I just want to go to sleep.........

On Friday, I had to wake up at 1:45am to make sure Rosebro1 was at his high school to meet a bus to the Charlotte airport to board a flight for a field trip. On Thursday night, in my mind, it made sense to take him to the high school, go to the gym, come home to shower, change, and get to school at 4:30am and get some work done so I could leave at a relatively early hour on Friday.  By 2pm, I regretted that decision.  I am not one that requires a lot of sleep. Yet, when I get sleepy-there better be a bed and pillow around. I was sleepy and wanted to nap.  So from 2pm-4pm, I put on my best smile and tried to fake my way through the rest of the day. Around 4 I had to go to the bike race downtown for a presentation with my Spartanburg Leadership group.  I ran into several parents and talked school for some time with each of them. Then I ran into an acquaintance who has a 5 year old and wanted advice about kindergarten in public school or doing another year at preschool. I then had to pick up Rosebro2 from spring football practice. While waiting in the car for him, a person I had interviewed for a position  came up to my car inquiring about the job, another former JBE parent came to me discussing some issues with her son. I then decided to go to my husband’s office and hide and lay on one of the training tables until Rosebro2 was done with team meetings …surely  no one would be in there. Well, in his training room, I found about 6 athletes, 3 of which were former JBE kids and of course I had to know what was going on with them and then the stories started about my outrageous principal behavior. One of the non-Boyd athletes made my day by saying, “Man, I don’t even think I know who my elementary principal was.  I wished you had been my principal.”  About this time, Rosebro2 came and we left the high school. Rosebro2 had plans with friends Friday night, so I thought I would quickly run into the grocery store and get him a frozen pizza. What was I thinking….a student was in the grocery store and I had to stop and talk for a bit, then another parent saw me and stopped to ask about field day t-shirts. We got home and I quickly made his pizza while he showered and then I took him to meet up with his friends. One of the friend’s parents, has a son the same age as Rosebro1, we talked for at least 45 minutes in the parking lot of the movies. Am I ever just Meredith or will I always be seen and known as Principal Rose?

I finally made it home. I took a bath and then snuggled on the couch with my dog reaching for my phone……8 emails awaited me. I started reading the emails and realized that it was time to turn all of that off. Answering those emails would wait until Monday. Then I started thinking about that whole idea of “balance.” Balance, after all, is an IB attribute of the learner profile, and should be something that I strive for every day. Yet, with the end of school approaching and May being one of the most challenging months as a principal and teacher, my balance seems to be all off.  Taking time for me should not include going to the gym at 2:30am….or even my regular 4:15am. Most people look at us teachers and think, “What a gig!!!” You work from 8-3 each day, 2 weeks off at Christmas, a week off in April, and all June and July as vacation. What do you have to complain about? NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING (well maybe messing with my kids) will get me unglued more than that statement. Because let’s face it……we begin our day at 7:45am (and at least once a week, you begin at morning duty at 7:30), during our planning time we meet with PLC, IB, make parent phone calls, set up our rooms for a science investigation, plan lessons, meet with our grade level, or grade papers, we spend our 20 minute lunch break with 20 kids,  at 2:30 we spend 20 minutes dismissing students, then we work some more preparing for the next day. Many weeks we have RTI meeting until 4:30, faculty meetings until 4:30, parent meetings, IEP meetings, etc. Then you stop by the grocery store only to run into students or parents. Don't even get me started about what we do during our "summer vacation".  AND we are the only profession where going to the bathroom requires an act of Congress.

So, what can we ALL do to create balance, continue to do our jobs with outstanding results, and find peace within ourselves and avoid burnout?  For starters, organize your to do list. Most of the time my to do list has about 15-20 items on it. Some are easy, like create the Monday Musing, or construct the Friday Forecast. Others are hard, like create the summer cleaning schedule around moves and a summer camp. I am quick to focus on the smaller items because they take little thought, I can be interrupted MANY times while completing them, and let’s be honest, it feels soooooo good to strike off something on my to do list. But I have started putting my to do list in 3 sections-Urgent, Time Killer, and Easy. I tackle the urgent first and then the Time killers.  I also have stopped multi-tasking. I have learned to say to folks, I will get to that as soon as I complete what I am working on right now. I am not going to lie and say I stopped taking stuff home. I still do and will continue to do so…….but I’ve started using a timer on my phone. When the timer goes off, I am done. It doesn’t matter where I am on a project or an email or writing, my work stops. I gain so much strength from hanging with my three boys. They deserve my time and attention and I need them. I also have stopped replying to every email and I certainly don’t reply to ever email right away. And finally-while this is another “To-do” list, I have started a gratitude journal. I have it on my computer and almost each day before I leave I write down something in my gratitude journal. Just like today, I had an email from a parent who had attended an awards day program at our feeder secondary school, and she was overwhelmed by the number of JBE kids awarded for various things, but mostly for kindness awards. I am so grateful that she sent me that email and that our work to maintain high academic standards continue while our efforts to create outstanding citizens remain just as high.

