Over the course of the past five years or so, I have taken part in a movement among the educational community (and the community writ large, I am certain) to select a word around which to center the upcoming year. I have engaged in this practice and found it grounding, especially as a year begins. As I have commented in previous posts, there is something about beginnings – the starts of years and months and weeks – that really clicks with my internal operating system. If I start something well and begin it at the right time, it becomes a part of my makeup, mindset and motion.

Therefore, I start the year 2024 with the word EMBRACE.

I intend to embrace the year,

embrace challenge and change,

embrace expectations,

embrace the unknown,

embrace gratitude,

embrace whatever is to come, fully and without reservation.

2024 – Embrace.

EVERGREEN POST

We do not get tired of good Christmas songs. Well, I do not, anyway. I look forward to their repetition each year. When beginning to compose a post for the week before Christmas this year, I realized I had covered the themes I wanted to in posts of Christmas post, so I will present this again here and plan to do so annually. I hope you enjoy it.

On many desks and in many inboxes this time of year, teachers and administrators find all manner of remembrances – cards and notes and gifts, tokens of affection and appreciation. Typically, these trinkets and notes do not fully express the gratitude of the students and staff we serve. They are lovely to receive. They are not always reflective of the appreciation our communities feel for us. Our communities typically love us and are grateful for our service.

And, while It is an appropriate time of year for students and staff to thank us, it is an equally appropriate time of year for us to be thankful.

As many of us finish our last-minute tasks, our baking and decorating and preparing, this is a great time of year to think about another great gift we in education are given: the gift of doing work that influences days to come.

Our work reaches beyond us. It reaches through time. It reaches into the future.

We most often do not see ready results. While some of us have been in this work for an extended period of time and we have been able to watch some of the seeds we have planted grow in the lives our students lead after they have left us, we are typically immersed in the day-to-day, the checklist of the moment, the class to come, the next paper to grade.

It is challenging, then, to remember that our reach exceeds our grasp, ever and always. The work we do influences the world to come. It shapes society. It changes the world.

Changes. The. World.

That’s a gift worth receiving. It’s a gift worth sharing.

Over the course of this first semester, I have had the opportunity to consider – deeply – what I believe are the core qualities that make up a good leader, that inspire a leader who truly serves others. 

A colleague this week asked me if I could distill good leadership to one quality. He wanted to know what was the quality I believe is the most essential in an excellent educational leader.

I should,  perhaps, have taken more time to answer than I did but  one quality immediately came to my mind when I was asked the question and I was answering before I knew it.

Humility.

When I consider my personal journey and all the experiences – wonderful, terrible, and everywhere in between – that journey has afforded me and I reflect on the most salient takeaways I have gained, humility emerges at the top of the list of the most crucial qualities of a leader.

It would take far too much ink for me to enumerate the many lessons I had to work through which helped me learn that I want and need to keep humility at the center of my leadership. I could discuss the times I thought I knew better than the wisdom of the room, the times I got ahead of myself and ahead of process, the times I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge and was afraid to admit that I was not the smartest person in a given conversation and that I did not have all the answers.

I have blogged about many of these experiences in the past. Each and all of them have taught me that the key component of my leadership and the quality I strive to keep foremost in my approach to it is humility.

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom, said Gandhi. If that is true, and I believe that it is, it is wise, then, to embrace the wisdom of others and to do so in humble humility.

I want humility to be the heart of my servant leadership. I will work to make it so.

How did it get this late in the semester? I suspect teachers all over the Western world have similar reactions to the first week of December. Where did this semester go? How did I get so behind in my curricular plan? How can I finish everything I need to finish, grade everything I need to grade, get done all that I need to get done?

These questions are certainly timely. These questions are certainly real.

They are all likely to be resolved in the next few weeks. They have to be. Finals have to be written. Papers have to be graded. Work has to be done. Though it is difficult, sometimes, to look at the calendar and see how all the work will get done, it does get done. Educational professionals always find a way.

Dare I say these things – the finals and grades – are the easy things to address? They are easy because we know what they are, 

The truth is there are other things that need tending to as we approach the end of the semester – other things that, too, need to be done. Some of these are not obvious. They are not stacked on our desk or circled on our calendars or clogging our inboxes. They are of a different nature.

Consider this: are there students in our classrooms with whom we have been at odds? Are there students who have managed to rub us the wrong way, about whom we are justified (in our minds, at least) to feel great frustration toward?

Are there calls we ought to make; emails we ought to write? Are there parents we know are stewing that we are content to let simmer in their own juices? Are we willing to simply write these things off and hope that they go away?

Are there faculty members we have avoided, those with whom we have conflicts – large or small – with whom we would rather not speak? 

Much like we have “work” to do with grades and exams and closing out the minutiae of the semester, these things, too, are “work.” Why do we often resist the notion that this kind of work is as important as all the other kinds of work?

Hopefully you do not have many of these items in your life, professional or otherwise. Hopefully you tend to these issues as they come up and, because we work with people – with students, their parents and our colleagues – they will come up. Hopefully you do not leave these things undone.

As we look to the semester’s end, though, maybe we can set our sights on doing those things that are undone. Perhaps we can wrap up some loose ends that are not tangible. Maybe these final weeks we can allow ourselves a moment to reflect on what needs to be addressed and give us the space to actually address it.

Perhaps we can do the undone.

That would be a great gift to share with others and with ourselves.