Status Check

"The journey is never ending. There's always gonna be growth, improvement, adversity; you just gotta take it all in and do what's right, continue to grow, continue to live in the moment."

-Antonio Brown

Normally, I try to limit my use of athlete quotes to truly transcendent athletes, but in this case, I have to make an exception because Antonio Brown's quote here was just too spot on for the thoughts running through my head today. I just finished my first round of formal observations of the year, and while it is a process that I know creates a lot of stress for teachers, I couldn't help but feel really good about the conversations I had with the teachers I met with last week. We've obviously had a lot change this year, and there has been some adversity. I can feel it when our staff feels like they are at a breaking point in terms of all we are expected to do. We were at one of those points just a few weeks ago. It may not have affected all of you, but I could sense a general tension, and I know it was largely driven by the adjustment to all of the new we have going on, but through a combination of things, not the least of which was probably the slumber party (hat tip to Tara Bates), I walked out of the building on Friday feeling very positive about the direction we are heading. I was able to have meaningful conversations with novice and veteran teachers alike about where they are in terms of professional practice and where they want to be. We discussed ideas for strategies to push toward excellent in categories that are meaningful to the individual teacher and his or her students. So many days and weeks, I feel like all I have a chance to do is run around putting out fires and managing the logistics of what we do. Last week was a refreshing chance to spend a majority of my time as an instructional leader, which is what the experts say I should be spending over half of my time doing. In that regard, I'm giving myself a proficient for last week, and I'm pretty darn happy with that.