to Greene Central in her first year. Almost every teacher in the building had taught her and she did not have her own classroom but lived on a cart that roamed from room to room each period. She was quick to tell me that she cried every day in her first year of teaching. 

Twenty-five years later she can't imagine doing a different job. Today many of her students are the children of former students. Those generational relationships have been a key to her success. Ms. Hedgepeth firmly believes that the relationships she built years ago are still paying off for her today. Living, working and raising her two boys in the same school community where she still works has led many of her students to affectionately refer to her as "Ma" instead of Ms. Hedgepeth. As Ma, her students know that she grew up here with many of the same experiences and struggles that our students experience. And even though she is older than their parents, that relatable nature makes it easier to teach. In room 32, students learn life + math and while they get a credit, they also get someone that they can come to later. 

While Ms. Hedgepeth claims that students today are probably better than they were a generation ago, she also knows that her patience is probably a little shorter now too. Now that she can count on one hand her years to retirement, she doesn't want that to spoil her attitude in the time she has left. She works hard to leave her problems at the door each day. Her students don't deserve to deal with her issues on top of what they have going on.

So when I asked her why she does this job, her answer also had little to do with curriculum. She said, "I love the students. I love my department and the people that I work with. I love the relationships. We are a family, good and bad. It's not about the math, but they accept that later." 

I'm Not Positive

Last week was one of those times where I didn't have much good to say, so I felt like I shouldn't say anything at all. The fights, lack of substitutes, strain on teachers, COVID tracking, and several other interactions throughout the week consumed my time and energy and kept me away from the good parts of my job. It's certainly not the first time it has happened and while I usually try to see the silver lining, I just couldn't for a bit. Here I was telling all of you to take care of your mental health this year and I was a victim of it myself. I have to do better I guess. 

But the start of this week gave me a little perspective on how to do that. Like most people, I told myself that I was going to "be positive." We've all done that, right? You coach yourself with the voice in your head and motivate yourself to accept a challenge or to change your mindset. But somehow the rational part of me took over this time. Let's be honest, last week sucked! It really did. Now I can try to pretend that it didn't or that stress isn't real or I can fake it until I make it, but it certainly doesn't change the circumstances. That's when it hit me that just "being positive" may not be the answer. Bad things happen. Bad days happen. And sometimes bad weeks happen. But instead of telling myself that these bad events are really positive, I decided that I'm going to be optimistic. I think things will get better. 

So like a principal with PTSD, I came to work this week waiting for the next crisis event to happen, but throughout the week I saw things that reminded me why I still love my job. Students and teachers dressed up for spirit week and decorated hallways. The loud noises in the hallways of a fight were replaced with laughter and music as students danced to "throwback songs" between classes. I made some headway with a few kids that I've been working with and I finally got to observe a couple of teachers. 

So I've decided not to be a positive person. Instead, I'm going to be optimistic. I believe that hard work pays off and that through that work, things will get better. Thanks for a great homecoming week and for getting me back in a good frame of mind. I'm optimistic about what next week will hold. 

You Can't Be Half Pregnant

This week I had an opportunity to chat for a while with my neighbor as she watered the flowers that separate our back yards. Both of us always seem to be on the go, and we don't see each other much, so it's nice to catch up when we do. In our conversation about what it's like to work in a school right now, she used a phrase that I have often used, but never really heard many others say. The phrase goes, "You can't be half pregnant." It's a simple, but a humorous idea. There are just some things in the world, that you are either all-in on or all-out. Just like you can't be half-pregnant, there are no part-time leaders and no half-invested educators. You're either all-in, or you're out. Maybe that's why things seem unusually difficult sometimes, and why those outside of our profession don't always understand. 

So many professions get to clock out and go home and while education always tended to linger into our time away from schools and classrooms, the past year or so has greatly increased that. If you are a teacher right now, you are working 24/7. Even if you aren't planning or grading, your brain is churning. Students and parents likely reach out to you when it is convenient to them, but maybe isn't the best time for you. And no matter what you tell others, you know that a large majority of the time, you respond when called upon. You can't be half-pregnant and right now you can't be half-educator. Sorry, but you're all-in. And just like carrying a child to term, we feel the stress, pain, and uncomfortableness along the way, but I've also never met one mother that will say that it wasn't worth it. Hang in there educators, we know that you're all-in and you're doing a great job.

Be The Crazy Teacher

Going into my Senior year in high school, I was already strategizing my senioritis. My best friend and I were trying to avoid Mrs. Sbolci, a notoriously tough Honors English 4 teacher. We wanted none of that, so we signed up for standard level and figured we would coast to an easy A. Of course, they didn't give Mrs. Sbolci Honors English 4 that year and on the second day of school, my coach saw me sitting in what he knew was the wrong classroom and had my schedule changed to the honors section. Instead of Mrs. Sbolci, I had Mrs. Peggy Nelson and I cannot begin to tell (nor would you even believe) all of the stories that came from that class my Senior year. 

Mrs. Nelson was just before retirement and to a class of 18-year-olds, we all thought she was a little crazy. She had stories of talking to the squirrels in her backyard, hilarious lessons on the Canterbury Tales with our class "pilgrimage" and all kinds of conversations that we thought were off-topic at the time, but taught us a lot of life lessons later. That year, we took a Senior trip to London and Paris, and somehow I became her baggage carrier throughout the trip. Mrs. Nelson was a tiny woman and I guess she knew I wouldn't say no. She gave me a shirt as a graduation gift for helping her out. It was nicer than most of the gifts my friends or family gave me. 

