INTRODUCTORY POST / A BLOG PROLOGUE: It is my hope that this blog will reveal itself to you and me in a delicate and deliberate manner, not immediately nor efficiently but slowly and over many months, beginning with this introductory post. I wish for both of us that its themes and practicalities emerge not in any way like an unremarkable first date arranged via a sultry online service but more like a good and lasting friendship that over many months evolves into a meaningful and enduring romance, made richer through intimate discourse and amorous stares as well as through the enduring understandings that can only be found through honesty, thoughtfulness, humility and grace.
At its core, this is a blog about schools and the great people who lead them. It is also then about teachers, the dedicated and humble public servants who deserve our just and lasting appreciation and, of course, it is about kids and parents, who we should serve and respect as if they were our own. It is a blog about inspiration and innovation, about the kind of schools and school systems we have now but more about the great possibilities that lay before us. This blog at times will be philosophical or even spiritual. It will also be heady and historical, only because we have good deal to learn from the great thinkers who have proceeded us. Of course, it is my hope that this blog will also be practical, with critical steps that we must take now to ensure that our schools and school districts are operating at maximum efficiency.
When I say that this blog’s themes are best acquired over many months, I say that because (like you) I have arrived at my own understandings only after many, many years of study and practice, of public successes and failures and of countless hours of private ponderings over theories and quick-fixes proffered by teachers, leaders, social scientists, historians and philosophers. I have sought out the best practices to educate our children and have dedicated my life to the cause of public education. Still, I toil on. In the spirit of full disclosure, let me be clear that I have not personally solved any of the problems of practice that we face today in our schools. In this way, I am the problem as well as the solution for I am a teacher, I am a principal, and I am the district.
I can only promise you that I am exceedingly well versed in how to teach and how not to teach as I have been an awful teacher and an excellent one. I am also accomplished in leading schools as I have been an extraordinary assistant principal and principal as well as an occasional failure at both. And I press now on as a fledging and dedicated district administrator who rushes home each night to tell his wife about the great victories we have won in transforming our school district while the next night prattling on about the bankruptcy of solutions that I was certain would work but somehow collapsed before me.
It is my hope then this blog will serve as a place for us to learn from each other, to share in the thoughts and stories of the many great leaders who serve our schools today and to breathe inspiration from the ideas they provide to the rest of us. I also hope this blog challenges our assumptions and undermines our prejudices. I hope it serves to position you in the right and proper context to lead schools and school districts that are in a desperate need of bold, instructional leadership. In a perfect and practical context, my hope is that all schools and school districts everywhere realize the possibility of sound instructional leadership and fully aligned systems that are designed to ensure growth and prosperity for all children. It is with this intent that we will explore a series of ideas via this blog that are reinforced by a strong instructional philosophy that might be described by some as having an instructional core but, for reasons that will reveal themselves in time, will be described via this blog as having an instructional soul.
