Naming emotional elephants. I encourage you to pause and name your emotional elephants.  Not someone else's, not what you want yours to be, but what it is.  Pause long enough to name your emotional elephants.  Fear, frustration, discouragement, sadness, isolation, pride, arrogance, anger, annoyance, guilt, apathy, disappointment, contempt, embarrassment, shame....

It is only after we name them can we acknowledge them and thus begin to address them.  Emotions in and of themselves are not right or wrong.  It is what we do with them in the space between stimulus and response that matters.  

So often I simply said and still say, "Good job."  Not a bad phrase, better than nothing at all, I suppose.  The problem is, it just isn't very helpful.  And it especially isn't very helpful when someone is trying to acquire a new skill.  

Being in the business of education, be it teaching, training, correcting or rebuking, offering direct feedback is critical to support growth.  Think about it for a moment.  Getting a red checkmark on my already confusing algebra problem simply let me know I did something wrong.  Chalk that one up to another dumb Lisa moment.  Hurry, cover it before someone else sees and laughs at me.  

But what if I knew that red checkmark actually indicated that someone was going to come alongside me.  Someone was going to point out the places or steps that I got correct, hopefully, because I understood, and then guide me through the places I didn't understand or miscalculated.  

Take time this week to check your feedback, both giving and receiving.  If it is offered with grace and illuminates truth, growth will happen.  

Tug of War is a game of teamwork. Marathon is a large group each individually attempting to reach the same goal.  Over the last few weeks, I have had to opportunity to sincerely brag about your teamwork.  Conversations at school meetings, personal conversations out in public, visits with parents who have asked how things are going.  

We, as a group, who are choosing to invest in the lives of children, are pulling together.  Not one aspect of this large system is being overlooked as we care for the children in our community.  Maintenance, tech support, transportation, food service, secretaries, paras, custodial, nurses, AEA support, teachers, administrators, parents, and students.  Not one single entity is left unaffected and in need of team support. 

Thank you for pulling together.  Today is 9/11.  As a nation, we came together.  Today, on 9/11, we are pulling together in a whole new way.  Thank you, for whatever role you have, in supporting not only the educational needs of the children but each other.   

I am not a morning person.  Never have been and suspect that until I am far older, I may never be.  I wonder about you.  What is that sweet spot in your day?  The time when you are not only fully awake but fully alive.

To be fully awake and fully alive.  To live life with intention and purpose.  To remember why you were created and the impact you are making at this moment in time, at this moment in the history of humanity.  

Whatever time your sweet spot is, may you live for today, being fully awake and fully alive.