Even with my current education and hindsight, I can't tell you that a lot of what we did in Mrs. Nelson's class related to certain standards, but we did have some deep conversations. Those conversations helped shape the minds of a group of young adults that all thought we were the smartest one in the room at some point. We learned to argue with evidence and to make our point without raising our voices. And we laughed a lot. This week I learned that Mrs. Nelson passed away when a classmate sent me her obituary. My memories of her instantly brought a smile to my face. She was the crazy little woman that probably tricked us all into learning to be better adults. 

We spend a lot of time on standards, assessments, and all other tricks of pedagogy and I promise they are VERY important. But every now and then, if we do it right, we get to be the crazy teacher. The one that maybe overshares a little too much or gets too into the lesson or stops a lesson to teach a life lesson. When
the moment is right, don't be afraid to be the crazy teacher. Those are the memorable ones.

"I get to be on a team!"

My daughter, Reagan, is pretty introverted. She's always been content to be by herself working on something that interests her. We struggled for years to find her an activity or sport that she enjoyed and got her out of her bedroom. A few years ago she started competitively swimming and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, that didn't do a lot to expand her social skills. There's not a lot of talking in swimming and she doesn't personally know most of the other kids on her team since they don't live close to one another or go to school together. Reagan decided (after a little arm twisting) to run cross country at the middle school this year. She figured that the extra running would help her in swim and improve her overall endurance. This week they started to practice and when I picked her up on Monday, she was pretty excited. Her very first words when she saw me were, "I get to be on a team!" It only took her one day to recognize how important teams and encouragement within groups can be. She was hooked. 

High school teachers can sometimes be like introverted teenagers. We have a bad habit of hiding within the four walls of our classrooms. We feel that we control that space or can hide within it if we know that something may be wrong. We are not nearly as forced to collaborate as elementary or middle grades teachers are. But there is power in having a team. When you can give and receive help from others that work with similar students, you get that same feeling of encouragement that my daughter got this week. Being a member of a team requires that you give and receive support to the other members, and both of those actions trigger the chemical oxytocin in your brain. Researchers talk a lot about dopamine with kids and engaging them, but we probably should be talking just as much about oxytocin with teachers. It's the chemical that makes us feel loved, safe, valued, and wanted among a group. So if you're already hiding within the four walls of your room this year...GET OUT! Engage your teacher team and contribute to it.

Why Do We Do This Job? - Part 1

I generally spend most of my time with other people. At school, I have very little time alone and at home, I'm generally with my family. So when I have a few minutes to myself, I get to think, and I can sometimes get a good idea or two. One of my thoughts while cutting the grass this summer was to integrate something a little different into my blog this year. Every now and then, I plan to insert a continuing series on what motivates our staff to be an educator. I'm going to kick the series off with my own story and throughout the year, I plan to interview teachers in our building to capture theirs and share them. 

I grew up in a blue-collar family. Most of the men have a history of military service and then moved to a specialized trade and I was on that track as well. Even as teachers recognized that I could be college-bound, I still found it hard to stray from the family path. Military service would lead to college which would just provide the skills for a more specialized trade. I couldn't see much past the path that I was on and did not have anyone in my family that had attended college that could provide me with a different perspective. 

It was my teachers that changed my perspective. These were the teachers that pushed me to take different classes, talked to me like I was their own child, and coached me to be a better student and person. I valued their opinions so much that when they told me that I would be a good teacher, I immediately thought that they had to be right. Blue-collar families don't usually have the means to put their children through college so when a teacher told me about the NC Teaching Fellows scholarship, I was hooked. While I originally wanted to teach math, I changed my mind my senior year to history. Those same teachers helped me earn the Teaching Fellows scholarship along with a few others that made my first years free. And when I got into legal trouble with a few weeks left to graduate, they came and supported me again and convinced the powers that be that I should keep my scholarships. 

It turned out that these influential teachers were right. I was a much better college student because I had found something that I was truly interested in. I liked motivating students and I liked pushing them to be something that they may not have known existed. I do this job because I still owe those teachers. They literally changed my life and probably the life of my children as well. Every new degree or accolade that I have ever received is because an influential teacher guided me to where I am. I can still hear many of their voices in my head when I have that time to reflect and think about problems.

Why do I do this job? Because I am still paying back the wisdom, guidance, and opportunity that was given to me.

What Could Go Right?

Last July, I sat in a county leadership meeting with the other school administrators and central office directors to plan how a school year would work. To say that this meeting and several that followed it were frustrating would be an understatement. I couldn't help but feel that this was never going to work. And don't get me wrong, I wanted it to work. Probably more than most people in the room. I could quickly see that our own fears of making wrong decisions led to no decisions. Obviously, to pull this off, it would take tremendous support and buy-in from teachers, another group that I knew had real fears and concerns. It would put so many of us out of our comfort zones for an extended period of time. I would have never have told you at the start of the school year, but I thought we would last just a few weeks. I've never been happier to be wrong. 

