I'm Not Very Good At This

Since schools shut down in March, I have tried hard to figure out how to do my job. Managing staff, curriculum, facilities, medical needs, and all of the other parts that my job has encompassed has been very daunting at times. I find myself wanting answers when there are none, and I am being far more reactive than proactive. I'll admit that in many ways, I have felt like I was muddling through and hoping that something would happen. Now that we are at the end of a semester, I feel like we have learned a lot together, but I also feel like there are so many things about school that are simply not working as they should yet. So many students are not being successful and I have watched the stress work on my staff. Parents too often feel helpless and are allowing their children to disengage. To say it simply, I don't feel like I am very good at this right now. 

This isn't the first time I've felt this way as a principal. That feeling creeps in when I went through years with bad test performance, high rates of school discipline, high teacher turnover, or when parents felt like I was targeting their child or choosing to deny them of something. When those things happen, the only thing you can do is to step back and figure out what you can change to keep growing. You can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. 

To be honest, I don't know of a school principal that feels great right now. I don't really know of teachers or superintendents that feel that way either. Even if you're doing your best to engage kids, we all know that our usual standard of what we would call great teaching and learning can't be met. Instructionally, we all got tossed into something new and while some teachers found a unique skill set that they may not have been aware of, most educators felt stressed about what we realized we were not good at. But I'm here to tell you that we are uniquely positioned to grow right now. As we prepare to turn over a new semester in a few weeks, we have a chance to start over with a wealth of knowledge about what was and was not effective. The absolute worst thing we can do is to republish our Canvas courses as they are and let the chips fall where they may. Standard 5 in the NC Teacher Evaluation rubric measures how reflective we are and this is an opportunity to show accomplished and distinguished work. 

So what pieces did you learn about this semester that worked? No matter how small. Was there a more effective form of communication or motivation? Did you find a good balance in how many assignments kept kids engaged versus overwhelmed them? Were you able to leverage any connections that you made between yourself and your students and their families? Think of these things before you republish your Canvas courses in January. This year, we all became first-year teachers again. While we may not have been our best, we can grow and be better. All of us.

Leaders Need Food Too

If there's one upside for me during the pandemic, it's that I read more now. (Kelly Garcia would be so proud!) I'm starting a book called Leaders Eat Last. The book references the U.S. Marine Corps practice wherein the senior officers move to the back of the chow line to allow the junior Marines to eat first. It is the job of the leaders to make sure that the group is well taken care of before they take care of themselves. The theme emerges, "Good leaders sacrifice their own comfort - even their own survival - for the good of those in their care." Coming from a family with strong military ties, I can understand this concept and how it has shaped my own focus, particularly this school year. 

In some lighter reading this week, I also found an article on school leaders and self-care. The article talked about the pressures of schools right now that we all have been under and how you have to take time to recharge and take care of yourself or eventually, you lose the ability to effectively take care of others. At first, the two readings seemed opposite to me. One theory says to sacrifice yourself at all costs and the other says to take care of yourself to be more effective. So what's the answer? Well, I think you can have both. I think you NEED both.

When we think of leaders, we often think of people that are bigger than ourselves. We think of politicians, bosses, and policymakers. Did you think of yourself? If not, you should. The very first standard in your teacher evaluation is on Teacher Leadership. Students and their families look to you as leaders. You lead in your classroom. You lead colleagues that come to you for advice and support. You lead parents when they don't know how to get their child back on track. And in years like this one, those many calls to leadership have left many of us drained and hungry at the back of the chow line as we work diligently to feed others first. 

The USMC analogy says that leaders eat last, but it never said that leaders don't eat. There may be times when they eat less or eat what's left, but they still eat. Leaders need food too, both literally and metaphorically. We are almost halfway through a school year that many of us thought wouldn't last but a few weeks. In what's left, your leadership will continue to be called upon and needed in many different ways. Take time to take care of yourself, so that you can take care of others. 

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.

Making the Right Choice

This week I read an article comparing how we chose fruit to purchase in a supermarket to how we should be leading schools in turbulent times. A few of the analogies were a bit of a stretch, but it certainly did get me thinking. How do you know which pieces to fruit to choose when you make a purchase? Do you squeeze it? Do you inspect it for bruises? Maybe you thump it and listen to the sound. Maybe you trust your nose to guide you. No matter what method(s) you use, you have to admit that it can still be a risk. Even the prettiest apple can have a rotten spot or taste tart instead of sweet. Choosing has a risk. 

