This past week, I was cleaning up my Google Drive and purging some documents that were no longer of importance. It is something that I do every year around this time while I am beginning my transition from school year mode to summer work mode. This year, I am going to have to spend some more time because I have been looking over A LOT of documents related to the COVID-19 pandemic. I realized very early on that I needed to start a COVID-19 folder and then create a variety of sub-folders that could organize all of the electronic documents that I had created and had been shared on. Two folders in particular that I spent a great deal of time sorting through were the reopening of school folder and the pandemic graduation folder. As I went through the various documents, I am amazed at how far my school has come in such a short period of time. The planning that we did on the front end allowed our school to stay open all year long to in-person instruction. It certainly wasn't easy, but we did it together as a school and we grew closer as a staff because of this shared experience. We failed, we learned, we improved throughout the year and even though the stress took its toll at various points of the year, we can finally see the finish line in this year of the pandemic education experience. Because seniors just finished up their last day of school, I think it is important that we reflect a little on what we have accomplished.
WE PIVOTED
Nobody will ever be able to say that the education system moves too slowly after this pandemic. At the end of last school year and over the summer, we took on the monumental task of pivoting to a virtual learning environment to meet the needs of our students. Regardless of our expertise with technology, we were able to embrace synchronous and asynchronous learning almost simultaneously so that we could teach our kids. We struggled at first, but we persevered and in the process, we modeled grit to thousands of students, which is a lesson they will carry with them forever.
WE HAD ALL THE FEELS
This year, more than ever, I have seen the widest range of emotions from my colleagues in my 20 years of education. We laughed, we cried (multiple times), we vented, we exhibited copious amounts of grace, and we grew together. Jim Valvano said it best when he stated, "If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special." Well, when you do that for a full year, you certainly have lived.
Posts
