Practical Theory

The Science Leadership Academy lost one of its founding members as our librarian, Paul Scaer, lost his battle with cancer and passed away at 3:30 am on Tuesday morning. Paul was a truly outstanding and caring educator, and his vision for the role of a library in an inquiry-driven and project-based school will guide us in the Scaer Library for years to come.

Paul took great joy in being a part of the SLA community, and he felt deep regret that he had to leave SLA before the work he set out to do was finished. As SLA continues to grow and evolve, we will honor Paul and his ideals by continuing to create a library that is both a place of great learning and of great joy.

That was what I wrote on the front of SLA's web site today. And that was the sentiment of what I said to the students who knew Paul -- our sophomores and juniors -- this afternoon. But there's much more to say...

Paul was an extraordinary educator. He embodied the ethic of care in the way that he treated students and teachers alike. As another one of our founding teachers said today -- it was when Paul signed on to join us that we all really knew that something very special could happen at Science Leadership Academy. He left Masterman -- one of the most prestigious magnet schools in the country -- to build the library at SLA. He was well-respected state-wide for his leadership in school libraries. And, in fact, when I first called him, it was to see if he knew anyone to recommend as  librarian, because it never even crossed my mind that he'd be willing to leave Masterman and join us.

Bringing Paul to SLA was one of the great stories of the birth of the school. I called Joyce Valenza, who I knew a bit from blogging and such, to see where I should look to recruit a tech-saavy "blended" librarian, and she told me that while she didn't know the Philly scene that well, I should talk to Paul Scaer because he was a great resource in the city. Paul and I traded a few emails, and arranged to talk on the phone. We talked for a while, and I laid out my vision of the school and of the role of the library and of tech and of open source and asked Paul who he could recommend. Paul's response was, "Well, I'd be really interested in doing that." I don't think I can accurately describe the stuttering response from me that followed, because I was so caught off-guard. With all of the due-diligence we did around the first cohort of teachers, I can say -- we only interviewed one person for the librarian position.

There are few librarians who see their job as encompassing information specialist, music teacher, head of the second lunch-room, open-source advocate, union chapter chair and sounding board for the adults. Paul was all of those things and more. The library under Paul was a safe haven for so many kids. It was packed at lunch every day with students reading and playing music and talking. It was open every day after school, and there were always students at Paul's desk with him. And he was a magnificient collaborator as well, bringing the ethos of research -- such an important part of our school -- into classes as he worked with other teachers to do information and research literacy classes so that kids saw the value and need for those skills as a part of every class, not just when students made a special trip to the library.

And on a personal note, Paul was an amazing colleague. Being a thirty-five year old founding principal wasn't easy, and there were (are) many moments of a crisis of confidence for me along the way. One of the most humbling and comforting and emboldening things about that first year (and onward) was that educators like Paul -- career teachers with many more years of experience (teaching and life) than me -- believed both in our vision and in my ability to lead us there. As a young principal who occasionally wondered what I was doing even attempting what we were doing, Paul's support and belief in me and willingness to dive into the work in front of us was so important to me.

Paul's goal was to spend five years at SLA before retiring. He wanted to get the library to a point where a younger person could take the work he had done and build on it. We only had Paul for a year and a half, and he really did view his work at SLA as unfinished. We are very lucky in that we have hired the person this spring who has the energy and vision and passion to continue what he started. Last week, while sitting in on a meeting with our new librarian and various faculty members and library science experts in the area, I sent Paul an email to let him know that his vision was safe in her hands, and that his work would be continued. His family was, as we found out this week, reading him all the notes and letters and emails that people were sending him, and I hope that he heard what I wrote and could feel peace that his work would be continued, and that he could see his work at SLA as a job well-done for the leadership he gave the space that will forever bear his name.

While Paul was there, the library was my first stop every morning. Cup of coffee in hand, I would come into the library every day at the start of school to catch up with Paul... get his read on what was going on at school... bounce ideas around... or listen to his latest ideas for the space and the school. I looked forward to that every day. Our school lost a founding member today, but for me, I also lost a friend.

Paul Scaer was as kind and decent and passionate an educator and colleague as I will ever meet. Our world is better for his having lived in it, and he was taken from us far too soon.

