Burning Yes

I know by looking at me you would probably not know that almost every morning around 4:15am, you can find me at the gym.  Around 5am, the gym starts to get crowded, but for those first thirty minutes you can usually just find me and just one other person. He and I don’t know each other well. Until recently I didn’t even know his name. He and I have exchanged pleasantries through the months, but we are in our own world. He watches CNN with closed caption while I have my beats on trying to survive running, well fast walking, either on the treadmill or elliptical. 

In the last few weeks, he and I have started to talk more. If I am completely honest, it really started one morning when I was having a difficult morning and was crying on the elliptical. He came over to check on me and ended up, probably not expecting it, hearing my sad story of the last year of my life. He was just precious, and since that moment, he and I are now gym buddies. Again, we don’t bother each other, we just check in with each other and then go about our workouts. He lost his wife about a year and a half ago to cancer and is having some issues connecting with his adult children since he has realized the relationship with his children had been through his wife. Without his wife he realized he didn’t know his children and they didn’t know him. 

Last week, I was running a bit late-like really late-I arrived at 5am. He came over to me to check on me and I detailed that I was up rather late dealing with an 8^th grader’s project and then had difficulty staying asleep so the 3:45am wake up call didn’t go so well. He laughed. Detailed some stories of his parenting days and then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. He hoped that tomorrow I would be able to get out of bed rather than push snooze and get to the gym and then he stated, “the best way to say no to something is to have a burning yes to something else.”

I mulled over that statement all day…..the best way to say no to something is to have a burning YES to something else. So many factors of my personal life could be summed up with that statement. But, as the day went on and I dealt with the day, I realized that that statement really, really applies to school as well.  We are often, as educators, asked to add more to our plates. But do we ever stop to analyze if 1. It is worth doing and 2. If our plates can hold one more thing. Going into my second year as principal, I set three goals for our school. These goals were not randomly selected, they were based on data, teacher conversations and goals, district initiatives, and best practice. It is so easy for me to say no to many ideas, initiatives, pilots, or volunteers because I have a burning desire to say YES to things that will help us reach our goals. 

This statement…..the best way to say no to something is to have a burning YES to something else…… has been in my brain every day since last week. I can’t stop thinking about it….So I ask you…what is your burning YES.  Do you have one? I hope you do. That YES is your WHY, and if you don’t have one, you’re missing out on so very much.  

IGNITE The Fire within

Recently I have been conducting interviews. Every spring this is what I do.   I will never forget pulling into an elementary school almost 24 years ago for my first teaching job interview.  I was so excited to get a job teaching, a goal that I had for myself for over 15 years and had worked hard in and out of the classroom to put myself into this position.  I had the right outfit, a wonderful portfolio that I had put together, and arrived a precise 10 minutes early for the interview.  I made eye contact and shook hands with the principal and assistant principal when they introduced themselves.  The first 5 questions or so I was on fire.  I had great answers for each question and with each answer I became more and more confident.  Then things went south.  I stumbled over a question about urban and suburban, mixing up their definitions.  I then had a hard time finding the right words to answer a question about poverty.  I stumbled through the last few question as my confidence diminished.  This left me frustrated and I honestly remember for the first time in my life, I felt that my dream of being a teacher was in jeopardy.  My next interview was in my hometown of Manning.  My poor interview the week before had cracked me.  I was a nervous wreck.  I wasn’t myself, I lacked belief that I could do it, and I failed again.  This left me even more upset, mad, and with less confidence than ever before.  Then I started thinking about my goal.  I wanted to be a teacher.  I wanted to change the lives of kids, I wanted to make a real difference in those around me.  So, I contacted one of my professors and asked for a fake interview.  I asked the principal of the school where I was student teaching if she would pretend interview me and give me feedback and advice.  I read and I reflected on the past two interviews.  Now, I think you all know how the story ends.  After a couple of weeks of really hard work, I was called to other interviews.  I vowed to myself that I would not let my doubts or fears enter my mind as I answered their questions.  I was offered that job, and two others actually before I finally accepted a job here in Spartanburg.  Looking back I think about what ignited me more.  Was it my inner fear of never being employed or was it my drive to be the very best at whatever I do? So as I drove by the school of my first failure this weekend, I started thinking? What ignites your fire?  What motivates you to want to improve?  Do you even measure your improvement? Do you see the need for growth? Every day I’m motivated to improve.  Sometimes that motivation comes from outside-a blog I’ve read, feedback from a teacher, or a situation that didn’t go so well, and sometimes that feedback comes from within.  No matter what, I am constantly striving to do things better. So as we enter the homestretch to spring break, what is igniting you?

