1.Sometimes you need a swimming pool. After kicking some midterm behind, Dr. Mac sent us swimming. On that day, poolside relaxation was just about the perfect reward for a job well done. We felt valued…and just a little bit special. The same will be true of the rewards we offer our students, teachers, parents, and community members. As we all know, a sticker or smile goes a long way. On that day, it may just be someone else’s swimming pool.
2. Some common sense rules are pretty self-explanatory. Thanks to Cody’s pain-staking notes, I was able to copy this gem from Dr. Davis. As our case studies have shown, educational administration will offer few right answers. Easy decisions will be even harder to find. So when a right answer or easy decision actually presents itself, take a skeptical moment, and then thank ya Jesus (or Buddha, or God, or some amorphous sense of religious obligation) that you finally found one!
3. When life gives you lemons, love your llamas. There have been a few tense moments, differing opinions, and competing voices in PC3. Could you really expect less of a small group of highly effective, occasionally neurotic, and generally exhausted teacher-leaders? Hopefully not. These very moments offer invaluable insight into our chosen career. As administrators, we will encounter practices we don’t understand, beliefs we don’t share, and mindsets we can’t even fathom. Nonetheless, we will have to love those llamas…if only long enough to learn from them.
4. We are elite? True, we eight were selected out of approx. eighty applicants. True, we were accepted into a flagship program for educational leadership and administration. True, Dr. Davis thinks we may be the best cohort yet—although we think he probably said the same thing to PC2. BUT mistakes will happen. We’ll laugh about some as we get caught in turnstiles, become lost in Guyton, and acquire false Patricks. However, some mistakes aren’t funny. Those ones are called bad decisions—or “bad things,” depending on the Kimism. And when (not if) we make those bad decisions, that’s when we’ll really need each other…to listen, learn, and maybe even laugh.
5. Educate. Learn. Coach. Collaborate. We’ll be talking about this one for the next twelve months, so I’ll summarize. Basically, it forms the “much is required” element of our “much is given” education. But if you have any lingering questions, feel free. Just please not now, after midnight, when I still need to finish this ELCC standards reflection…
Written by Courtney Van Cleve former teacher in the MS Delta
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