Now that we are at the end of what will always be remembered as a difficult school year, we are starting to think about the next one. We also know that even if we return to operations as normal, next year will be tough. Longer days, fewer workdays, fuller classes, and retraining students to regular expectations will be difficult. As challenging as this year was, we will have to start next year what these new challenges in front of us. It's easy to think about what can go wrong and what will be difficult. A big part of my job is to try to recognize problems and find solutions to them. But if this year has taught me anything, it's that you can't just focus on what can go wrong. 

When we start next school year, there will be plenty of students that welcome the sense of normalcy. Their return to activities and socialization will fill a void that has been empty for a long time. There are also plenty of students that virtual learning didn't work for. A return to classrooms and more interpersonal teaching will reactivate parts of their brains that have been asleep and you'll see those lightbulbs go off. There are freshmen this year that didn't get a real "high school experience" and perhaps a dose of that will excite them, even if it's just a few that emerge as leaders. When we mix this with new skills and abilities that we have picked up this year, there's probably good reason to focus on "what could go right" over "what could go wrong" the next time around. 

Next year, my oldest daughter will be here along with many of her friends that I know well. I can tell you that I hear in my own house a yearning for a normal school year. They are excited about high school. And I can't help but think that for me, that makes it personal to give them back every opportunity that we can. What can go right this next year? I promise I won't doubt us this time.

Thank Your People

Despite the fact that you work with people all day, being a principal can feel like a very lonely job. Your interactions come from people that you manage in some capacity, or from the families connected to them. You don't get much of a chance to interact with peers. This week I had a chance to participate in something that did give me that opportunity and it reminded me of how valuable it is to have people that listen to you. I have done some teaching and professional development work for the North Carolina Principal and Assistant Principal Association. Generally, this work centers on helping teach aspiring administrators or assistant principals that want to take on the principal role. When they contacted me to work on a different kind of project, it quickly caught my interest. This time, I wouldn't be teaching, I would just be facilitating conversations. There are members of this group with far more experience than I have and some with much less, but that's kind of the point. We meet and share ideas about how we can use our experiences to make our own jobs better. Our first event kicked off this week, and it was already a great time for everyone. 

This did get me thinking about how valuable it is to have people that are willing to share your experiences. Many of us are exhausted this time of year and if you take just a second to think about it, you probably have a person or two that you have shared that with. These are the people that are willing to listen to you complain and also the ones that you run to share good news with. We might call them friends, colleagues, or family, but collectively they are "your people." My opportunity to share with a new group of people this week reminded me that we should never take our people for granted. They keep us grounded and their support gets us through good times and bad. Throughout the school year, we celebrate different groups with a week or day to celebrate their position (Teacher Appreciation Week, Principal's Week, Assistant Principal's Week, School Counselor's Week, Social Worker Appreciation Day, and School Nurse's Day to name a few.) Today, I ask that you recognize Your People Day and thank those that have supported you through this crazy school year that we can finally see the end of on the horizon. Thank your people for listening to you, celebrating you, and supporting you this school year. We might not have made it without them!

How Things Seem

Mrs. Whitson saw me in the hallway Tuesday or Wednesday morning before school as she came to fill up her water bottle at the fountain. She asked me how I was doing and all I knew to say was, "Tired." The usual frustrations of the end of the school year along with some unique ones that seem to be beyond my ability to fix caught up with me this week. Yesterday Mrs. Batchelor told me that she was worried about me. I guess I've given off that vibe this week so if I've seemed short, I apologize. 

I generally try to be the guy that promotes being positive and looking at things from the bright side. But when you're tired and frustrated, even the best of us can fall prey to negativity. I'm not sure if you're like me, but when I get like that, I struggle to see the difference between how things seem, versus how they are. I put on blinders to the positive things around me because I focus so hard on the negative ones. 

For some reason, I started to see some of those good things yesterday. I got to hang out at our baseball game and they won in a walk-off. Scarlett Vargas finished her AP Studio Art project and I am absolutely amazed at the talent that comes from that kid. Today our tennis boys play for a chance at a state championship. Yesterday I got to see my daughter play tennis and it was a great distraction. Tomorrow night we get to have a prom again. Sometimes things seem pretty bad, but it helps to have people around you that can remind you of how things are, instead of how they seem. If you're tired or frustrated like me, take a second to see how things are, instead of how they seem. You can focus all you want on the problems, but if don't take a second to focus on the good things too, you lose your balance. Thanks to those of you that helped me find mine.

Reflection

I had just walked in the door and set down my things yesterday when I got a text. I'm pretty sure that my eyes rolled at the thought of what was about to disrupt me from taking a second to unwind. It was one of my professors from ECU. The text read, "What three obstacles have you overcome on the way to earning your degree?" I didn't expect to be prompted with a question. I thought I was done, but there was one last task. It took me a second to think about it and maybe that's the point.

At the end of each year, we hurry to finish our final classroom observations, PDPs, and we complete our summatives. The final standard of the summative talks about reflection. It's the one you can't really observe in a classroom, but I think this year, more than any, it's really important. Taking a few minutes to answer my professor's text made me think about how far I had come, what I had learned, and how I have changed. I'd bet that most of you could do the same this year. If you're like me, some of the obstacles that you overcame this year were external. Maybe it was learning Canvas or communicating with parents when you didn't have good contact information. External obstacles are easy to spot because they are the day-to-day problems that we encounter. But if you really think, you'll also find some internal obstacles. These are our thoughts, habits, or behaviors that have to change. These require personal growth. I've seen SO MANY of you struggle and grow this year as you continuously rose to the challenges that were thrown your way. So at the end of this Teacher Appreciation Week, I'm forwarding the question your way. What 3 obstacles have you overcome this year? It's a harder question than you think, but there's no way you don't feel a sense of pride in your answer.

