Metaphors

As we started back to school this week, I realized all too quickly how different this year was going to be for me being away from the building at times. I spent most of this week in Raleigh at the State Board meeting and workshop on strategic goal alignment. (I know, it sounds REALLY glamorous!) I tried hard to leave Dr. Willis, Mr. Jones and Mr. Simms alone, but inevitably I found myself texting them to ask about school and how things were going and even inserting myself to make decisions when I didn't really have to. It's a big adjustment for me to be away and still feel like I'm doing my job for the school. 

While I was at the State Board workshop, we started our work with a metaphor. The state committed itself to several goals and objectives not long before the pandemic changed everything and now the question was, where are we on this journey? Did the plane ever leave the airport? Did we take off and have to make an emergency landing? Did we finish a leg of our journey, but got delayed to our destination, or did we make it farther than we thought we would? As we discussed our status related to the goals, we continued to use the metaphor to express how we feel about school progress, the impact of the past two years, and where we ultimately want to be. It was a great exercise and somehow relating our progress to something very familiar made it easier to talk about and relate to. 

Later in the week, school performance grades and growth scores were officially released and the statistical realities of the impact on schools were made public. In many ways, it is what we expected, but still, a tough pill to swallow compared to the progress we were making before. Any move backward in the land of student growth isn't what you want to see. So where are we? I believe that the first leg of our journey was rerouted and over the past two years, we fought the turbulence of the flight and looked for a place to land. We were delayed and missed our intended connection. (If this has ever happened to you, you are well aware of the feeling.) But the trip wasn't canceled and on Monday, we took off on the next leg of our journey. We are ascending and on our way to the next destination. I'm happy to be flying with you and I can't wait to make it to where we are going together. Just hold on, because it is going to be a heck of a ride. We have somewhere to be!