What am I Doing?

This year I began my journey as Principal at Brock Elementary. I quickly realized, there are not enough hours in the day to do everything I need to do, let alone dream about. Balancing my time between managing the day to day, developing meaningful relationships, taking an active role in instruction, while continuing to raise expectations for student success, can be overwhelming. I never imagined that this job would be easy. I expected bumps and set backs. This year like any other, there have been several.  As we take on change we must face every issue with the question, "What is best for our kids?" Recently I started to ask myself,  how do I know what my students and teachers need? What am I doing to make sure that I truly understand where they are coming from? These questions have kept me up at night and somewhere in my thoughts I came up with a simple solution. What if I made time to put myself in the shoes of the very people that I am serving. What is it like to be a student in my school? How much planning and thought go into teaching a child the joy of reading or how to do the new math? What goes into feeding our students each day or keeping our campus clean? I have many other questions like these and I have decided to find out for myself. For the rest of the year, I am going to schedule time to find the answers to these questions. I will go to class as a student, work with teachers to teach lessons and take time to work in the cafeteria and with the custodial staff. One might question this decision as I am already stretched for time. I would defend it and say that there is nothing more important than relationships, without them we have nothing. This adventure will help me to lead from within and solidify my commitment to our school and community. I plan to reflect on my experiences and share them with anyone that is interested. I am writing this down so that others can hold me accountable. My hope is that in the whirlwind that I am constantly caught up in, I will live up to the high expectations of those that I serve. Together, we will continue to build a school that is centered in what is best for kids.