Time for Reflection

I’m not always good at slowing down to take a minute to reflect. It’s something that I have to force myself to do as a habit. In fact, this blog is a big part of getting me to stop and reflect on the week. Without those forced habits, I am far too task-oriented to stop and appreciate things or think about how they could have been different or better. I do believe that reflection is essential to personal and professional growth, so despite my natural aversion to it, I choose to work on it. But every now and then, reflection will slap you in the face. That happened this week.

Ten years ago this week, I traveled to Washington DC to accept the award for the National Blue Ribbon for Greene Early College, where I had served as the principal the year before. The awards ceremony was on my birthday and I felt so proud to be there, but also knew that other than filling out the grant application, I had very little to do with the award. The teachers at the school had earned that and I was just there to represent them. Fast-forward a decade and I found myself having dinner with the governor, surrounded by some of the brightest minds the Old North State has to offer. On the drive home, with my wife asleep in the passenger’s seat, I had time to reflect. 

I’ve had some pretty awesome opportunities in my life. And when you have dinner with the governor, Eric Church and several professors and authors that are decades ahead of their peers, you can’t help but wonder how you got there. That meal is a long way from mucking horse stalls and shelling butter beans that were a regular part of my youth. And once again, just like I knew from the Blue Ribbon award, I’m there because of the people that help me do the work. I’ve been exceptionally lucky to work with people that care about what they do. So on the ride home, and with Thanksgiving a week away, it hit me like a ton of bricks just how thankful I am for the opportunities I’ve had on behalf of the work you all do. As a team, you deserve a lot of extra credit. So over the next week, I hope that you also get to reflect and appreciate where you are and the people that helped you. So little in our personal or professional lives is accomplished on our own. Even when we hit a big goal or milestone, there are people supporting us or filling the voids so that we could focus on that task. Schools and the lives of students and educators certainly are no different. So somewhere in the next week, I hope that you get the chance to reflect on that. Like me, I'm sure you've already come a long way from where you started. 

As a Parent

One of the unique benefits that most educators don't acknowledge enough is the extra time we often get to spend with our own children when they go to our school or one nearby. My daughters have always spent a disproportionate amount of time in school. When I was a teacher and coach, they tagged along to practices and events, and later when I became an administrator, they attended arts and athletic functions when I had a duty to be there. When I initially started working in Greene County, I was still living in Pitt County and my children went to school there, but it didn't take long for me to bring them with me if nothing more than the added benefit of seeing them more and supporting them the best way I could.  My wife has generally left school information and functions to me (until the girls got older and didn't always want me there) and I was always able to be involved as a parent in their school functions. My experience with my children and their schools has not been the normal experience for most parents that have a career. 

This year, I've started to understand and appreciate the more traditional role of a working parent as I've been much more involved in things that have not allowed me to be as present. Both of my parents worked, and they had to prioritize what they were able to attend to see me do, and for the first time, I've had to do the same thing. This week was particularly tough as I couldn't attend Rylee's last tennis match of the season because I was hours away. I had to check in with Reagan and her day via Facetime, rather than our usual discussion when I grabbed her from the car rider line. We are making it work, but it's not always the same. However, I have an advantage. Over the past several weeks, several of you have reached out to me to send pictures of my daughter in class or at tennis. I've even gotten a few funny stories about things you've seen. It's as if you knew that I, as a parent, would want to see that and you shared that experience with me and I can't tell you how much it means. 

As a parent, we all want to support our children. We trust their teachers to not only instruct them in content curriculum, but in our absence, we often need them to support our children in other ways as well. Ultimately, I wish that every parent was able to share in some part of the experience that you have given me this year when I wasn't able to be there.  The unexpected anecdotes of our child's success do amazing things to brighten our day and reassure us that they are doing well. Taking a minute to do this is one of the most customer-focused things an educator can do. As a parent, I want that for every parent. As a principal, this is ultimately why I ask you to try to prioritize parent communication. I'm not sure if the pictures and texts that I received will make it to your Parent Contact Logs, but they are exactly why we do them. As a parent....thank you.

What Does a Graduate Look Like?