The ONE

This weekend I went home. My brother needed me and I was glad to be at home in Manning. As difficult and as lonely as I feel without my parents there, it was where I was needed. I attended my brother's church and the pastor discussed a verse in Luke about a shepherd who had 100 sheep but has lost one. The shepherd left his 99 and went searching for the one. At first I was really only half listening and passively thinking, "Dude, really, it's a sheep and you have 99 others!" Then I listened more intently and I realized that these were his kids, his livelihood, his passion. He knew them by name and he was willing to take major risks to go after the one who was lost and then when the one sheep was found he rejoiced. It was the perfect transition for my Sunday afternoon which I spent watching a movie. I watched a relatively older movie called Captain Phillips. I am not one to normally love this type of movie, but it was on and it was cold and rainy and my niece was asleep on my chest and the remote was halfway across the room...so I watched it. How glad I am that I did! 

The movie is based on the real life events of April 2009 of a cargo ship headed by Captain Phillips that was overtaken by pirates in the Indian Ocean.  Capt. Phillips is just an ordinary normal guy, good marriage, hard worker, getting his two kids through college. He knew that piracy existed and that he must be on the lookout for pirates due to the area he was taking his cargo ship into. Despite his preparation and efforts, his boat was seized by pirates as they tried to escape the cargo ship. Events unfolded and Capt Phillips was in an impossible hopeless situation in the pirates boat. At one point Capt Phillips tried to escape but was almost killed in doing so because he couldn't save himself. But what he didn't know was that the US Navy Seals were preparing to come after him. An entire country was fighting to bring him back. They were coming for ONE person-Captain Phillips-the one. Just like the shepherd going after that one sheep I'd heard about just hours before, the Navy seals were coming for the one captain. 

So, it made me think. Who is your one? Who needs saving in your class? What are you doing behind the scenes that the students, the parents, your teammates, or even me don't know about? We all have the ONE. Sadly, some of us have more than one, and what's even sadder is that most of us have several. Just as I feel the lesson I learned at church and from Captain Phillips was a calling, I believe our stewardship as educators is a calling. Who is the ONE? The one that isn't getting it, who is struggling more than anyone, who isn't clean, isn't happy, isn't behaving, isn't having any luck with friendships?

Honestly reflect and ask yourself, are you going after THE ONE? I hear often the adage, "every child can learn" and yes, I believe i. But I probe even further and I often wonder, don't tell me you believe all children can learn, tell me what you believe when they can't. So I wonder, are you like me thinking, "I've got 99-that's a good record, forget about the 1" or are you like the shepherd and the Navy Seals-doing WHATEVER it takes to bring that ONE home?

Porch Swing

Growing up my house had a front porch swing. I spent hours on that swing. I went there to read. I went there to catch lightening bugs. I went there when I was mad. I went there to cry. I went there to have long talks with my siblings or either of my parents. The swing was my safe place. I remember waiting on that swing for my prom date to pick me up. I am sure they existed, but I don’t remember a day that I didn’t spend some time on that swing.  I find it interesting that while I have an ideal porch for it, I do not have a front porch swing in my own home.  I started thinking about that this weekend. It didn’t made sense to me why I have some amazing memories of something; yet, when given the opportunity, I didn’t replicate it as a grown up.  And in many ways I miss that swing.

I started doing my research. I started with my husband. He cleared things up for me. He reminded me that when we moved into our house some 12 years ago, I fell in love with the large deck out back. I wanted to decorate it with outdoor furniture (which ended up being from a clearance sale at the Walmart), beautiful plants (which have all died), have an herb garden on a palate (which I’ve never done), and create an outdoor living space where we could grill, eat, hang out as a family, watch TV (we’ve never installed one), and watch the stars (I’m usually in bed before the clouds clear enough to see the stars). He reminded me that my parents gave us the rocking chairs that still sit on the front porch and that I was worried that a swing would be too dangerous for Rosebro2 who had (luckily it has subsided) a wild streak a mile wide and I was sure he would dive off the porch and break an appendage or two.  It started to make sense again in my head. It isn’t that the swing is bad or my memories were not great-it is just that it no longer fit into what I my family needs.

As I was doing some school reading last night, I thought about that swing. I thought about our school. How many things do we do because it is what we’ve always done or what we know? Do we even know why we do it? Does it fit our pedagogy? Do we do it because it was done to us when we were in school? Do we do it because that is what the teacher before you did?  As a child and as a teenager, I held a steadfast belief that the swing on my front porch was magical and could solve all my problems. Yet, as an adult, I now know that it wasn’t the swing, it was the calmness of swaying back and forth, the soft words of advice from my parents, the scenic view of a corn field as the stalks swayed to and fro with the wind.  Challenging our beliefs of what we’ve always done is not always easy. It is a struggle to change, to grow, to believe something different than before.  Yet, if we are accountable to our students, we must be reflective and pedagogically strong educators. We must make our practice match our pedagogy-even if it has always been done a different way. We sell our students short if we don’t do this. We also hurt ourselves when we continually look at what’s next and don’t focus on what’s new.  As Henry Ford stated many years ago, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

I loved that porch swing. My memories are strong. I can feel the wind on my face as I pushed my feet off on the floor of the porch, but my dinners on my deck after grilling burgers followed by smore’s on the fire pit as just as wonderful-if not even more.