For the record, here was my answer:

1. Communication: It was hard at times to get what I needed when I needed it. I had to pull from other people to get the info I needed to move forward. 

2. My Own Stubbornness: Working on this degree was some of the most work that I have had to do where I wasn't the one in charge in recent years. When things don't go my way, I have a tendency to dig in and I had to learn to get over that.

3. The Paperwork Process: I had to redo my dissertation submission 5 times. I am still convinced that something is going to be wrong and I won't graduate!

Send me your answers if you're up for sharing. 

"Winning is a Habit"

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the North Carolina High School Athletic Association's Hall of Fame banquet on behalf of Donald Clark. Mr. Clark retired from Greene Central seven years ago, so if you're relatively new here, you may not know his name. But if you're from Greene County or know anything about tennis in North Carolina, you absolutely know him. Mr. Clark came to Greene Central and really wanted to coach baseball, but got asked to fill in as a tennis coach for a bit. Two years later he was 0-32 and really was considering giving it up. But he decided to study the teams that won consistently and copy them. The teams started winning and a few years later were regular contenders for the state championships. Take a look in the trophy case up front and you'll see a lot of tennis in there. Those are because of Mr. Clark. 

When he spoke for the crowd, he said something that resonated with me. He said he learned that winning was a habit and that when you start winning and know how to win, it's hard to stop. Think about how true that is. We sometimes attribute winning to key individuals or superstars in the field, but often when a culture of winning is developed, those teams (or groups) continue to do well after the superstar is gone. Our own tennis program is a great example of that. Mr. Clark has been gone for seven years, but our teams have continued to thrive. They expect to win.

Building a winning culture is hard to do and it doesn't change overnight because you worked hard for one year. Remember Mr. Clark started 0-32. But sustained effort builds upon itself and eventually, it adds up to a lot. We can all learn a lot from Mr. Clark beyond tennis. He is proof that time and dedication to anything can pay off and impact so many others. He taught a small farming community how to win against communities with country clubs, and he left us with a habit of winning. 

Cortisol

A herd of gazelle graze in the savannah. Heads down, eating as they do every day. One is alerted to the rustling of the grass ahead of them. She stops eating and listens. Her senses are on alert to detect danger ahead. Seeing her, others in the herd also go to alert. Evolution has taught the herd to pay attention when any other member senses possible danger as a survival mechanism. Is it the wind, or a lion stalking them? As one gazelle sees the lion inch forward, it bolts in the opposite direction, and instantly the others in the herd flee to safety as well. None of this is learned behavior. There is no discussion or debate on the potential presence of the lion. It is simply biology at work. It is thousands of years of adaptation that have led the gazelle to safety. But it’s not just the gazelle that responds this way, we do it too. 

This has been a stressful year for teachers and we are entering an even more stressful end as we attempt to wrestle with double the student population in our school on top of large numbers of students that do not share the same urgency for effort that we do. On top of that, we are all tired and many of us bring other stressors from outside of school into our hallways. When our bodies are stressed, we release a chemical called cortisol. Cortisol is the chemical opposite of serotonin, the chemical that makes us feel happy. Cortisol can be good if you’re gazelle sensing a lion. It tells your body to go on alert. It’s the “fight or flight” chemical. In some situations, it can keep you alive. But the prolonged release of cortisol has very negative effects on humans and just like the herd of gazelle on the savannah, we respond to others and their stress as a biological mechanism for survival. 

Perhaps the most damaging effect of cortisol on teachers, is how it inhibits you from doing your job. The release of cortisol makes your body focus on trying to remove the stress that it is under and this shuts off the part of your brain that is capable of empathy for others. It tells your brain to save itself and not to worry about anyone else. And if you are a teacher, that means you can’t teach. You can’t care for others. All you can do is wait for someone to jump so that you can jump too. 

In these last six weeks of what has been a very stressful year, I beg you to find a way to release your stress so that you can keep that cortisol from running rampant through your body. Not only will your own body appreciate it, but others around you won’t face a biological need to respond to your stress. Managing your stress allows you to be a good colleague and an even better teacher. So go exercise, read a book, enjoy your family time, eat well and get your sleep. The rest of our herd needs you that way.

Enjoy Your Students

Just as quickly as we shut down last year, our students returned from Spring break and classes were more full than they have been in over a year. It was just in time for our FFA students to compete, the shoppers of the greenhouse to show up, another round of spring sports to kick-off, and the thermostats to switch to cool mode instead of heat. On Tuesday I found myself turning my head to loudness in the halls at class changes, only to see students greeting one another and laughing. We have all been thrown back into a more normal version of school, and while COVID isn't gone, it has been fun to remember what school was like for a bit. 

