Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
School starts on Tuesday. The past couple weeks have been building up, and up, and the hype is real. I’m getting excited about the year ahead. I want great things for my school community, and I’m looking forward to a wonderful year.
But it’s still a couple days away and the hype-up has been too long. Today I just feel drained. I’m taking a rest day on my workouts after pushing hard for two days and having a hard grind of a walk scheduled for tomorrow morning. I have a few errands to do, (I’m sitting in my car writing this after doing one of them now), and honestly I just feel blah.
I know this will change and the excitement will hit me again starting tomorrow night and well into the day Tuesday, but I’m just going to accept today as a low-energy, low productivity day. I’ll just let the blahs play themselves out.
I’m headed to our school board office this morning for our first admin meeting of the year. There are years when this day arrives and I sit in bewilderment wondering what happened to my summer? But this year is one of those years where I’ve felt like I’ve had a wonderful break and I’m ready for the new year.
My regular routine starts today. I’m not writing this at a random time of day, or squeezing my writing in right before bed (like last night). Rather, I’m up early, I’ve already meditated, and I’m getting on the treadmill as soon as I publish this. It feels good to be back to my routine.
The new year brings with it both excitement and trepidation. I always start the year with specific goals in mind, and I feel enthusiastic, yet apprehensive. The year always holds so much promise. New plans, new students, new and unexpected scenarios all lie ahead.
There is a lot of prep work to do, but no amount of prep makes you feel 100% prepared. Planning only gets you so far when you are dealing with so many people in different roles. You might be calm and ready, but others will be nervous and unpredictable. No matter how well planned you may be, unexpected things will happen.
Schools are places of growth and learning, and real learning doesn’t happen smoothly and with conformity. Things don’t always go as planned. Yet, that’s part of the excitement. The unknown, the unexpected, the surprises along the way, the connections you make, the solutions you work on, and the collaboration required, are all part of what makes this job exciting and unique.
It’s the first day back, and so a whole new adventure begins…
Last night, me and about 16-to-18,000 of my closest friends gathered around giant TV to watch the Vancouver Canucks hockey game. Well, what actually happened was that my buddy and I went to a ‘Watch Party’ at our home arena, while the Canucks played the Oilers in Edmonton. I wasn’t sure what to expect? Going to a hockey arena and watching the game on a screen above the empty ice rink felt a bit surreal.
Even from the National Anthem before the game, it felt electric with a genuinely excited crowd. Then, like this was a pantomime, the crowd would boo and cheer pre-game when the camera focused on the Edmonton versus Vancouver players. This continued throughout the game, almost every time there was a stop in play.
It was a lot of fun cheering along with so many people but I couldn’t shake the oddity of so many fans coming to a massive arena to watch an away game on a giant screen; Everyone shouting and cheering as if they were actually at the game… Buying popcorn, and beer, and game day food; and all decked out in Vancouver fan wear, mostly in the away game jerseys.
I spent a good part of the night fully immersed in the game. And yet, I also had these meta-moments where I’d think about the fact that my shared experience with all these people was more like watching the game at home with friends than it was actually going to the game. One minute I’m feeling this whole experience is odd, and the next I’m fully caught up in the fervour and excitement of the game and the crowd. Participating in the wave was fun the first 3 rounds, watching the crowd go up and down in unison, then by the 7th time I’m wondering why this is still happening with no audience besides the audience?
The answer is, it’s all about the power of crowds. The power of being near others with common energy and spirit. The power of sharing a moment, an excited experience with others who have the same intentions. Since before the colosseum and gladiators, crowds have gathered to cheer for talented heroes of one sort or the other. Warriors and athletes performing at their peak, with only one of two outcomes: victory or defeat.
And it is so much more fun, in the company of crowds.
I am nervous about the balance of things: work/home life/exercise; leadership/management; priorities/budgets; teaching & learning; support & independence; planning & follow through; time & efficiency.
I may be nervous but I can feel the potential… the promise of a great year ahead. Physiologically there is almost no difference between anxious nervousness and excitement. So I’ll reframe my thinking, I am excited.
I hope all educators are equally excited. We are in an incredible occupation. We change lives. We make learning fun and engaging. And our teaching goes well beyond the curriculum. We don’t teach subjects, we teach kids. We teach kindness, collaboration, cooperation, and creativity. We don’t just teach classes, we teach young adults who want to do well, who soar, who struggle, and who do the best with the resources they have.
Some come to us full of support and resources, others come to us with much less. The less the resources, the more compassion we need. The greater the challenge, the more patience we must have. The more we are challenged, the higher we must rise.
We can be the purveyor of the status quo, or we can be the change agents we want to be. It all begins today… here we go!
Just two more sleeps and the new school year begins. Some people get away for the last weekend, my wife and I almost never go away on this long weekend. We find it busy and our minds are too preoccupied with school. I’ll probably go in on Monday for a couple hours and make sure I’m ready.
Every new school year begins with so much promise, and this year feels especially filled with potential. I know we aren’t completely out of the covid cloud, but most of the restrictions we faced were to ensure there were not too many hospitalizations that we’d overburden our hospitals, and with covid cases being much milder, I think this year will be much more normal.
I never thought I’d be thankful for ‘normal’ but here we are. This year doesn’t need to be special to be good, it just needs to feel less restrictive, less focused on what we can’t do, and more focussed on what we’ve done well in the past. Rebuilding is not as hard as paving the way. The infrastructure is there, we know how to do it, we just need to execute well. But even that can be a little nerve racking looking at the whole year ahead.
Two more sleeps until the new year begins. I’m a little nervous, and quite exited about what lies ahead.
