Learner. Human. Joyologist.
I hope you have an opportunity to be new to something this summer, and I hope you are able to enjoy the learning process along the way too. I believe new experiences have much to teach us and many of those experiences are transferable to the classroom.
Just allow yourself a clearer awareness of your loops. The only way out is through, and the way through it starts with acknowledgment.
But so do the good times. Our joys, the beautiful moments, the really good times, they don’t last forever either. So, let’s really appreciate the good moments and good days not taking any little bit of good we can find for granted.
You are human. And so is everyone else.
Our homes, neighborhoods, and our schools serve as the center of every child’s universe, and we get to make that universe as good as it can be, so they can go out there and create an even better world for all of us, seeing what can be and what every living creature deserves. George Couros wrote about this yesterday, “Instead of preparing our students for the ‘real world,’ how do we help our students make the real world better?” What a tall order and yet what a profound honor. May we never forget what a powerful privilege it is to faithfully and dutifully serve our communities to the best of our abilities with joy and hope for the future.
It could mean any number of things but instead of assigning meaning to it, I focus on what people can’t take away from me: my learning.
Our students don’t just notice how we treat them or how we treat other students. They learn from how we treat each other too. Whether we realize it or not, we are modeling what it means to be an adult.
I’m writing this to share that maybe that thing we are afraid to do or think we can’t do or that thing that feels inconvenient might be exactly what we need. When we remove the friction points and stay the course on a commitment we made, especially one that is about our wellbeing, we remind ourselves that there is more to us and this life than our work. We remind ourselves are we are human beings not human doings.
We all have hard jobs and parts of our jobs that don’t give us energy but what if we sought to multiply energy with moments like this? Because I can tell you, these little acts are helping me reframe a lot of the tough stuff.
It’s not a guide or a how-to. Our work as leaders is too complex and our communities too nuanced to be distilled down in that way. Instead, it’s rooted in principles and perspectives that illuminate possibilities in a heavy world.
MEGHAN LAWSON 