I really love Spring Break. It is a great time to idle the work engine a little bit before the craziness of the last few weeks of school kick into gear. I tried really hard not to work over Spring Break because I have learned that you can't continue to rev the engine all the time. I did, however, look at my calendar to see what I had in store for me and I joked with my wife about the sprint to the finish line that is the last day of school. I told her about all of the late nights I would have due to student honor celebrations, prom, graduation, etc. and let her know that the next few weeks were going to go by like a blur. It was at this point that she dropped some knowledge on me and told me that I was looking at things all wrong. The end of the school year isn't a sprint, but rather, more like a 3200 meter race. For those of you who don't get the track reference, let me break it down for you. A sprint is a short distance where you exert maximum energy and go as fast as you can to cross the finish line, whereas a 3200 meter run requires that you pace yourself and exert your energy over a longer period of time. I hate when she is right, so I just politely disagreed with her and then started writing this blog as a white flag indicating that I am surrendering to her superior mind powers.
Truth be told, the last couple of months of the school year are a major test in endurance and it requires that you keep a steady pace if you want to finish the race. The goal in this case is not to finish first, but rather, to just finish. This pandemic education experience that we are living through right now is a prime example of testing our endurance. Like many, I came out of the gates this year on fire. I was committed to make this year as normal as possible for everyone and I spent countless hours outside of work exerting a ton of energy making plans, revising them, backpedaling, revising again, and then implementing. I watched as the people I am charged to lead did the exact same thing and exhausted themselves planning lessons for virtual, hybrid, and in-person learners only to scrap them and start all over again. There really was no opportunity to find a groove and develop homeostasis. Sure, there were respite periods along the way like the holiday break that allowed us to get some rest, but we knew that there was still half a race that we needed to complete on the back end, so we never really got out of our sprint mentality. Instead, the whole year has been a giant sprint and everyone is cramping up or getting injured because we are pushing ourselves to the limit.
In the world of marathon runners, the hardest miles during the marathon differ for each runner, but they are typically between the 18th and 23rd mile, closer towards the finish line. Well, we have reached those moments in our race that is a school year. We are too tired to sprint because that is what we have been doing all year, but do we have enough energy in the tank to endure the last few weeks? The reality is that we do have the energy, but only if we pace ourselves accordingly. In this race, we are going to need to rely on our fellow colleagues to help push us towards the finish line and provide the necessary encouragement that is going to get us to the end. This is going to require that we tune in to what our bodies are telling us and not try to push ourselves harder so we can attempt to be first in a race that cannot be won. At this point, endurance is the name of the game and we need to give ourselves permission to slow down to a pace that is manageable and will allow us to get to the summer. We can do this by being kind to one another, supporting one another, offering a helping hand to others, and giving ourselves some grace.
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