The Journal presents my weekly reflections on being a private, Catholic school principal during what promises to be a year filled with energy, excitement, challenges and possibilities…
Welcome to the last edition of The Journal until 1.6.2021. See you then!
… we need to take a break.
In this last installment of The Journal until 2021, the message I share with all those involved in education as simple as it is necessary: take a break.
Never before have teachers and administrators and staff needed a break as much as we do now. The challenges of this year – from last spring until now, whether a school has been remote, hybrid, fully in person or a combination of all of the above – have been unprecedented and staggering. Teaching is a profession wherein those who excel seem to rarely give themselves time off, time away, time at all.
This is not the year for us to continue that trend.
This year, we need to take a break.
I was speaking over the weekend with a sage and wonderful friend of mine at a virtual happy hour and we were discussing the coming weeks away from work. He suggested that he typically had a project going in to time off – a hobby in which to dive and something fun with which to divert himself – and he was searching for what this year’s project would be. I am sure he will find one and will dive into it with abandon and commitment and fun.
As always, when my friend speaks, I listen. On this bit of advice, we all should.
We all should find something with which to involve ourselves that does not revolve around lesson planning and schedule changing and long ranging planning and the myriad of other things we might have on our lists. Surely we will have to do some of that over break to keep ourselves on pace and to make the beginning of 2021 comfortable and calm. That work is there and we will get it done.
But we need a break. We need to divert ourselves, to give ourselves downtime from the work, to recharge.
We need to dedicate time in which we would usually be working to not work.
Please, I implore us all, to find a project, a pursuit, a paperback and take a break.
Frankly, it’s the very best thing we could do for our students and staff and communities.
Merry Christmas and a blessed new year to all!
New guidelines released by a task force of educators in Colorado will be published next week, but early returns suggest that they will greatly assist schools in remaining in in-person instruction beginning at the first of the year. This is wonderful news, as is vaccine distribution beginning. As I noted last week, we live in hope…