Learner. Human. Joyologist.
What would happen if we decided to dream a bit smaller? What if our dream was to get really curious about what was happening in our schools? What if our dream was to suspend judgement and to merely notice and wonder about the student experience? To truly talk to kids to find out what school is like for each of them? What if that curiosity and listening drove our next moves?
Perhaps we aren't utilizing our teams to their fullest capacity. Perhaps we are hyper-focused on perfecting things that are not urgent or important. Perhaps, we are assigning work to students in a way that is making our grading feel impossible. I heard a high school student say, "You know, she complains about all of the papers she has to grade and about how long it's taking her to get through all of them, and I keep thinking, 'Aren't you the one assigning these papers and setting the due dates this way?"'
Think about how far you've come. Just think about it for a second. Think about all of the hard days that you've made it through. And just look at you. Wow, you made it. You are strong and inspiring and you've grown. I'm so deeply proud of you. I'm proud of us.
This work is legacy work. And it's built one day at a time, one small move at a time. As Peter Block has said, "How do you change the world? One room at a time. Which room? The one you're in."
The dangers of a culture of CAN'T.
Children become adults who carry how we made them feel in their hearts for the rest of their lives. That's powerful. To matter that deeply in the lives of others. To matter that deeply in someone's future. We can be daunted by that or we can see it has an opportunity to be the good.
We don't have to make ourselves small to make other people more comfortable. And we don't have to make our work small either. We can choose. We can choose how we show up for ourselves and for others and for our work.
However, sometimes in schools, we hide behind phone extensions and closed doors. Afraid of the unpredictable landscape of the school day, it's easy for us to also hide behind our rules and procedures. While procedures are a helpful way to keep the work orderly and as a safe as possible, when someone is in distress, talking about the procedures is one of the last things they need in that moment.
When you're motivated to do the right thing for kids for the right reasons, you can move big work and you can move it more quickly than you might think. It is almost always scary and difficult, but it's also worth it. It is a good kind of satisfying exhaustion. I live that for that kind of exhaustion.
It doesn't mean we don't stand up for ourselves and others. What it means is we decide which arguments are worth attending. And when we do engage in conflict, we show up with class. With integrity. We model for others what we want to see more of in the world.
MEGHAN LAWSON 