Startle me.
I second guess myself quite a bit. I find myself fretting over what I’m thinking about doing and whether it will work. And what it doesn’t? What will happen then?
Since commencing Real Schools, I’ve come to learn that this thinking was actually engrained within me across my time as a Teacher and Principal. Doesn’t that sound awful to say out loud? You see, we educators are just so risk averse these days. It’s far less your fault than it is a perfectly human reaction to the scorn and the criticism that comes when we get it wrong.
The result of this is a tendency to play safe. Safe in our experimentation. Safe in our practice. Safe in our communications. Safe in our rituals and traditions.
But what if the best possible growth you could achieve for your school in 2019 actually required several failures? Would you still do it?
Would you be prepared to share and publicly celebrate each of the failed attempts?
Would you prepare your colleagues for the expected failures in advance?
Would you keep your eyes on the breakthrough possibility … or retreat to more popular, expected and familiar habits?
So my wish for you is that you have an entirely unsafe 2019. I hope you fall. I hope you experiment and fail. I hope you can smile, determined to try again.
I hope you get back up.
Your very next attempt might just be the breakthrough that will distinguish 2019 from the other years that have gone before it.
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