Tom Hoffman, in his post Social Work and School Reform, cites an article from January's Washington Post - DC School a Test of Teachers' Grit:


And this:


Two of my personal goals for my own life is this -- I want to be a great father and I want to be a great husband. I want to be powerfully involved in my childrens' lives. I want to be the husband my wife deserves. If the only way I can be a great principal is to sacrifice those goals, then it's not interesting to me. If I'm not home for dinner with my family (and dinner is often at 7:00 pm) at least three nights a week, it's a bad week. I don't want to miss a Saturday T-ball game because I'm at school. I'm in school from 8 am until 6 - 6:30 almost every day. After my wife goes to be at 10:00 pm, I sit down at the computer and work until about 1 am almost every night. I put in between 60-70 hours every week, and if that is not enough, then I am not interested in the job anymore.

We have to come up with a better model of urban school reform than the messianic workaholic model. It is unsustainable and it requires Faustian bargains that no one should have to make. The danger of KIPP... the danger of Dangerous Minds and Stand And Deliver and all the newspaper articles that talk about the unmarried / childless teacher / principal who makes their school their entire life is that it excuses us -- as a society -- from envisioning a healthier model of school.

If we expect teachers to have an ethic of care about our students, we have to have an ethic of care about toward our educators. Asking them to sacrifice their lives to teach doesn't get us there. And it certainly doesn't get us toward systemic reform.

Let's start having that discussion... and every time someone talks about / writes about / makes a movie about some teacher who sacrifices everything to be a great teacher, let's demand that the authors answer one question -- Why can't we imagine successful schools in our cities that don't require Herculean effort to succeed? And what does it say about us -- and the underlying assumptions we make about teachers, schools and cities -- that we cannot.

Tags: urbaned

Tom VanderArk has a very interesting / provocative post about the teacher effectiveness debate and there are plenty of controversial and challenging in a very short post, but there's one in particular that I take issue with (tonight.)



Now... I complained about my grad school classes when I was in them, but I'm not sure "worthless university certification that has little to do with the job" is accurate or fair.

I've studied under some truly brilliant folks in grad school, from Tom Sobol to Ruth Vinz to David Schaafsma. They were career educators who made me think about teaching differently. Sometimes, they forced me to confront the assumptions that I came into teaching with because of my experiences as a students, sometimes, they gave me language for things I thought but could not express. (And in the case of Tom Sobol, I just sat there trying to soak up as much of his wisdom as I could.)

It's interesting because, two years out of my English Ed masters, I went back and re-read a lot of my notes and books and papers from grad school and I found that I was in a much better place in my own teaching to try to do the stuff we were talking about then. Sometimes, I think we waste pre-service teacher programs on pre-service teachers who aren't yet at a point to fully get what they are learning. So much of what the first two or three years of teaching is about is about figuring out who you are and how that "you" relates to the stuff you learned in grad school (or undergrad) and how any of that relates to the kids in front of you in the classroom.

And while, yes, I think Mr. Vander Ark is correct that we need do to a much better job of coaching / mentoring our new teachers, I disagree that it follows that just because we don't do that, that means that our current pre-service program is invalid. In fact, I'd argue that, in the best of all worlds, better mentoring of new teachers would allow them to more quickly and more effectively access the skills they learned in graduate school.

I'd hate to think that we'd do away with the notion of teaching teachers how to teach because we don't do a good enough job of supporting young teachers. Our profession needs more thoughtful practice, not less. A summer of quick and dirty "here's how to teach" lessons will not create thoughtful pedagoges, but rather, mostly, it will create a generation of teachers who teach the way they've been taught -- at best.

(By the way... One of my biggest frustrations about our profession is how little we know about the history of our profession. One thing I think our teacher education programs could do better is to teach the history of our profession. We need to be a less a-historical profession, and we can use our teacher education programs to do that. But I digress.)

So yes, let's look at how we support our young teachers. Let's build in apprenticeships into teaching. Let's mentor and coach much better than we do. But let's also help young teachers become scholars of their fields. Let's give them the time to learn about teaching, not just in the middle of it all, but in study because we stand on the shoulders of giants... and our teachers should have the time to learn who they were, what we've learned, and how that can transform what we think our classrooms can be.

And one last thought -- if our teacher-ed programs don't always get there... that's reason to push to make them better, not get rid of them.

Tags: teachereducation

SLA (and I) are featured as the Video of the Week on ScholasticAdministrator.com. They really did a nice job of capturing a sense of the school in a four minute video!