At the end of every school year, the Senior homeroom teachers sit and go through the cumulative folders of every graduate from our school and triple-check that everything is right and accounted for. One of those steps involves checking over each student's final transcript. It was a habit many years ago to shout out the class rank if it was exceptionally low or high. The first time I heard it, it quickly became one of those little idiosyncracies that turned me off. (In full disclosure, I am aware that administrators have strange quirks about our schools. We are not always right or wrong on these, but it doesn't take long to find them. I am no exception!) I guess the thing that rubbed me wrong was that I didn't see the point. I have two daughters that work hard to be among the top of their class, and I'm exceptionally proud of them. But if I'm being honest, their class rank doesn't define anything about how successful they will or will not be as an adult. Class rank is about academic success (which is really awesome) but I've never been in a job interview that asked me for my 11th-grade test scores nor have those scores ever helped me in the difficult moments of being a parent. Life isn't about scores, it's about navigating people and situations.

Near the end of last school year, I had the opportunity to participate in a statewide think tank of students, teachers, administrators, higher education leaders, business owners, and parents. Our goal was to define what exactly we wanted a graduate from North Carolina to look like. Several, multi-hour Zoom meetings allowed us to talk with one another to express frustrations and celebrations of what the modern workforce and society need from students today. We started with 50 competencies and by the end, we narrowed it down to 7. This week, I had the privilege of sitting on the media panel to unveil those seven competencies to the world. As a part of the announcement, they also filmed a video (you can watch it here and see several of our classes). 

So how did we do? I think we did pretty well to wrap up what a successful adult looks like today. Hopefully, the idea of teaching these skills to students isn't foreign to you. Many of these have been a part of our STEM initiative and even our curriculum maps for years. But whether they are new to you or something that you've been trying to practice for a long time, this week was important. It was a reminder from the very top of our school system that teaching students to be competent adults has a lot more to do with skills than test scores. And if you're a caring teacher, I know you can appreciate that.

Anything But a Backpack

I've had so many questions from students, teachers, and parents about homecoming next week. I think everyone is excited about it this year, including our community. But without a doubt, the most questions I have received have been about Anything But a Backpack Day. Everyone wants to know what they can bring to school in place of a backpack. I've had requests for everything from shopping carts, to pets and siblings. (By the way, pets and siblings are not allowed!) But the idea of it got me thinking about backpacks. When I attended school, I carried textbooks and notebooks. In a 6-period day, you carried around a lot of books and they easily filled a backpack on a night with multiple homework assignments. But today's school looks different. Textbooks have been replaced with online course content and for most subjects, notebooks have been replaced with iPads. So what's in those backpacks that kids keep carrying around?

The answer to this came to me from what I see teachers carry too. I laugh each morning as I see many of you haul your lives, sometimes in 3-4 bags into work each morning. Everything from lunch and snacks to a change of clothes for after school and all of the accompanying things that make our day better. Somewhere along the way, we started bringing our lives to school with us. We take the things that make us comfortable and come prepared for the things that we think we might need. And if you look a little deeper, we bring more than physical parts of our lives to school with us as well. We bring good and bad emotions, problems and successes, and all other parts of us to school each day. Those things that we bring are much more complex than a textbook or notebook to understand. 

So is it so strange that a student thinks that a sibling or a pet should come to school with them? I don't think so. Those things are as much a part of their lives as a hoodie or water bottle that they drag around. But the silver lining in their request is that they feel good enough about this place that we call school, and they trust the environment enough to bring the things most precious to them along. And similarly, we all unpack those intangible things that we bring with us in trust as well. Thanks for bringing anything but your backpack to school, but more importantly, thanks for making this a place where others can bring their items as well. 

The Storm

Several years ago, on a summer afternoon, I was following a school of fish through a marsh just behind a barrier island on the coast. My father-in-law and I had caught several, and we were as excited as little kids. I'd be lying if I said I did not notice storm clouds a few miles off from us. I think I even said out loud, "We might get a little wet in a few minutes." I generally don't play around with coastal storms when I'm on the water, but I was probably blinded by the thought of catching just one more. I didn't know that the storm that I was seeing was a water spout that was moving onshore and turning into a tornado. By the time I recognized the danger, the storm was on top of us. The wind and sideways rain made it almost impossible to see the front of my boat as I tried to navigate away from the storm. I remembered having to coach myself into breathing slower and not panicking as I inhaled water coming at my face. It was over in a few minutes of chaos, but it was as scared as I'd ever been on the water. 

