My First Blog Post
Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken. — Oscar Wilde. This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
From Here To There
Leading Through Learning
Year: 2019
Educational Blog Posts
Intentions
Leading through learning As a new year begins, I am always surprised and grateful for the “freshness” that is inherent in education. Teachers come back excited and rejuvenated, students come back with new goals and hopes, new students arrive unsure and eager to learn and make friends. It is one of the most critical times…
Energy
Leading through Learning “As a leader, I want to be chief encourager. I want people to know that they are appreciated, admired, and even loved. I think the best organizations operate as a family. There is trust, compassion and a shared sense of belonging and identity.” – Daniel Bauer Week 2 of School – check….
Intuition
Leading Through Learning As I’m looking over my first two blog posts, I realize the purpose for this blog is not clear. So to clarify, this blog will serve as my time for reflection. As I use writing all during the week as a way to refocus, clarify and gather my thoughts, these entries will…
Balance
Leading through learning Week 4: Balance There have been points along my journey when I think balance is my ultimate life lesson. Over and over and over, I am aware that balance brings calmness and clarity to most, if not all, issues. Sometimes this awareness comes at the price of losing balance in my life…
Creating Space
Leading through learning “Stillness is not about focusing on nothingness; it’s about creating a clearing. It’s opening up an emotionally clutter-free space and allowing ourselves to feel and think and dream and question…” ~Brene Brown This week we had three large trees removed from our backyard. They were dead and we have been discussing removing…
The Myth of Busy
How can we recognize the negative impacts of “busy” on our lives? How can we re-frame busy to focus?
Freedom Focus
We have a class called Junior Leadership. It is a connection class, or a middle school version of an elective class. Students have two electives per quarter and these classes rotate. At the end of last year, teachers in this class conducted an experiment. They wanted to see how many times students’ phones dinged, buzzed,…
To Tell A Different Story
Week 8 – To Tell A Different Story
How can we expand our vision to understand a different view? We can through challenging our own assumptions and sense of rightness.
The Curiosity of Wonder
I am reading the book Wonder by R. J. Palacio to my 9-year-old son. Although Isaac is a great reader, he doesn’t love to read like I do or like his sister does. He’s more like his father – he wants to read in order to learn how to do something or for a purpose….
The Impact of Beliefs
The Snake River, winding through Yellowstone National Park. “I would rather have a mind opened by wonder, than one closed by belief.” – Gerry Spence, trial lawyer who did not lose a case between the years of 1969-2010. In this quote, beliefs and wonder serve as opposite forces. When you look at beliefs by themselves,…
The Power of Play
I became a teacher before I became a mom. I can split my professional experience in education as: (1) before children section and (2) after children section. When I had children, my priorities shifted, not only with my family, but also with my career. I prepared extensively to become a mom. My husband and I…
The Courage to Love
I remember hearing the statement, “If your heart can take it, come fly,” in the context of courageous love. Courageous love means showing a willingness to love another despite mistakes, despite unknown outcomes, despite fears of failure. It means taking actions rooted in faith and not fear, forgiveness and not anger, hope and not pity….
Weekend of Reset
How I enjoyed this weekend! The Hemlock Festival (HemlockFest) is a weekend celebration of music, food, vendors, and awareness about ways to protect the Eastern Hemlock Tree and bring back the American Chestnut tree. It is in North Georgia and one way my family and I give back to something we care about deeply. It…
The Art of Self-Discipline
All of us have the experience of quitting an activity because it was too time-consuming, too costly in either effort or money, or because we were just over it. I remember when my children took Tae-kwon-do. We got involved initially because my youngest needed an activity. My oldest liked the class too, so we signed…
Facing Challenges
My principal always reminds me that the challenges inherent in schools are merely microcosms of our society at large. The struggles students face within the context of schools and social groups mirror the same struggles adults face in the context of their lives. When our country and those in power lead with fear, as educators,…
Leadership Mindset: Grace, Grit, and Gratitude
“So what are you going to do about this situation? Your decision can’t be only about how you feel,” my mother asked me on a sunny morning. I believe she had asked me this question many times because my initial reaction was to roll my eyes even though we were talking on the phone and she couldn’t actually see my response.
New Perspectives
Birds of a feather, flock together. You are who your friends are. Two peas in a pod. Cut from the same cloth. If everyone jumped off the bridge would you, too? These sayings we all have heard to essentially imply that who you spend time with is a reflection of who you are and the…
Braving Bias
“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair. We all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we…