Tags: SLA, ScholasticAdministrator

I've been thinking a lot about coaching lately. Partially, I'm sure, because I'm reading Making Learning Whole by David Perkins (thanks, Gary!) but also because I think so much of the way we learn and the way we set up smart systems can be seen in smart coaching.

When I first became an Ultimate Frisbee captain in college, one of the former captains of the team told me, "Don't try to do everything in a time out. Give everyone three things to think about and nothing more." It was great advice because it was always very tempting to go over EVERYTHING I saw on the field in every time out. But whenever I did that, folks never retained everything, and now everyone walked away with a different piece of what they thought was important.

This became great advice as a high school coach as well... and not just for timeouts. One of things I learned as a coach was not to try to do everything at once. Before every season, I laid out all the skills and concepts I wanted them to master, and then I laid them out across the season -- how I would introduce ideas and then constantly spiral back to them... so that we could build slowly and smartly together. But I also learned how to focus on certain ideas, certain concepts, player by player, skill by skill. And I learned that, whenever possible, connecting ideas together, so that players could see how what they did related back to the whole was incredibly important.

But I also realized that I couldn't teach everything. I know coaches whose teams had twenty plays with multiple offensive and defensive sets, and more often than not, those teams could be beat just by out-executing them. Our teams did what we did very well, and what we did was rarely scripted, but rather we put in systems that relied on players to know what they were doing very well and then make smart choices based on what they saw in front of them.

Yeah... allegory, right?

But what made me think about this was not about teachers teaching kids, but how too many places deal with teacher learning and school improvement. So much about the current school improvement ideas are about trying to improve twenty different things at once, and I don't think that works. It sounds good -- especially because we can all see that there are often many, many problems in schools -- but it rings hollow, because the sum of all those parts rarely add up to a whole.

What amazes me, more and more, is how few schools have a clearly defined pedagogical practice that can be articulated simply and powerfully, and are therefore, even more susceptible to this kind of problem.

Let us think about how we build smart teams and build smart schools. Let us realize that we're better off picking the things we want to do well and then work tirelessly to do those things well. Let's be smart about what we want to be, how we want to get there, and how we get there collectively and individually, and then let's stop trying to go over all the ways we want to get better in a 30 second time out.

Today, President Obama nominated a very experienced center-left jurist for the Supreme Court. The nominee is a Hispanic woman. If confirmed, she will be the first Justice of Hispanic descent to serve on the Supreme Court.

Today, the Supreme Court of California ruled that Proposition 8 -- the ballot initiative that outlaws gay marriage -- was legal under the California Constitution.

Today when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about President Obama's reaction to the California decision, he responded with a very politic non-answer:

Tags: politics, proposition 8, SCOTUS

Clarence Fisher (@glassbeed) tweeted out the other day:
I replied:
And several folks asked me to elaborate on that second part --

That's more than a 140 character response... so here goes.

At its most basic, the skill sets that allow you to be successful as a teacher are not necessarily the skill sets that set you up to succeed as a teacher. For example, any photographic evidence of my desk and office back when I was a teacher / tech coordinator would show a cluttered mess. It was o.k., I have a really good memory and I could put my hands on just about anything when I really needed to. I enjoyed that mess, honestly. I felt comfortable in it, and I was pretty effective in it. However, when I became a principal, I found that methodology didn't work for me anymore. I had to change a fundamental part of the way I worked. There was too much to keep in my head so that a major part of how I worked had to change. I had to become more organized. I had to develop new systems if I was going to be successful as a principal.

That may not sound that much, but for a lot of us (and I include myself in this), how we work often is part of who we are. I loved being that messy teacher. And it wasn't enough for me to say, "I need to be more organized." I had to say, "I have to be a more organized person." Now, I don't leave most days unless I go through the pile of papers on my desk. And moreover, I've noticed that I've changed the way I think about a messy desk. It actively bothers me now, which I never would have thought.

That's a somewhat easy answer, but there's a deeper level of this as well. One of my mentors pulled me aside as I was taking on more administrative roles back at Beacon and said, "Up until now, you've had a lot of success on the faculty being a passionate advocate for your own ideas. Now, your job is to support other people's ideas." That was a shift. There's no question that being a principal -- especially a founding principal -- means having a vision and being able to articulate it passionately and powerfully, but after that, unless you want every idea to come out of your office, you really do need to be able to step back and let others inhabit that vision -- sometimes (even often) in ways you have never thought of.