On Wednesday, that memory came back to me as I joined several students and staff members before school at the Meet You at the Pole prayer. The event takes a few moments to rally students, staff, and community members to pray for schools and the people in them. It's another one of the post-COVID things that I was happy to see come back. One of the prayers quoted the book of Mathew and the storm that the disciplines found themselves in. Maybe it was the impending hurricane that I knew was coming later in the week or maybe it was experience talking in my head, but I knew, in more ways than one, a storm was coming. 

October is generally one of the more stressful months for educators and students. It is usually jam-packed with events and the newness of school has worn off a bit. Grades and expectations become real things rather than something said at a staff meeting or written on a syllabus. Things like homecoming week and field trips to the state fair compete with the end of the marking period and due dates for STEM grand challenges. And just like me following a school of fish for fun, we can all get distracted until it is too late to see that a storm is upon us. We talk a lot about self-care for teachers these days, but rather than finding reactive measures to destress, I'd like to propose a proactive one as we embark on a traditionally stormy month ahead. Carve out a few moments each day to look at the horizon and prepare. Make it a habit to know what is coming up and talk to your students and fellow department members about how to manage what needs to be done. Be strategic and be vocal about it. Don't wait until the storm hits you. 

Curiosity

A decade ago, NASA landed a robot on the surface of Mars. The 6-wheeled, 1900-pound device was named Curiosity and over the past ten years, it has been sending back pictures and information to us on Earth in its effort to determine if and when there may have been water on the surface of Mars and if there had been life there swimming in it. It continues to travel over mountains and through craters to collect data as we learn more about the planet closest to our own. 

I recently picked up a book about the engineering marvel that led to the Curiosity rover getting to Mars and found that our own story shared some parallels with the mission. While we don't have the need for rocket scientists and the development of a sky crane to get our jobs done, the level of teamwork, reliance on others and adjustment to meet our goals sounded very similar. Undoubtedly, over the years, I've approached many of you under the guise of my own curiosity about how we approach a problem or look for growth. I probably even used the word. But the thing that I love the most is that ten years later, Curiosity is still looking, still assessing data, and still searching for more. 

If there is one trait that I hope all leaders in a school have, it's curiosity. Students, teachers, counselors, principals, and district leaders all need to remain curious about what we can do next. Curiosity leads us to discover something we may never have found and those discoveries lead to more growth. And growth is what we are all about. So stay curious teacher leaders, but more importantly, follow your curiosity and inspire students to do the same. You never know what you might find.

What Does Leadership Look Like?

Over the summer I've been invited to speak with a lot of groups. Generally, they leave the content of the message up to me and when they do, I almost always choose to talk about leadership. As a principal, I am often looked to as the leader in the building and the majority of my talks have been with other building and district leaders, so they get the formality of that position. But this week, I was asked to speak with a different audience. My task was to speak to all undergraduates at the University of Mt. Olive in teaching majors. My first thought was to find a different topic, but I caught myself. This is exactly who needs to hear about leadership the most. Within a short time, each of those students will be in their first year as a classroom teacher and some administrator will walk into their room to do their very first observation. The very first standard on that observation covers leadership. 

I think we confuse leadership and authority too much, so I needed a way to explain how a first-year teacher can and should be a leader in their classroom and in their building. Being a leader does not mean being in charge. Instead, I focused on the traits of a leader that involve inspiring others, collaborating to remove barriers, and meeting expectations so that the people that they collaborate with can meet theirs. In reality, leadership is more about a dance with others than a set of directions to them.  So how do you break that down so that a 19-year-old pre-service teacher can understand it? You tell a story. And in my stories to them about teacher leaders throughout our building, I realized a common theme. Each of these stories involved leadership that became contagious. While the traits that were demonstrated were never taught in a classroom lesson or in a PLC, in every instance you can find a student or a colleague that saw leadership in action and copied it. Good leaders build more leaders. That's what leadership looks like.