We still have students that are behind that we will struggle to catch up in the next 6 weeks. Ultimately, there will be students and parents that ask the age-old question of, "What can my child do to pass" when you have sent it out so many times. Your A/C may break down on the first hot day in May. A counselor may have to put a student in your room with 2-3 weeks left in the year. The old problems of school never went away, we were just distracted by new ones. And while we can spend the last 6 weeks in our usual tired and stressed out ways, I'm choosing to take a lesson from Mr. Ginn this year and I'm choosing Joy. I, like many of you, spent all year hoping to have our students back, and now they are here. I got what I wanted and I think some of the students did too. Reversing the impacts that a year of school in a pandemic left us won't be fixed with one summer school session. So instead of stressing over where we are with their learning, I am choosing to celebrate having the students where they are in our classrooms. Enjoy your students. They might not admit it all of the time, but I bet they are enjoying having you just the same.

Remembering Dr. Frazier

An arrogant 26-year-old walked into the principal's office to interview for an assistant principal intern position. He was the first of 3 interviews for the day and all of the applicants knew one another from their graduate classes. When the interview was over, he asked "When do I start?" Dr. Geroge Frazier, the principal, reminded him that there were two other interviews. "I know," the interviewee said, "But I know who they are, and I know who I am. So when do I start?" 

Dr. Frazier called me back two days later to welcome me to the school. I shouldn't have answered the phone. I was in the delivery room with my wife and my new daughter, Reagan. That arrogance went away quickly when I had to ask for a few days before I could start. But he was happy for me and gave me all the time I needed. He was always good at humbling me.

I only worked with Dr. Frazier for one year before he retired from education. He had been the principal at JH Rose High School for a decade and had such a wealth of knowledge. He was way past the excitement of fights or angry parents. He took everything in stride and had such a calm demeanor about him in stressful situations. He carried me everywhere with him that year. I had access to principal meetings, expulsion hearings, and even his resignation with the superintendent. He wanted me there to see and learn, but I was certainly the only principal intern there. He always used to start sentences with, "When you are Dr. Greene..." and follow it with some piece of sound advice that I probably couldn't fully understand at the time. The one that stuck with me was when he told me this: "When you are Dr. Greene, remember that D-R does not equal G-O-D." 

Dr. Frazier called me a few times after he left the school that year. Usually, he wanted me to fix his laptop or wanted a copy of the school newspaper because he wouldn't come in the building to get it. A few months later he passed away. His funeral is still the longest and largest funeral I have ever attended. At 26 years old, I had no intention of earning my doctorate and I brushed off his "when you are Dr. Greene" phrases as nothing more than flattery. But apparently, he was right and for some strange reason, I thought of him the morning I defended my dissertation. I hope he would have been proud. 

I learned a lot from Dr. Frazier that year, and I have learned a lot more from so many of you since then. You have put up with a once-young (now not so much) principal that was genuinely figuring things out as he went sometimes. And while I'm certain that there were times when you may not have agreed with me, you were patient and we figured things out together. While I'm proud of the accomplishment of finishing the degree, I'm more proud of the experiences that shaped me getting here. Experiences with each of you. I think that's what Dr. Frazier might have meant by not being God. I earned a title, but I still don't know everything. It's the wealth of knowledge and experience around us that continues to shape and grow each of us no matter where we are. So thanks for your help along the way. I couldn't have done it the same way without you.

One Year Later

One year ago on March 11th, my family sat at Pizza Villa celebrating my oldest daughter's birthday. We had just left a track meet and we were trying to cheer Rylee up for her birthday after she wasn't too happy with her performance at the meet. Food always changes her mood. I started receiving a flurry of texts about a two-week school shutdown that disrupted the rest of the evening and the next 12 months that followed. 

Last week I wrote about resilience and the many ways that it has shown up this school year. It's been a long year and we have all certainly had many highs and many lows. We have drawn closer to certain friends and family members and been separated from others. We have lost loved ones or know people that have. We have defended or argued against policies put in place that impacted our lives. We developed opinions and changed our minds. But we are still here.

This week our Governor and General Assembly announced that schools would be reopened. I had a parent ask me what I thought about it and I reminded them that we have been open since August 17th. We have been open to in-person learning, virtual learning, late-night Remind messages, phone calls and texts from parents, policy changes, and demands. We have been open to changing how and what we teach. We adjusted to some of it well and for others, it has been a bumpy road. Now, as we look to finishing out the school year with more students in front of us than we have seen in a year, we face one more hurdle. Like all of the other challenges, we will be anxious and we may question motives, but we will still be here. 

I know that this isn't Teacher Appreciation Week, but maybe it should be. Thank you to each of you that have continued to show up over the past year. Thank you for trying when your students haven't. Thank you for adjusting when you might not have agreed. Each of you stands like a lighthouse in a storm and together we will get them through the end of this disruption and get back to the business of school. 

One year later....thank you.

A Theme in News Stories

Over the past two weeks, I've spoken to the media about our school more than I have in the past year combined. It started with the story about Ben Lozano's return to school following cancer treatment. This week I spoke with a reporter doing a story on rural school facilities. and a lack of funding that was promised to improve them three years ago from our state legislature. If you're been anywhere near the work on the library hall or the water leak behind the greenhouses this week, you know this is an issue. Yesterday, I got to participate in a story about how rural schools are making school work this year given the specific challenges that we face. Schools and learning are hot topics right now politically, so it doesn't shock me that news outlets are paying attention to what school is like right now and how different school looks in different places. The pandemic exposed some inequities that many of us have known about for years.