Those are two examples that are specific to me, but I'd posit that everyone needs to go through this process when they become a principal. Many of us who are teachers have made being a teacher a fundamental part of our identity. And while I don't think administrators should ever stop thinking of themselves as teachers, there is a shift that must happen in the way we see ourselves. It requires different strengths, different skills, to be a successful principal than the skills that allowed us to be successful in our career up to that point. Going through that process can involve a bit of a sense of loss, but it is a necessary thing to do.

So now I'm wondering... for any admins who read this -- do you agree? What did you have to give up or change in self-examination when becoming an admin? And for other folks... what skill or trait or tendency that serves you very well as a teacher could you see being less of a positive thing as an administrator?

Tags: admininstration

... but first we have to ask ISTE to include him.

ISTE will be having a moderated debate as a Keynote Panel on June 30th. The six panelists have not been announced yet, and this is a perfect chance to lobby for one of the best voices we have to advocate for the intersection of progressive pedagogy and technology. I have known Gary for several years now, and I've even been lucky enough to be on a panel with him at EduCon 2.1. Gary speaks passionately and eloquently about the schools we need, and his debates at EduCon and with Will Richardson have sparked dialogue long after the events are over.

So sign the petition, and ask (dare I say urge) ISTE to include Gary on the NECC Keynote Panel.

Tags: NECC

So I was at the Penn State 1:1 Conference this week. Sunday night and Monday, I was working with administrators from all over the state -- mostly from smaller districts. I was struck by the way they talked about their schools and districts. Principals talked directly to superintendents, priorities were set by administrators who had been there for a dozen years. I spoke to one superintendent about what it was like to be in his job long enough to see the kids who were affected by a kindergarten initiative graduate... and talking about building support for initiatives over a number of years to get the kind of buy-in necessary to do it right. In short, it was the complete opposite of the experience so many of us in urban education have.

In the three years that SLA has been open, we have had three CEO / Superintendents of the school district, four regional superintendents, multiple changes to our School Reform Commission (a school board of sorts) and even the regional structures have been changed several times. We have seen initiatives come and go, and we have spent a ton of time and energy teaching the new administrations about SLA and what we do that is different than many other schools.

I'd assert that one of the keys to true sustainable innovation is sustainable leadership. We haven't had a superintendent for more than five years since (I think) Constance Clayton in the early 90s. I wonder what that does to the ability to cautiously and wisely affect change. I wonder what that does to teachers and parents and school-level administrators who live through change without innovation.

I have no doubt that there are plenty of days when the problems that the smaller districts face feel as frustrating as the problems we face in urban structures do. However, I admit that talking to the leaders I met at Penn State made me wonder what it would be like to run a school in a smaller district. I'm not leaving SLA or anything, and I'm an urban educator at heart, but I'd be lying if I didn't feel a touch of envy when I thought about how much easier it'd to be to sustain innovation if the support and leadership structures weren't changing all the time.

Tags: life, education

Science Leadership Academy is featured (along with High Tech High and New Tech High and Gary Stager and Jane Krauss, nice company!) in this month's Scholastic Administrator Magazine in The Power of Project Learning -- an article about project-based learning. In addition to some cool shots of Gamal Sherif and Matt VanKouwenberg (and a nifty one of me, I admit), there are some great quotes such as:

Sometimes the results surprise both the teacher and learner, says Zachary Chase, an English teacher at SLA. To learn about the oral tradition associated with Homer’s The Odyssey, students were charged with finding a family story, getting a first-person recording of the story, and preserving it to pass onto their children. When one student found a bunch of letters from an uncle who had left his family to go to California during the Gold Rush, he used GarageBand to record himself reading the letters. He altered the voice to make it sound like that of an older man, Chase says. This project not only outstripped the teacher’s demands, but the success of the final project even surprised the student, he adds.

But be sure to read the whole article.

That was one of John Wooden's credos -- Be quick, but don't hurry.

It seems to me that Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a former former Harvard basketball player, would do well to remember. Sec. Duncan was quoted heavily in an April 17th editorial in the Chicago Tribune that suggested that unless Illinois quickly changes to his ideas on education reform, they will get none of the $5 Billion "Race to the Top" Department of Education money.