That's also how Mrs. Garcia and I felt as we chose the teachers that would lead this week's professional development sessions. We knew what they were doing in their classrooms. That means that they passed the sight and smell test. What we didn't know, was if they could lead colleagues to talk about what problems they were having. That's not easy for everyone and it takes something inside of you that's different from teaching children. Doing it for the first time means there is a risk. 

I sat through every session yesterday because I wanted to see how well it worked. I cannot tell you all how proud I was to watch teachers lead and participate yesterday. You were outside of your departments and that means that you were out of some of the traditional comfort zones that you work in daily. Many of you put your successes and challenges out in the open for everyone to see and hear. You quickly jumped in to help others with an idea. And you were not led by professional development gurus or talking heads for programs that are not living in your shoes right now. You all did a great job and I am especially thankful for those of you that took the courage to lead yesterday. I think we chose the right ones and I'm looking forward to making more choices to put more of you in charge this year.

Patience

One year ago this week I was on a study abroad trip in Peru. As a part of that trip, I got to visit Machu Picchu. It's truly an amazing place and something that is just hard to wrap your head around when you think of how it was constructed so long ago. Peru is a country that makes its money from tourism and sights like Machu Picchu generate a lot of revenue for them in many ways. For that reason, it's also hard to wrap your head around the fact that no one has visited the site since the middle of March. Well, almost no one. 

A story broke this week about a Japanese man, Jesse Katayama, that has traveling around the world when the pandemic lockdown began. He was in Peru, with a ticket to see the famous site the week that everything shut down. Rather than going home, Jesse decided to stay in Peru, originally thinking that it would reopen in a couple of weeks. That stay turned into six months. During that time, Jesse Katayama opened a boxing studio and taught people of all ages in the city of Cusco. His story caught the attention of many locals and eventually politicians took notice. The people loved his dedication and service to the community and pushed hard for him to be granted access to Machu Picchu. Last week that finally happened as he was granted access, by himself, to visit the site. His patience had paid off. 

I'm not the most patient person sometimes. I get caught being eager to accomplish something and I want results to happen. I want answers now to questions that I have. I think in a lot of ways, our lack of patience is really at the heart of why we still wrestle with the restrictions that we have as a society. When we run out of patience, we look to someone that we believe can or should make the problem go away. Unfortunatly, many of them don't have all the answers right now either. 

I don't know that there is much that I can do to feel less impatient, but I do think that I do have a choice in how I react to it. I really admire how Jesse Katayama decided to make himself as useful as could while he waited. Staying busy and working to improve things around you can fulfill us while we wait for what we really want. When I thought about it from that perspective, I thought about a lot of the people that I work with. We all are likely growing impatient for school and life to return to some semblance of normalcy soon. But while we wait, many of you have been working hard to make the best of things around you. I've seen your attitudes shift and your productivity spike in new areas. To say the least, I'm inspired. Now I'm going to do my best to work on what I can, while we wait.

What Lies Ahead

We have made it to the end of the first 9-weeks of the school year. It's hard to believe that the year is 25% over. In some ways, it is a true blessing that we have made it this far. We have fought against the pandemic and the endless demands on how we change instruction. On the other hand, we know that we have so much more work to do if we are going to make students successful. If that was not hard enough, we have what is perhaps the most contentious election of our lifetimes on us now as well. So many people are passionate about their political beliefs right now. North Carolina has become a battleground state for federal elections and we are inundated with political ads and everything else that comes with candidates spending money and time to try to get your vote. In so many ways the political events of our times have influenced how we feel about the medical and social events of our times and have made them harder for all of us. 

At a recent principal's meeting, we discussed the policy on political statements in schools. Dr. Miller encouraged us to say something to our school staff about being civil and avoiding conflict over politics in schools. While I'm excited that others are excited about voting, it's sad to feel that we have to remind adults to be kind and considerate of one another. But just like the end of the school will arrive, so will November 4th. It will end and when it does, we are going to have to remember what we have in common instead of what we don't agree on anymore. We are going to have to go back to watching regular commercials instead of political ads. We are going to have to get along. And while that may seem a little scary for what lies ahead of us, remember that we made it through the start of this school year and we certainly didn't think that would happen either. 

So I'm not going to send you an email about being careful about voicing your political beliefs. This blog post will suffice. The message that I hope we all get is not to be careful about what we say that may offend each other and instead, think about what you can say to support each other, especially those that are different than you. No matter what happens in a few weeks, we will undoubtedly need one another to get through the rest of the school year.