As I finally climbed into bed around 9 Friday night (don’t judge), I heard my phone “ding”.  It was a text from a JBE teacher. My first thought was, she should be at a soccer game (where my hubby and her daughter were), and then I thought I am going to give her a lesson on balance. But, I read her text. Call it being ridiculously tired or call it crazy emotions from a principal who is a bit overwhelmed with work, the multitude of heartache in my family lately, and the worry over Rosebro1 being in NYC, or call it midlife hormonal insanity, but I just cried when reading the text. Her text showed me how she was growing as a teacher and how she never stops doing for her students…even at 9pm on a Friday night. Then I watched a video another JBE teacher had sent me of what she was doing with her Friday club. I realized at that point that I will never be just Meredith or Mom or wife or friend. I am principal…and I am darn proud of that! I get to be the influencer of the influencers. Will that mean LONG hours? Will that mean I can never have a glass a wine in a Spartanburg restaurant? Will that mean I will never wear pjs to Walmart at 11pm like the growing trend? Will that mean my family will have to bear being interrupted at every restaurant meal, outing, or shopping adventure in Spartanburg? YEP, that is all true. And while I need to find a better balance in my life, more than anything I need to embrace this wonderful job and realize that all those interruptions mean we are doing something right. We are creating a place where families love us and know we care about their children.  So while I will create more balance, I will also love what we are doing and embrace the chaos....and wait to enjoy those 2 months of doing nothing (yeah, right?!)

Every day is special........

Last week we all were a part of something pretty special-pun intended.  While I preach using every moment to teach and to push our students higher and higher, there are moments when we have to pause and do something that is not academic. The Special Olympics sendoff parade was just that. All of us, no matter what age or attitude in life, want to feel proud. As I followed the parade around videoing the students in the parade and the students lined up cheering them on, a couple of things occurred to me. The first was the faces of the Special Olympians.  They were thrilled to have this pomp and circumstance albeit some of them were a little confused-and that makes sense due to their physical and cognitive “differentabilities”.  What I saw even more was the look on the faces of the Boyd Buddies.

These Boyd Buddies selected this Friday afternoon club. While most of their friends wanted to do mystery Club, juggling, cooking, puzzles, and a host of other clubs, these students decided they wanted to become friends and help out our students in our special education classes.  Their faces were that of true pride-not for themselves, but for their buddies. One of our male regular ed students –a 5^th grader- where this is normally an absolute social suicide move, held hands with his male buddy and kept encouraging him to keep going in the parade.  After the parade when they were safely on the bus, I did what I always do and went back to my office to download the video and post on our social media accounts.

While I was waiting for the video to load on Youtube, I kept watching it over and over. What I noticed this time were our students who were lining the hall. They were just as excited as the athletes. They were cheering them on and had the students’ names on banners. They are not afraid of our students or making fun of our students with special needs-and that has been intentional. We teach our students that your normal isn’t the only normal.

But more than anything, I realized that there is so much good in this world. We hear so much bad. We hear the mental illness rates rising, we here the persecution of our schools for not doing enough to help students, we hear about mass shootings, we hear about the rise of screen addiction. But do we ever stop to take pride in what we are doing right and so very well?

We have a huge responsibility in teaching our students to read, write, to calculate math, and to understand scientific facts, and to learn from historical events. But moreover we teach our students that there’s more than one way to be right. We teach them that every person is special. We teach them that it doesn’t matter a student’s color, size, clothes, shoes, or last name that makes them important, it is there heart.

Are we successful every day and at every moment-absolutely not. But do we keep trying?  I adored Barbara Bush. On a news report last week upon her death, someone quoted her as saying, “never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people - your family, friends, and coworkers, and even strangers you meet along the way.” Take pride in the fact that we are doing just that as we teach this value every day to our students. And if you don't.......maybe today is just the right day to start. 

Counting Down.........

As I have mentioned before, I grew up on a farm. Farm life did not allow vacations.  When I was a little girl, I hated Spring Break. Spring Break did not mean fancy trips, sleeping late, or adventures with my family. It meant Camp Granny. Now for some of you Camp Granny sounds amazingly fun. But that is because your “Granny” was probably awesome. One of the many reasons losing my parents has been so hard is because I loved the relationship my kids had with my parents. My parents loved having my boys around. They had great adventures. By the time I was 9, I only had one grandparent alive-Granny.

Granny wasn’t fun. She was not very nice. She was grumpy. She was particular.  And Granny really, really didn’t like me. I loved being outside. I loved playing outside and getting dirty. I loved talking back. I loved getting under her skin. I hated dresses and I hated bows in my hair more than the dresses she tried to get me to wear.  But because my Mom worked, Spring Break meant my siblings and I had no one to stay with while my Mom worked. So we went to Camp Granny. Granny Camp started with making a count down calendar which stayed on the refrigerator. This counted the 5 days until we were to go home on Friday afternoon. Each morning we took a day off the countdown. It usually started a fight between my sister and me as to who ripped the paper off first. Granny made attempts to do things with us. She really did try to make it somewhat entertaining, but you could tell she needed Friday afternoon to come quickly. Granny didn’t love us being around. Granny counted down the days each day until we left….and now, as a 45 year old, I remember the feeling of that. I remember the countdown calendar on the refrigerator. I remember that she was so excited to be rid of us. I remember the feeling of her not wanting us there. And more than anything I remember that feeling of rejection.

