Check Yourself

I have been working on a project for a while now to change some policy and budget legislation. With election season upon us and the interim budget changes getting ready to start, that work has kicked back up. This time around I have some new thought partners in the process and it's been super helpful. It's always nice to have a partner on a project who carries their weight on tasks and can talk the talk and walk the walk. Last weekend we did some revising to the policy and drafted some new ideas for messaging. It was really good work. While it was all fresh in my brain, I sent the information out to a larger group with all of the ideas that we had talked through. It was literally a giant brainstorm put into organizers and carefully drafted words. And I seriously messed up. I gave absolutely no credit to my partner for their contribution to it. It wasn't on purpose but it hurt their feelings. And rather than let that get in the way, they let me know. 

Have you ever messed up and not given credit where it was due? I feel like I do it at the worst possible times. I put my head down and focus so hard on a goal, and in the process, sometimes forget about those that are working on it with me. Luckily, this person was great enough to check me in a nice way, but if that hadn't happened, I could have lost out on a thought partner or even lost a friend. The truth is that we all have partnerships like the one I referenced every day. These are the people that you ask to do things to help you personally and professionally. They get you through things, listen to you rant and (if you're lucky) check you when you mess up. It's important to have people like this in our lives. They hold us support us but also hold us accountable. You very likely work with some of these people. They are the ones who don't mind stepping in with some other part of your life is in chaos. They are the ones that are our first pick to work with when we have a task or a challenge. They are the ones that you would do the very same thing for in return. So before you mess up like I did, take a minute this week and check yourself. Who are the people you count on and appreciate that you might not give credit to? Give them that credit. It will mean the world to them and that feels so much better than the feeling of regret when you realize you didn't.

The Costs of Umbrellas and Funnels

Part of my work outside of my role as the principal of Greene Central involves providing professional development and courses for new and aspiring administrators. I also do some policy and advocacy work around the role of school administrators. These roles usually mean that I have to explain what modern principals do each day, week, month, and school year. The job has changed a lot since I started it and today, we find ourselves in the middle on mandates from the district, the state or the federal government and the students, teachers and community that we lead. So when a new need or policy arises, we find ourselves having to make a decision on how to go about it. Usually that decision requires that we be an umbrella or a funnel. 

As an umbrella, I try to shelter those below me from as much as I can. Having an umbrella in a storm doesn't guarantee that you stay dry, but it does a great deal to protect you from being soaked. As a metaphor, it means that while teachers and students might get some exposure, generally I try to cover them myself by taking on the bulk of the implementation of that new thing. Conversely, by choosing to be a funnel, I have to pass things along to teachers and students to do and I direct that as much as possible as it moves through me. Parent contact for absences, tardies and smaller classroom behaviors are a good example of this. I help direct policies that ask teachers to do the first interventions because there are more teachers than there are counselors and administrators to take this on daily. 

There are costs to umbrellas and funnels. As a teacher, it's probably easier for you to see the cost of a funnel. It comes as an ask of your time at the expense of something else you would have been doing. It's "another thing" to think about and adds something to your plate. It doesn't always feel fair, even if you understand it's purpose. The same is true for umbrellas. When I decide to shelter teachers or students, it means that it is another thing that I take on and there's almost certainly an opportunity cost. It could mean that I'm less visible, have less time to be in classrooms, or direct less resources to something that had previously done just fine. 

For either choice, there is a cost. But here's the thing; we know it's going to rain. New things will come and will ask for our time and attention. New problems will arise. So when that rain falls, we can have an umbrella or a funnel waiting, or we can all just get soaked in the storm and no one wants that. So maybe we need to do a better job of talking about what we do with and for one another. Just understanding and appreciating the burdens that we carry can give us tons of perspective. Becasue while the costs of umbrella and funnels can sometimes feel quite high, the costs of finding shelter in a storm are always priceless.

