It’s a new day.
Yesterday I spent a good hour coming to terms with all the ways I’ve gone wrong this school year. Many things have started to click together, and the things I’m doing wrong rose to the surface.
It started when I randomly clicked on January 2019 in this blog and found a poem I wrote where I mentioned we have to “bend the curriculum to the students,” a quote from Cornelius Minor.
It reminded me of something I read on New Year’s Day, an essay by a teacher who talked about storyboarding the curriculum, an idea that set me on fire. After all, I have preached to my students that everything is about story. Why I never applied that to the curriculum is anyone’s guess.
That aside, I realized that I have been unkind at times. Controlling. Have carried negative feelings toward certain learners. Have focused on the wrong things. Have looked for magical answers and then blamed the kids when they didn’t work.
I tired myself out.
Between revisiting We Got This by Cornelius Minor and Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, I found a direction. The new semester is a chance to hit the reset button and start again.
One of the things that stood out in Dare to Lead was Brene’s list of the differences between Armored Leadership and Daring Leadership.
Armored: Leading for compliance and control.
Daring: Cultivating commitment and shared purpose.
This provided my direction.
I also revisited the end of the book where she explains thoroughly that everything is about the stories we tell ourselves. There was that word STORY again.
I’ve concluded that everything is about story or nothing is. I will take the former, and I will make it a part of my classroom culture. There are already a million ideas floating around in my head, and I can’t wait to get started.
After all, today is a new day.
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