Teach & Serve III, No. 29 – The Dream Business
February 28, 2018
The Dream Business. That is an exciting business in which to work. That is an exciting vocation to have. And enabling dreamers around us is part of what we do.
Dreams.
It is about dreams I wish to ruminate for a few paragraphs because dreams are so critically important to the work we share as teachers and educational leaders. Dreams are the blood that should run through the veins of our schools. They should be the air our students breathe. Dreams ought to be what sustains us as we look to February and the long March toward summer.
In our schools, we as adults are surrounded by people who dream. Our students dream of their future and what they will become. They dream of who they will play with on the playground or ask to prom. They dream of their role on the volleyball team or in the next play. They dream about getting out of the class through which they are suffering.
They dream.
Part of our role as teachers is to enable them to dream, to stretch their imaginations about themselves, to exceed, first in their minds and then in reality, the obstacles they believe they cannot overcome. Part of our role as administrators is to enable our faculty and staff to do the same thing: to dream of who they want to be for their students and department and school.
We are in the dream business in education.
Yes, I know. There are practical pieces to what we do, practical things we must help our students and staffs accomplish, practicalities that are practical and must be practically done.
I understand.
But when we allow ourselves and our systems to be overcome by the practical, we neglect the impractical. When we only focus on the possible, we forget the impossible. When we hone in on what must be done, we lose sight of what can be done.
The Dream Business. That is an exciting business in which to work. That is an exciting vocation to have. And enabling dreamers around us is part of what we do.
And we need to dream, too, dream about what might be, not only for our students, but for ourselves.