Courage

Like most young children, my younger brother fixated on different things as he grew up. TV shows and movies are often watched on endless repeat for kids at that age and for some strange reason, his first addiction was to The Wizard of Oz. My brother is five years younger than I am so I have pretty vivid memories of being subjected to watching that movie over and over again. To this day I could probably quote it word for word. As I grew up and read the novel by L. Frank Baum, I gained a different appreciation for the messages in the story. Later as a student of history, I learned that the characters were metaphors for different American political figures and themes. This week I was reminded of one of those characters, the Cowardly Lion. 

Someone asked me a great question this week. "What makes a good leader?" There are so many different qualities that we respect in good leaders, so it seems like such a trick question to try to narrow it down. When you do try, the definition that emerges almost seems inhuman and free of faults. In our minds, they are universally revered and inspire us. They have answers to questions when we don't. They pull us up when we are down and somehow never seem down themselves. It doesn't take much pause to know that those ideas are unachievable, even for the best of leaders. So what is it? My answer was courage. Courage is deciding to take action even when you are afraid or unsure. It's knowing that you may not be right, and being willing to deal with that because you know that doing nothing might be worse in many situations. It means to take a chance to be the first voice to speak up, the one that cares for others, and the one to take action when there is no clear path. 

In The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion struggled with a lack of courage. He emerges in the story with a loud roar to be feared, but at the first sign of resistance, he cries and backs down. However, throughout the story, his attachment to the group and their mission gives him opportunities to be a leader. His actions are never for himself and he's always motivated by doing something for the group. The irony at the end of the story is that he had a heart (courage) all along. Being a leader is inside all of us. We are classroom leaders, leaders on the playing field and other extracurricular activities, leaders in teacher groups, and just life leaders for students and peers. And just like the Cowardly Lion, those traits are inside of each of us. It often just takes a little courage for them to come out and to take a chance to do what we felt was right or needed. 

Inaction

At the end of 2022, my life was in the midst of a lot of change. I felt as if I was constantly chasing my tail to meet the new expectations that had been thrown upon me as the state's POY, while also trying to figure out how to do my job back at school and be a parent and spouse at home. I was doing everything and felt like I was achieving very little. I'm a pretty reflective person and with all that I was doing, I hadn't taken time to assess how I was doing. I decided to deliberately carve out some time each day to refocus and reflect and the best way that I knew to do that free of distraction was to go for a run. I went for a run every day in 2023 and it did wonders for me. I made time for myself and the physical activity helped my mental health quite a bit. But this story isn't about the action of daily running, it's about what I didn't do before; the inaction. 

It was no revelation to me that I was drowning in the months leading up to my decision to make a change. I've been there before and we all probably have. We have something new come into our lives, maybe a job, a relationship, or a child, and it drastically changes our daily activity and how we spend our time. The new thing demands something of us and we somewhat subconsciously stop doing other things. We change. But change isn't always good or easy and some of the things that we left behind were good for us. They provided a sense of identity or a distraction from the stresses of life. That's exactly where I was. I had let go of the things that gave me joy and filled that space with more expectations. The inaction of taking care of myself was taking a toll on me. I knew that I should be doing a better job of managing my life, but I thought that I could be everything to everyone and I was wrong. 

Inactions can be found everywhere and they usually aren't a surprise to us when we realize the consequence. They can be inactions in our personal lives or inactions in our professional lives that jump up and remind us of something that we should have done. I chose the start of the new year in 2023 to turn that inaction into action that I knew would be positive for me. It had a trickle-down effect as I reprioritized how I spent my time in my personal and professional life. Simply put, I knew better and I decided to do better. The start of a new semester is a great time to do the same for us all. Each of us probably is aware of some inaction that jumped up and bit us at some point. Perhaps you put off making contact with a student's parent the way you should have and they didn't pass in the end. Maybe you didn't invest your time into something that you told yourself you would do at the start of the year and now it's still staring at you as a reminder. Yours could have also been personal and it impacted your professional life. Whatever it is, now is a great time to change that thing. It's never too late to turn inaction into action and we often just need a good push to make it happen. This is your push. Do that thing that you know will make you better. I promise you'll be happy that you did.