When I was listening to one of our Seniors, Meredith Beaman, speak with the reporter yesterday something hit me. Meredith was asked if she thought that virtual learning during her Senior year would hold her back or make her unprepared for starting college next year. Clearly, the question sets her up to say yes, but that's not what they got. Her response acknowledged the work that our school had done to help students, but it also acknowledged a mindset. Meredith told the reporter that she feels more prepared for college after this year because, in college, it is on you to motivate yourself to do the work and participate when you are supposed to. 

While the three news stories are unrelated, there certainly is a theme. Remember back a couple of years ago, we worked hard on trying to teach resilience? Well, something stuck. Think of the resilience it took for Ben Lozano to fight cancer and return to school without scars on his head even fully healed. Think of the resilience that our staff has undergone this year mixed with the struggle of a school that sometimes needs some work to keep it going. And while so much of our focus this year has been on the kids that are not keeping up with their work, don't forget that most of them are. We are a resilient bunch and there are examples of it all around us. And while being resilient isn't always easy or convenient, it gets the job done. 

I'm Tired

I'm tired this morning. Not the normal tired from mental fatigue that I've often experienced over the past year, but physically tired. On Thursday I arrived at school at 6:30 am to open up and prepare for the day. After school ended at 2:00, we got ready for the "second shift" with a soccer game at 4:00 and a football game at 7:30. I got home last night close to 11:00 pm. Not once in my life have I uttered the words, "I don't think my alarm clock went off" until today. I scurried out of bed quickly at 6:00 am to get ready to be right back here. I made it by 6:45 am. Several of you probably know a similar feeling this morning if you coached or helped out last night. I'm not sure if you'll share my feelings, but I can tell you that I think it's a glorious thing. 

Yesterday I got my first vaccine shot and I've never thought twice about it. I have been fascinated with the science of it and impressed with the rollout. As a history teacher, it reminds me of the civilian efforts under World War II and the science expansion of the Space Race all rolled into one. And while some people are skeptical, I personally trust the experts. Similarly, we ask parents and our community to trust us as experts with the education and welfare of their children. 

I know that many of you have either received or scheduled your first vaccine shot already this week, but if you're on the fence, I encourage you to do it. I am tired this morning, but it's a tired like I have not been able to feel in a year. It's a tired that I missed. It's a part of my life that I got back, and even if it's just a small piece, for now I'll take it. I'll sleep well this weekend for sure.

Let's Hear It for the Girls

One of the initiatives that was given to me eight years ago when I became the principal of Greene Central was to reignite our Ag and FFA membership. More specifically, we were recruiting girls. At the same time, our STEM program was very young and it also had a goal of 51% female membership in STEM courses. These initiatives were started because our leaders recognized that these fields are overwhelmingly dominated by males and if we are going to pave the way for things like gender and pay equity, we have to get girls interested in these programs early on. 

I can tell you that it's been a bumpy road to get the kind of female participation in FFA and Ag courses that we had been hoping for. It's hard for students to take the first step into something like that where they are an instant minority. They will tell you that they quickly recognize that "there's no one like me in that class." I've heard that response from so many students over the years and I'm still always shocked by how observant students are on things like this. 

But perhaps we have turned a corner. This week, our FFA team had their first competition and when you see the list of winners, it's hard not to recognize something different. Eight out of the twelve winners were girls, including an all-female parliamentary procedure team that took first place. The entire officer team is female as well. That's nothing short of impressive and exactly what we have always been hoping to achieve. So give credit where it's due. Our girls are doing a great job. And we can't diminish the great work that the boys have done as well. Their accomplishments are just as important. And that's the point of equity. I'm just proud to say that we have come to see a longtime goal achieved. 

Investments

This past week I had my annual meeting with my investment guy. He handles my retirement savings and the college savings for my girls. Our conversation is always about the same. We look at what's happened over the past year and we talk about what he projects retirement and college will look like in future dollars if we stay the course. He always reminds me that we shouldn't think about growth as good times or bad, but how it looks averaged out over decades. When the stock market is doing great, we are always happy but when it starts to turn, you can't help but wonder if you're doing the right thing. Either way, he says it always works out to an "expected growth" over the long term. 

He used the word "growth" enough to trigger my thoughts about student growth. We generally look at student growth from year to year as they matriculate through different levels of math, science, and English. We talk about Expected Growth and High Growth for EOC courses and those teachers use lots of specific strategies to try to get the most out of growth. But once the student leaves their class, they are most likely forgotten as the new group comes in. Unlike the advice that my financial advisor gives me, we think of growth in the short term, instead of the long term and I think we might be missing the point. I won't say that we are not concerned with growth this year at all, but it's easy to see that our focus is not the same as it would be under normal circumstances.

If you take a step back and see students over time, we can start to see that "expected growth." Their elementary teachers made the initial investments. Middle and high school teachers built from there and tried to compound it. After us, they will continue to learn professional and life skills that further enhance their growth. And just like stocks, some have bad years and some have tremendous years. Overall, we hope that the growth averages out and a well-rounded, educated person emerges. Not all investments make us rich, but if they slowly grow over time, they do pay off. If a student leaves us and has a career, supports a family, and contributes to a community, we have to regard that as expected growth. Every now and again, we get one that exceeds expected growth, and those are the great stories that we love. But what we have to remember, is that we have no way of knowing the final outcome in the short time that they are with us. We are simply the installments. We are payments made to a long-term growth plan. And even if this might be a year that doesn't fully yield what we want, it doesn't mean that our investment is lost. If we stay the course and we all give a little, we can still expect a return, and sometimes that return can still be huge. You just never know which ones it might be.

