Pray for Rain

The rain this week, coupled with our professional development to improve our online courses reminded me of a saying. I've heard slight variations with different origins, but the one I like is attributed to the author, Stephen King. "Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it." It seems like so much of this school year has been spent wishing and praying that life goes back to normal. So many of us have hit the point of fatigue with social distancing and the other rules surrounding the prevention of COVID-19. Similarly, we had all hit that same point with the commercials, text messages, and phone calls we received leading up to the election. As educators, we want desperately to have our kids in our classes again to engage them. We have been praying and wishing for things to change. 

But whether you realize it or not, you've also been digging your well. Think back to last Spring or even the start of this school year. How much better are we now than we were then? Think about how you've changed as an educator in such a short time. Our work this week to revise our courses based on a student or parent perspective is an excellent example. Before this year, we probably didn't do that a lot and we probably should have. Think about how much more responsive you are to students and parents. Or how much better of a communicator you've become in multiple formats. Do you find yourself thinking more about grading and what really matters instead of what you've always done? These adaptations that we have made won't disappear when we go back to a normal school year one day, just like the well doesn't go away when it rains. The work you've done remains there, ready and waiting to be put to use. I'm eager to see how our new skills will get put to use when we have all of our students sitting in front of us, but until then, I'll keep working on digging this well. 

Ben

This week has been filled with a lot of anxiety for sure. I don't consider myself as someone that often feels anxious, but between rising virus cases, the management of school cases and exposures, and the week-long (and growing) election, it's hard to avoid even a small amount of that feeling. No matter how you feel about those topics, you can easily dwell on your problems. Focusing on your problems can put you in a funk and I've certainly seen it bring some abnormal behaviors out in people that I don't consider to be abnormal. Your mindset impacts your behaviors and even the best of us get caught on the bad side of that from time to time. That's how I felt yesterday afternoon and I even caught myself being a little short-tempered with my children when I got home. Then I got a call from a parent that grounded me and hit a reset button in my head. 

For the past week, I've been monitoring the situation of a 9th-grade student, Ben,  that has had some medical issues. Headaches had led to doctors finding a brain tumor and he underwent surgery last weekend to remove it. While the surgery was successful, the prognosis afterward was not. The cancer causing the tumor is treatable, but it is not curable. His parents received notice that this would eventually take their child away from them. As his mother gave me the news, I couldn't imagine the strength it must have taken for her to just say the words. 

The conversation eventually shifted to school. Ben wanted to come back but he can't right now as he prepares for treatment to begin. She said that he was in great spirits and was optimistic that he would get to come back soon. While he knows that the doctors believe that the tumor will eventually return, he doesn't care to know the timeline that they have given him. All he wanted yesterday was a double cheeseburger. 

The first principal that I worked for as an administrator had a phrase that he used quite a bit when he talked with parents that were upset about their child's academic performance or some small trouble that they were in. He said, "Be grateful that your child is average. So many of them are not." I don't know why it takes things like this to snap us back to a reality of what actually matters sometimes, but this certainly did it for me. It's easy to focus on events and people that cause us problems from day to day, but all too often, there are people that would be happy to trade their problems for ours. And then you meet people like Ben, who in spite of problems that are considered terminal, choose to face them with a smile. I wish that I was as strong as him. I wish we all were.