This blogging practice has disappeared for me. G-Town Talks has been languishing out here, waiting for my return and I just don’t see it coming. I’ve thought a lot and can’t honestly say why I’m blocked from a practice that was so positively rewarding for me.
I feel as though I should just take all the posts and readers’ comments and put them together in a book titled “High School: A Principal’s Perspective” and call it a day. I loved blogging and everything about it. Writing down my thoughts about our students, learning, school management, and G-Town was absolutely ingrained in my day. Reading other blogs, looking forward to the comments left on this one, and thinking out loud were incredible for me. Heck, we even got some national attention with a couple of articles and interest from CBS Evening News that never panned out. And now it’s all gone.
The reason I’m stuck seems easy to trace to my movement from high school principal to assistant superintendent. I could write that I’m too busy now or that the things I’m involved in aren’t “blog worthy”. But none of that is true.
The truth is that this blog and the writing I did was focused on our kids. Our experiences together, our growth, our change, our learning. It was about my experiences as a principal and that wasn’t just a job for me. It was the biggest and best part of me. It was the one thing in my entire life that I’ve been really good at–and I underestimated how much I enjoyed the day to day management of the school. I blogged because I had much to say about a job, about a school life, that I couldn’t get out of my head.
I didn’t know myself well enough to realize that the reason I was a good principal is that I took it all personally–the relationship building with kids and teachers and parents, the problem solving, the success and failure. I wanted our kids to succeed as much as or more than anyone else there and I wasn’t afraid to show that to anyone. I simply loved going to work every day, loved the people I was with all day and gained enormously from our kids–in my school.
My brother claims that loving your job like that is unusual and not something I should take for granted. He doesn’t know many people who feel that way and says it’s worth a lot more than money or status or more responsibility. Maybe I was doing exactly the thing I was meant to do in this world.
My new job is focused on teachers, on curriculum and instruction. On improving things for kids, meeting the standards set for adequate yearly progress and beyond, staff development, and on important components like reading, formative assessments, and curriculum design. I’m in the classrooms and at meetings and attending conferences. The work is important and offers an opportunity to make real change. It’s a challenging job focused on improvement that stands to have a powerful impact on our kids. Most administrators would jump at the chance to focus sustained attention on these efforts, without the worries of the day to day operations of the school. I should be deliriously happy. Trouble is that it turns out the day to day operations are exactly what I wrote about here and are exactly what I was most passionate about in my job.
I’m glad I had the chance to learn here and I’m grateful for every comment left–thanks for sharing your thoughts with me Readers!
Maybe when I find my way back to the kids I’ll find my voice again. Until then, G-Town Talks will be keeping quiet.