And So It Begins…

I have tried to journal, blog and vlog… I can never stay consistent. I’m hoping to change that as I seek to not only document my journey as a first year principal, but also record this time of change and I truly believe, time of great consequence for public education. As I write, our school district is a mere 48 hours away from the start of the 2020-2021 school year. This is a year that starts with uncertainty as the Coronavirus continues to spread across the United States and the world. And to add to the anxiety, social justice issues have hit a watermark as protest continue following the public viewing of the death of George Floyd at the hands [and more specifically, the knee] of a police officer. It would be foolish to think we will be able to start and finish school as normal. Everyone is longing to return to normal or even a new normal. What if we didn’t? What if we came up with something better. I feel education has the chance to do that. Learning online is hard and at times foreign to what we are used to. Teachers long to have students in front of them. But what if this new system gives way to new opportunities? So instead of business as usual, educators take the time to create a new way of doing business? We can do it, you know. The capacity to adjust and adapt by educators is endless. Did you not see what we did at the end of the last school year? We flipped months of lesson plans on a dime and worked with technology to pull it off. Was it perfect? No. But we got it done and learned a few things about ourselves and our students. Not every student tuned in and was turned on by a Zoom classroom – Why? There is nothing like that connection we make as we build relationships in our classrooms and schools. So as I start a new school year as a building leader -I hope to inspire my staff and students to build solid relationships – whether in person or over the interwebs. We learn so much content, but the most important learning is what we learn about and from each other.