I question those folks who would say that there is one way to fix education -- or that we know what we need to know. I worry a great deal that in our hurry to change education, we are pushing "reforms" through that may not do what we want them. And I worry about a Secretary of Education who would use language such as this:

One, what is the data that suggests all of Illinois is at a mediocre level? Two, the innovations that Duncan proposes -- according to the rest of the article -- are more charter schools and merit pay based on test scores. The recent RAND study that included Philadelphia charter schools suggests that we still have a lot to learn about the efficacy of charter schools. That's not to say they shouldn't be funded, but rather that we shouldn't only look at the latest educational fads as the path to improvement.

And that's happening a lot lately. It's easy to forget, but NCLB is only eight years old. We have seen an almost complete upheaval of public education in those eight years. We are racing toward... what? What is the specific vision of those who would reauthorize NCLB, who would push for merit pay, who would push for both more charter schools and more standardized curriculum for the public schools?

There is no question that we must continue to work to fix our schools. There's no question that there is work to do. But let us be deliberate and thoughtful about the way we do it. Let us dial down the rhetoric and recognize the hard work and successes that so many educators -- and so many schools -- have achieved. Let us make choices (and spend money) in ways that help students as best we can, as opposed to changing as much as we can as fast as we can, just to say we did something.

In other words, let us be quick... but let us never hurry.

... and that's a very good thing.

In a recent post entitled "Let's Just Put Them All In Jail 24/7," David's title came from a comment a reader left in the post before about Secretary Duncan's comments in Coloardo where he called for more time in schools as he said:


David weighs in with his own opinion about this:


The whole post is worth reading -- as are the comments, but I wanted to jump in and say that what angers David most, it seems, is the whole "the beatings will continue until moral improves" mindset that seems to be prevailing these days. And yes, it's being applied to students and teachers alike. The answer to our problems in education seems to be teach more, teach harder, learn more, learn harder. More hours, more homework, etc...

... without ever questioning the validity of the time we spend -- and the work we do -- together.

David is right to challenge the prevailing winds in education policy. He is right to be angry. He is right to worry that the path we're heading down does not lead to smarter, more passionate students and teachers, bur rather it leads to teachers and students thinking that school is something that is done TO students, not with or for.

If we want to see a smarter populace, let's start by making sure we find ways to make the time we spend together meaningful, and then let's continue by helping kids make all the hours of their days meaningful. That might mean letting them find their own learning from time to time, but first, we've got to make sure school doesn't take that love of learning away from them.

Much of this blog post is coming out of comments that grew out of a Twitter / Facebook update and turned into a deeper conversation in the Facebook comments... I started with this...

The ability and confidence to network is a soft-skill that, unless we explicity teach it in schools, is an SES inequity. Thoughts?

I wrote that because I was at a networking event that was tied to the 40 Under 40 Philadelphia award. It was a "networking" event, and I realized:

a) I am really bad at it. (Yes, I know folks who have met me may find that hard to believe, but put me outside of those spheres where I am most passionate, and I'm shy. Really. I'm good at talking about stuff I care about or talking with people I care about. I have never been good at small-talk. Even at these networking things, I tend to find a few folks who are interesting and get into in-depth conversations, which doesn't exactly let you network much.)

b) Networking is a skill -- and therefore it can be taught.

c) School doesn't really teach networking -- and by "doesn't really," I mean, doesn't at all. This means that you learn those skills in other places, and if you want to look at the achievement gap in terms of post-school achievement, I think we can look right here.

d) Teaching kids to do these things cannot just be done in the realm of after-school activities, team sports, and internships. We have to be sure to reinforce these skills in the academic classroom as well.

I have a very good friend who was raised among the power elite here in Philadelphia. He grew up having very powerful people at his parents' table for dinner. As a result, there are very few conversations he does not feel comfortable joining.

I, as much as I had a solidly middle class upbringing, didn't grow up around privilege in that sense, and despite what has been a reasonably successful career so far, am still very unsure of myself when I am in situations where I am outside of my comfort zone. Put me in a room of educators, sure... I can network with the best of them. Put me in a room of business folks, and I am terrible.

So as I was sitting there, dealing with my own discomfort with feeling like I "belonged" in the room, despite what has been a life that has given me exposure to people from all walks of life, I thought of how much more difficult it would be for students of mine whose life experiences and skill sets were very much defined by limitations, not possibilities.