Support your School Counselor

Last week I was talking through the registration process with Stephanie Snow. She was stressed because it will take longer this year than normal due to the tracking of students and the restrictions on the number of students that the counselors can meet with at a time. She also knows that the time that students are in class is very valuable and she wanted to protect that for teachers. After finally scratching out a plan, it hit me that our counselors haven't had much of an opportunity to do the rewarding parts of their job this year. Their time has been filled with endless scheduling needs, student and parent check-ins, and locating disengaged students. In the meantime, we have squeezed in college planning, FAFSA applications, program enrollments, and the other more redeeming work that they do. (Ironically, our FAFSA applications exceeded last year's total by just October of this year.) They have been caught in a world of trying to triage students that are not successful while still finding time for students that are. 

If I'm being honest, the school would run fine without me right now. So many of you know and demonstrate leadership and could take the reins of what traditionally fills my time if you had to. But I cannot imagine school this year without effective school counselors. They built the framework for how our school functions under Plan B and keep the wheels moving every day. Their work defines the term "essential" that seems overused in many areas by comparison. 

So if you haven't spoken to our counselors lately, make a point of it today and show some love. They deserve it now more than ever.

"I don't know how to teach people how to care."

It's strange how some things can stick in your brain. Things your parents or grandparents tell you as a child, or messages from your heroes often occupy a part of your brain and stick there. I'm almost certain that there are important things that went into one of my ears and out the other. It just didn't stick. And then there are things that seem meaningless at the moment, but make so much sense later on. This week I had one of those experiences and it led to a bright idea that I really do think can help us be better educators right now. 

In the 2016-2017 school year, Carrie Ann Miller had agreed to take a step out of teaching full-time to try to coach other STEM teachers. At the time she had received a lot of praise for the work that she was doing and STEM education was a buzzword nationally. We had asked her to try to get teachers to think and work in the ways that had made her successful. She was apprehensive but agreed to try. We knew going into a coaching position, that it is hard to see quick success. Ask any of our instructional coaches. Getting adults to change is difficult, but incredibly rewarding when it pays off. Carrie Ann quickly realized something about herself and what was holding her back as an instructional coach and what she told me has occupied a small corner of my brain ever since.

"I don't know how to teach people how to care." 

Carrie Ann wasn't critiquing the pedagogy, standards alignment, or any other piece of instruction that she thought she was there to fix. Those parts are easy to identify and much easier to correct than other problems. What she saw instead was that when teachers were struggling, so were their students and vice-versa. This struggle often left teachers, good teachers, being dismissive or overly focused on tasks than on human beings. She wasn't saying that they didn't care about their students or even their work. Instead she saw a difference in how teachers managed students and themselves in difficult situations and how easy it was to forget that we are people first. Her struggle left her frustrated and she returned to the classroom full-time the next year because she needed to feel the success of something she knew she could control. 

I had not thought much about that year until this past Friday when I heard a podcast about the economics of compassion in medical care. The show cited several research studies that proved that compassion and empathy on behalf of the doctors actually made patients heal faster, provided less expensive care, and reduced doctor burnout. They could provide amazing medical care, but beyond that, the biggest impact on themselves and their patients had nothing to do with medicine. The researcher was now searching for ways to teach doctors how to care about patients as human beings instead of just treating their illnesses.

So many students are in a state of educational trauma this year and so many teachers have resorted to some form of triage as we try to make things just work for a bit. If that's left you burned out or if your students just are not responding to every education trick you try, maybe it's time to try a dose of compassion. It sounds strange and a bit hokey, especially for high school teachers, but I can tell you that there's a lot of research that says it works. We have to teach everyone how to care right now.

What Are We Grading?

Any teacher that was forced to sit through an educational history or methods course can tell you that the birth of public schooling is rooted in the industrial revolution and a need for a labor force that had basic skills and could follow routines. While curriculum and pedagogy have branched out a lot since then, we haven't strayed far from our roots. We still ring bells and have routines that could easily be compared to the factory system. There has been a modern push to change some of that and it has gained some traction in the concept of grading for mastery. In Greene County, we see it in lower grades with our standards-based grading system and in upper grades, we introduced rubrics. If you were here in the RBT training years, you might recall the Met or Not Met grades that we were encouraged to give. These new grading systems try to focus more on what kids know and can do, but they are also sometimes difficult for parents to understand because we received grades on a numerical scale and that's what we know. 

Since the first progress reports went home this year, I've thought a lot about grading. It's hard not to right now. We worked hard to get students to submit assignments and the phrase, "Just turn in something" was often heard. We gave students authentic grades and after the first report card, we knew we had to do something and developed remedial assignments. That made a big difference, but not big enough to keep me from worrying about it. 

The two children that sleep in my home have done well this year. They have all As and have learned to communicate with their teachers on their own. I'm proud of them for adjusting, but it hit me this week that those grades don't truly belong to them. Those are household grades. My children live in a home with two parents with advanced college degrees. They have access to reliable, high-speed internet and any other tool they need to be successful. Their parents manage people and programs or a living and know the education system well. My children don't have a reason to not do well right now. The problem is that we are the exception and not the norm. 

