INTRODUCTORY POST / A PROLOGUE: It is my hope that this website and all of its ponderings will reveal themselves to you and me in a delicate and deliberate manner, not immediately nor efficiently but slowly and over many years, beginning with this introductory post. I wish for both of us that its themes and practicalities emerge not in any way like an unremarkable first date arranged via a sultry online service but more like a good and lasting friendship that over many months evolves into a meaningful and enduring romance, made richer through intimate discourse and amorous stares as well as through the enduring understandings that can only be found through honesty, thoughtfulness, humility and grace.
At its core, I write about about schools and the great people who teach in them, and lead them. It is certainly about great teachers, the dedicated and humble public servants who deserve our just and lasting appreciation and, of course, it is about kids and parents, who we should serve and respect as if they were our own. It is my hope that this site breathes inspiration and innovation, focused on the kind of schools and school systems we have now but more about the great possibilities that lay before us. The commentary at times will be philosophical or even spiritual. It will also be heady and historical, only because we have good deal to learn from the great thinkers who have proceeded us. Of course, it is my hope that it will also be practical, with critical steps that we must take now to ensure that our schools and school districts are operating at maximum efficiency.
When I say that the themes are best acquired over many years, I say that because (like you) I have arrived at my own understandings only after years of study and practice, of public successes and failures and of countless hours of private ponderings over theories and quick-fixes proffered by teachers, leaders, social scientists, historians and philosophers. I have sought out the best practices to educate our children and have dedicated my life to the cause of public education. Still, I toil on. In the spirit of full disclosure, let me be clear that I have not personally solved any of the problems of practice that we face today in our schools. In this way, I am the problem as well as the solution for I am a teacher, I am a principal, and I am the district.
I can only promise you that I am exceedingly well versed in how to teach and how not to teach as I have been an awful teacher and an excellent one. I am also accomplished in leading schools as I have been an extraordinary administrator as well as an occasional failure. And, of course, I have been a dedicated district administrator who rushed home each night to tell his wife about the great victories we had won in transforming our school district while the next night prattling on about the bankruptcy of solutions that I was certain would work but somehow collapsed before me.
It is my hope that these blog posts, the trainings we offer, and our back-and-forth banter will serve as a place for us to learn from each other, to share in the thoughts and stories of the many great teachers leaders who serve our schools today. I also hope it challenges our assumptions and undermines our prejudices. I hope it serves to position you in the right and proper context to lead schools and school districts that are in a desperate need of bold, instructional leadership.
In a perfect and practical context, my hope is that all schools and school districts everywhere realize the possibility of sound instructional leadership and fully aligned systems that are designed to ensure growth and prosperity for all children. It is with this intent that we will explore a series of ideas via this place that are reinforced by a strong instructional philosophy that might be described by some as having an instructional core but, for reasons that will reveal themselves in time, will be described via this site as having an instructional soul.
