Carrots and Cousins

Yesterday was another sprinkled with challenge. Just as I attempted to begin my commute home with a time of solitude and sulking, my principal cheerfully invited me to "meet with a group of colleagues" in a classroom smack dab between mine and the exit. Oomph. For a lot of reasons I saw that it would be good to show my face, so I went.

As we all know, theory is the handsome cousin of practice, so things got dicey pretty quick.

The bottom line was we needed to agree on the bottom line, which was somewhere near a happy place where we consistently, fairly AND cooperatively worked to raise the bar for students and teachers.  Not only raise the bar but hold it in place and regularly inch it up as we see fit. In either case, I reached my limit before it was all done. I came, I saw, and I was conquered. And I remain frustrated because I love this work for the same reasons I could begin to loath it--the jumbled, contradictory, messy, emotive nature of human beings. Whether it's teenaged boys defying a school uniform policy, a career politico stumping for office or a two-year-old one breath from a tantrum, one thing rings true: To live is to struggle. The carrot on the proverbial stick I need to hold before my eyes is: Will I struggle for a solution or for MYSELF? And yes, in case you are wondering, I do consider each option the polar opposite of the other.

Nonetheless, in this moment I am still for the larger good, believing that much, much more is not only possible, but DO-able to make humans less human and more HUMANE. I hope I feel such a way next week, next year and next decade.

Really I do.