When students spend seven or more hours at school every day, we are some of the largest contributors to their thoughts and expectations. While we still struggle with getting some students to comply, we can get the majority. It's probably not a fluke that in a normal year, the failure rate hangs close to the unemployment rate and that's pretty low. This year things are different and failures don't reflect curriculum that students can't do, they most likely reflect work they haven't attempted or submitted. Mix that with an adapted curriculum and we are moving much closer to grading compliance than we are learning. 

So what's the answer? I have no clue. And I don't really think anyone else does either. But I believe that necessity is the mother of invention and we are in a time of great need. The education world is holding on to hope that everything goes back to the way that it was, but I believe that teachers are perfectly positioned to create change right now. So how do you know what your kids can do? How do you know that they have learned and grown? You are all in the driver's seat to help make some of those decisions and I'm so curious to see what comes out.

What Did You Do Right?

I started doing my third quarter observations this week. The rubric doesn't exactly fit the way school works right now, so I have been learning how to give a little more latitude on some of the elements that I used to be very specific on. Usually, when an administrator gives you feedback on an observation, you're happy to hear what went well and anxious to see if there's something they did not like or a suggestion for improvement they may have. It's human nature to focus on the negative or to take it more to heart. I had that in my mind this week and stumbled across an article that suggests that focusing on our weaknesses might be detrimental to your future decisions as well. If you're one of those people that gets anxious at the bad news or the negative feedback, it can be even worse for you. 

We started this school year knowing what didn't work from virtual learning last Spring. We went on to center our professional development at fixing courses, improving communication, and trying to fix everything that was wrong. And if you are normal, at some point that work put you in a bad mood. I know I'm certainly guilty of that. With all of the focus on what's been wrong, I thought it might be time to start focusing on what is going well and where we have made progress. Some of you are already doing this and I hadn't really noticed until I stopped this week to focus on it myself. Here are a few successes that came to mind this week:

• The OCS classes are setting up an occupational lab in the school to teach work skills since they can't travel to work sites.
• Five beginning teachers decided to take on an extra professional development with Mrs. Garcia and she's so excited about working with them.
• Mrs. Head holds a voluntary live Zoom each morning to teach Math 1 to any teacher's students and they are attending without having to or receiving any other incentive. 
• Mr. Gnau got back to coaching men's soccer this week with a large majority of players eligible to play despite the academic challenges of the Fall semester.
• Mrs. Mattocks has been initiating our freshmen to the library as a part of her world history classes and it's great to see the space being used by students again.

There are many more, and certainly, some that I have left off that you've shared with me this week. And I think we need to start taking a little time to focus on what we did right. Look for some opportunities to share your successes throughout this semester, big or small. Your ideas and ability to overcome challenges can unlock inspiration in others, and focusing on your successes keeps you in a positive mindset to make better decisions in the future. 

A Fresh Start

In the Fall of 2000, I entered ECU as a Teaching Fellow. I was a first-generation college-goer that had plenty of great support from high school teachers that filled some voids that my parents were not able to fill when it came to the college process. Despite the support, like most teenagers with a new-found sense of freedom, I proceeded to have a really good time in that first semester of college. Hopefully, many of those exploits remain as skeletons in the closet, but it can easily be deduced that academics were not my first priority...or second...or third really. 

The director of ECU's Teaching Fellows program at my induction was Dr. Ronny VanSant. Dr. VanSant was a legend in the world of the Teaching Fellows program throughout the state. She had very strict expectations for how we dressed and behaved as representatives of the program and as recipients of the scholarship dollars. It didn't take me long to recognize that Dr. VanSant didn't seem to care much for my attitude or appearance sometimes. I associated mainly with a group of other students that seemed to not fit in as well. I can't say that I blame Dr. VanSant one bit for recognizing that I did not display what she wanted from me. She was proud of her program, and I wasn't always bringing good things her way. 

Several things happened after that first semester though. Many of my friends had failed courses and were on academic probation. It became pretty clear that they would lose their scholarships. And while I was not in their position, I knew that I wasn't doing what I should be doing either. My grades were not what they should have been and I knew I was dialing it in. I didn't exactly have a backup plan and joining the military with several of my friends that knew they were leaving didn't sound appealing to me at 19, so I decided to distance myself from some of my distractions and start trying. Now I do not proclaim that I made a quick turnaround. I still struggled to change throughout that Spring semester, but I had some help. 

Dr. VanSant had to leave her position due to illness and an interim director took her place. Mary Beth Corbin took over and fortunately, she didn't have the same first impression that I had given before. Mrs. Corbin never treated me like anything other than a great student. She was always welcoming, easy to talk to, and overly helpful. I went from being someone that dodged the Teaching Fellows office, to someone that stopped in to say hello or ask for help. I joined committees and volunteered. And while I doubt Mrs. Corbin even knew of the influence she had on me at the time, I'm eternally grateful to her for the fresh start that she gave me. 

This week we begin a new semester in a school year that has seen record student failures due to the pandemic and the nature of schooling. At the end of the first 9-week period, about 43% of courses were failing in our school. By the end of the semester, that fell to 28%. While that's great progress, it's still a staggering number. But it does show that many of these students recognized a need to change and at least started that transformation. As a student that has been in those shoes, I am telling you just how important it is for you to be the leader that gives them a fresh start. Embrace them despite their past. Encourage them when they struggle. Lift them when they fall. The opportunity you give them can be just as influential as it was for me.