In the end, what it served to do was reinforce how important the SLA core values of collaboration and presentation are, because I do believe that we can give kids the skill and confidence and ability be always believe that they belong in the room and as a part of any conversation. I am reminded that we chose to teach drama to all students in the 9th grade so that our kids can learn how to powerfully present their voice to the world.

I watch SLA kids interact at places like EduCon, with people like Jeff Han and Stephen Squyres, and I am in awe of their comfort. I listen to them lead people around SLA and speak with confidence and humility, and I am humbled by them. But I remember that it didn't happen for them overnight. They've worked hard to earn their voice, and the teachers of SLA have created the spaces for them to do so.

But it also made me question (again) what we value in American education -- especially urban education. As we work to close the achievement gap -- what achievement are we talking about? Where does that achievement leave our kids? And are we teaching our students the skills they need to close the achievement gap that matters -- the achievement that matters when our kids leave our walls and take their place as fully realized citizens of the world.

I want my kids to feel more comfortable in the room than I do.

I think we should want all kids to be able to take their place in the world -- and I think we should want to help them learn what they need to do so.

Tags: networking, soft skills, school reform

I just wrote a piece for the Anytime, Anywhere Learning Foundation all about the SLA - TFI partnership. Here's a sample:

At Science Leadership Academy, we have been incredibly fortunate to have a deep and meaningful partnership with The Franklin Institute -- one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology museums in the country. This partnership is unique in many ways, not the least of which is that the school was planned as a partnership school, in fact, my office was housed within the walls of The Franklin Institute (TFI)during our planning year. This gave us the opportunity to build many aspects of the school with the partnership in mind. In the end, the partnership in mind -- from the way the schedule works, to the hands-on pedagogy-- matched the philosophy of TFI itself. And in everything we did, we felt it was very important that the partnership was a true synergy -- one where both partners were enriched by the interaction. Too often, school-community partnerships fail because they are viewed not as a true partnership, but as a hand out or a public relations moment. With this in mind, as a founding blueprint, we framed partnership in three ways: Shared Public Vision; Shared Pedagogical Vision and The Interaction of the Two Communities. This is a framework we still use today.

The whole article is here. I'm hoping it's a useful frame for how school partnerships can be successful.

[This was originally going to be a comment on a blog where folks were getting angry in the comments... I realized I just might have been projecting a bit.]

I think there's something else that we have to be aware of right now. I think there's a lot of collective exhaustion going on. It's that time of year where folks feel the grind. In Pennsylvania, it's PSSA time... the economy is lousy... people are fearful about their jobs and wondering how much their lives are going to change. And I think there's a lot of disconnect within our profession right now, and it didn't magically disappear with a new administration.

I'm not posting many blog entries right now because what I'm writing isn't public writing, certainly not in any helpful sense. I'm tired and cranky and my writing feels that way, and I know it isn't productive stuff. And worse, I know I'm not a whole hell of a lot of fun to be around right now. (My apologies to all those who have to deal with me in real life.) For me, it'll pass... and part of my process lately has been to try to figure out what I need to do to help that along. One thing I'm trying to do is remember what my sphere of influence is -- and to focus on the places I can have the greatest impact and to let go of the "reaches" for right now. That's not always an easy thing for me to recognize, and it's an even harder thing for me to come to terms with. But it's what I need to do right now.

Interestingly, though, one thing that is interesting is that I'm hearing much the same story from urban folks, suburban folks, east coast, west coast, etc... I'm hearing a very frustrated tone from a lot of educators right now, and I'm hearing more and more stories of kids coming stressed over the economic hardships or stories of the college process being an even more tortured process this year, and just stories of exhausted educators who aren't finding the renewal that they usually do with the coming of spring. In general, I think schools and teachers and kids are feeling the effects of living in very uncertain times, and that can't be a good thing.

It's one thing to hypothesize, but it's another thing to try to come up with ways out. In addition to trying to say the serenity prayer a whole lot more often right now, I'm trying to dial up my level of care with people -- and that has to include myself (even if I am dealing with some insomnia by blogging). I'm trying (and REALLY not succeeding all the time) to be more understanding -- both of others and of my own limitations. I think it's helpful if we all remember our shared humanity and our shared sense of purpose and give each other the benefit of the doubt right now. In the end, if we have built healthy communities -- healthy schools -- then now is the time to rely on that -- to rely on each other, and find our way through to some healthier times.

(And hey, Spring Break isn't too far away...)