Thanksgiving and Sacrifice Go Hand in Glove in Leadership

My feelings about this holiday season over the years have evolved into more and more reflection time around what really matters in my life. As a black man in America, I don’t get into the logistics over the history of the holiday that I've educated myself on because this is a PERSONAL time of reflection, gratitude towards my family and friends, and of appreciating my blessings. This year, especially, there are 2 words that ring loud and clear in my inner being as I reflect, and those are Thanksgiving and Sacrifice.

As one who holds leadership roles in education and at my church, I take those roles very seriously. I’m thankful to be blessed to operate in both roles, and it requires sacrifice. The very act of being thankful for your blessings should propel one to look beyond the blessings and say to oneself, “How can I sacrifice in order to pass the blessings that I have been bestowed upon me to someone else?” This is where it gets personal for me. The blessing that I have worked diligently to pass on is safety. As a school leader during this pandemic, parents are entrusting me to ensure a maximum level of safety for their kids. In turn, my wife and my own kids at home have an extremely high expectation that as a husband and father, I will live my life everyday during this pandemic in a manner that does not expose them. 

The confidence that my family and the families I serve put in me LEADS ME to sacrifice everyday that I wake up, and I do offer that sacrifice with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. Will I miss seeing family and friends for Thanksgiving? I certainly will. Do I miss watching my kids participate in soccer, basketball, and field hockey during the fall and winter months? I miss it to a level that you wouldn’t believe. However, I know that my level of thankfulness to be in the position that I am has LEAD me to sacrifice the things I love to ensure that the kids I serve can continue to attend school in person if their parents have chosen that option. My level of thankfulness to serve in a leadership capacity at my church has LEAD me to sacrifice my personal desires for the members (30% or less of capacity; socially distant; and following all state and CDC guidelines for houses of worship) that look forward to attending in person to hear a message of Good News every Sunday. My level of thankfulness for having a beautiful wife and kids has LEAD me to sacrifice by isolating myself from all the things I love to do to ensure that I am keeping them safe. My thankfulness has LEAD me to think about the families of my colleagues, my neighbor that I may pass on my morning or evening walks as we both walk our dogs, and my fellows brothers and sisters that I don’t know, and apply personal sacrifices to my life for them.

However you celebrate, or if you don’t celebrate during this season at all, I implore you to love on the family in your house, reflect on the bright spots of 2020 that bring a smile to your face, and be hopeful that the future brings greatness to all around you.

Evolving Mindsets...Leaders, Tap Into Your Teachers

 If you are reading this, please make sure to go back and read the blog post by my friend and colleague, Doug Timm @DougTimm34, and this post will make more sense to you. His post, "What I Thought, Is Not What It Is," got my mind in reflection mode so I decided to write. I'm challenging my friend and colleague Deanna @Hessteacherest to follow this post up with her wonderful insight to help Doug and I channel this in a great way that she always does.

There were 2 statements that Doug had in the blog post that captivated my thoughts. Here they are:

1. "I thought my presence, title, and perceived power would bring my 'thoughts' to truth and facts."
2. "It turns out my thoughts were wrong. It is a lot of hard work, constantly growing, and mindsets evolving."

To unpack it further, I am focusing on "thoughts" and "mindsets." As a school leader, these 2 areas are imperative to continually improve instruction and student achievement. One tip that I'd like to drop for school leaders is to ensure that you are in at least one Voxer group, thought group, etc. where you as a school leader are outnumbered by teachers. The key thing is that it is a group of teachers not from your school or district. This will push your thinking in ways that a graduate course or a conference may not. Let me break it down for you.

With every passing year in leadership, that is one more year further away from the classroom. For example, I haven't taught in the classroom since September 2014. The experience of the teachers I serve now is completely different from what I experienced. My students in 2014 are not the students of 2020. As I gain new learning about instructional technology, resources, and strategies, I can't rush to try to push it all on my teachers. In addition, the teachers I serve may feel uneasy about calling me out on my approaches to things or challenging my thinking on things that drastically affect them in their classrooms. By being in Voxer groups or PLNs where you are outnumbered by teachers, I can gauge how my teachers really feel about certain things without them having to tell me. The teachers in my PLNs can call me out or challenge me on parts of my leadership or practices that teachers are going to have problems with. Not only can they call me out, but they will also describe their own experiences or history in certain situations that I'm describing, and explain to me how it may have negatively impacted the morale of the school.

This is one significant way that school leaders can challenge their thinking and shift their mindset. A sample testimony of mine is that there have been many ideas that I've had that I wanted to present to my Principal for us to think about based off of what I saw other school leaders doing on Twitter or Facebook. It'd happen by chance that I'd find myself lurking in one of my Voxer groups, trying to catch up on a conversation, and teachers would be discussing a similar initiative or strategy being implemented in their school that I was thinking about, but the implementation was not going well for several reasons. It gave me a chance to gauge how that same thing could either blow up in my face at my building or how we would need to revamp it in order to suit our school.

Let's Rock!