Leaning on One Another

I work with one of the greatest groups of people you could possibly want. They are truly amazing, and yet I don't tell them this enough. We held a "parent information" meeting just the other night to discuss the state test (ISAT) that is coming up all too soon. In my infinite wisdom, and being so typical of myself, I waited until the afternoon of the event before I really started doing any of the legwork for the event. Everything else was ready - I met with a group of teachers beforehand, spent time thinking about the pertinent facts and information we would share with them, and discussed the logistics of the event as well. Not to mention, this is the 4th year holding one of these nights! Everything should have gone off without a hitch. Should have.

It was 4:00 and the After-School Bus was late, five people stopped me in the hallway or caught me in the office with problems that needed solving right then and there, a parent called looking for her child, who was supposed to have been home 30 minutes earlier (the young man,a 2nd grader, ended up being right next door...), and 8 teachers were going to be out the following day. In elementary-school-land, this last piece tranlastes into both copiers being jammed for an hour at the end of the day! Not only did I still have to copy, make transparencies, and make sure we had enough sharpened pencils for our guests, I still had to run out and get the refreshments we had promised in all of our fliers advertising the event! It was 5:30. When I looked out the front door for the first time that day, another surprise awaited me. It was snowing. Blizzard-Style.

In most cases, I would have gone into a frenzied state of panic. I would, perhaps, have used a few choice words, stomped around as if in a temper-tantrum, and begun blaming everything else under the sun except for the fact that I tend to procrastinate at the very worst moments. And so I did just that. I panicked... until I remembered that I have the very best staff in the whole world. A quick call into the classrooms of a few very dedicated teachers, and they began putting everything together while I drove through the snowstorm to get refreshments.

I was reminded later that night by one of those remarkable teachers that I need to do a better job of delegating. Delegate? What's that? But she was exactly right. As leaders, we tend to have this thing where we think we should have all the answers, be able to do everything and do it the right way, be everything for everybody. And yet this is so far from the way schools are actually set up to run. If we want to get it right the first time, if we want to be all things to all people, we need all people. We need not only to delegate, but to do a better job of making this thing called schooling a community effort. Doesn't it take a village to raise a child?

By the way, that's the singular form. Child. Meaning one. It takes a village to raise a child. This implies that every child requires multiple adults pulling together to get it right for that child. And with multiple adults come multiple ideas, lots of perspective. And if we still don't get it right, at least there will be more than one person to blame.

We need to count on each other, lean on each other, depend on each other, rely on each other. I was reminded of this again tonight, when a teacher called apologizing. She was going to have to be out for at least two weeks. She had broken a bone in the most unfortunate of places, and yet she was apologizing to me. She would be on crutches upon her return, and yet she was dreading the feeling of putting her colleagues out, felt that she would be a burden to them. I was able to use my experience of the night before with her in this case. I told her that this was the last thing she should be worrying about, because this is what we do for each other. It may not be a classic case of being able to delegate some responsibility, and certainly not the most ideal situation, but this is what we do for each other because it is what we do for kids.