We are in the last two months of the school year. It is a packed, adventurous time. There is so much to be done between now and June 4^th. In fact there are moments that I am unsure it will all get done. But I started thinking about that countdown. I am sure, like me, you’re starting to think about those things you plan on doing this summer: vacation, books to be read, Netflix binges, rooms to paint, closets to organize, PD to attend, Pinterest ideas to create, etc.  Yet, don’t physically start  a countdown to summer. Remember little Meredith at Camp Granny knowing that she was counting down the days until she was rid of me. Our students look up to us. Many do because they’re taught to do that by their parents and others look up to us because we are stable, we are caring, and we are their world. Now imagine how that must feel to them for us counting down the days until we are no longer a part of their world.  

Lester Laminack once said, “You can crush a child’s spirit in the blink of an eye. Be thoughtful.  Be present. Be honest. Be kind. Be an adult.” Think about that before you  Count Down to Summer or count down until you're rid of these kids........ that really should be a depressing thought.

Coming Back from Spring Break................

Do you not just love spring break? I mean really...it is almost like Christmas morning. It is a well-deserved break and rest before the last 7 weeks of school. I often think that we are the busiest school in America, because I all the time try to find a “not busy time” and cannot find such a time in our calendar. I also think that the beginning of school and the end of school are the hardest. Labor Day is the reward for making it the first few weeks of school, spring break is preparation for the hardest weeks, and summer is the reward.  I had many plans for spring break this year. As I was stuck in traffic Friday travelling home (my usual 8 hour trip took 12), I was thinking about how I didn’t want spring break to end all the while being super excited about coming back to school today.  Strange? Maybe, but I love being in this building with our students and our amazing teachers.

Because I live with all boys, many of my family’s activities revolve around sports. Last week was spent watching the National Championship basketball games.  One of the reasons I like championship games is the pregame stories. I love hearing the backgrounds of players and coaches. In fact, I believe that coaching is much like teaching, and I study coaches and their approaches with their teams. I think we can learn a lot about our teaching and leadership through watching and learning from good coaches. In most of the final 4 games-both men and women- the games were very intense and very close. I was intrigued by what is a ritual these days of holding up 4 fingers as the fourth quarter begins....I think that this is something that started in football. Again, the intensity of these games and the importance of winning were shown on the faces of the players, the gestures of the coaches, and the craziness of the fans. That 4th quarter acknowledgement is important. The players, the coaches, and the fans hold up those 4 fingers in an almost contract like manner as if stating that they are pledging their honor to give it their all in the last quarter of the game. It is not the time when they start trying hard-they’ve done that the last 3 quarters, but it is a symbolism of leaving it all of the court (or the field-for whichever sport). The players know the W or the L will more than likely be determined by how you finish.  It is exciting to watch. Because I am older and maybe because I have children who play sports, the saddest thing in the world to me is when a game is over and the camera pans to the losing team. I hate watching the players upset. I hate seeing coaches distressed because they must go and shake hands and congratulate the other team all the while wondering what they are going to say to their devastated players when they get into the locker room. But I can’t shake the feeling of the solidarity of the hand raising at the last quarter of the game.

Church ran over yesterday. I cannot tell you how many folks I saw looking at their watches. Yet, last night, my husband and I couldn’t go out to eat until the Master’s golf tournament was over. I got to thinking about school. I got to wondering about our last “quarter” of school. These last 7 weeks are difficult. These last 7 weeks is why we have summer vacation. There is so much to do. There is so much intensity between end of year testing, programs, continually teaching and moving your students forward until the very last day, class placement cards for next year, and end of the year business. But would it not be so much better and so much easier if we acted like those sports teams who raise their hand holding up 4 fingers?

Instead of complaining about all that must happen in the 7 weeks between now and summer vacation, what if we pledge to work together to make it the best ending of school ever? When this happens, we communicate more, we work together more, and we work towards one goal. This makes it easier for all of us. It also makes it right for our students. When we enter the school in the mornings, knowing that there is a lot of work to be done, but knowing that you have a team to help you get it accomplished and knowing that you play an important part in that team, helps our students. It also helps you plan well thought out, meaningful learning engagements for our students in the last few weeks-even with the disruptions of testing, field trips, and programs. Our students, and quite frankly our colleagues, deserve to have the dedication of ALL faculty and staff to finish strong. I hope you will seriously consider changing your lens to one of (metaphorically-I can see so many of you now walking by my office holding up 4 fingers) entering the 4th quarter knowing that you are going to give it all you have. You, our profession, and most importantly, our students deserve it.