Successes and Learning Experiences not Successes and Failures

Cartoon shown during Murray Banks keynote at NCSA Administrator Days

This cartoon shown during NCSA Administrator Days in Kearney this past week made me  remember when I interviewed for the Laurel-Concord/ Coleridge High School Principal job last spring at 27 years old.  I was sitting in the school's board room with three other potential candidates; all much older, two with prior administrative experience.  One seemed to know everybody in the school already, and I later found out that he was originally from Laurel.  I felt really good  about my interview, but on the way home I had already called my mom and told her to chalk it up as another learning experience because of the experience level and the hometown connection that the other applicants had.  To my surprise I was called the next day and offered my first administrative job.

I know that first year I strived to make everything go perfectly and I spent every waking minute of the year focused on my job, but many things that we tried as a district and I tried as an educational leader were chalked up as learning experiences.  The hardest thing for a perfectionist to do is to understand that not everything is going to go as planned and be an absolute hit.  Murray did a great job of reminding me that we should all have way more learning experiences tallied up than successes; and a great administrator is one who can take those learning experiences and turn them into successes.

I have spent a lot of time this summer looking at those learning experiences and trying to find ways to turn those into successes.  I am excited to bring my students and staff back for year two; and prepared to show them some new things we are going to try and some changes we will make to a few of those learning experiences from last year.  I am sure they won't all be successes, but hoping some of the decisions and plans developed will impact learning and teacher effectiveness in my district.

I like that the cartoon has called things that don't work out learning experiences and not failures.  Failures are things that you totally give up on and never workout.  Hopefully all initiatives and  changes being made in our schools are based off of the vision, mission, and goals of the district.  We should continue to adapt and take the learning experiences and tweak them so that we are continually striving to meet our vision, mission, and goals.