Skretta's Scintillating Salutations

We drove out to Colorado with the four boys over break and spent a couple days in Keystone.  It occurred to me again that skiing holds many life lessons and in particular many metaphors that are applicable to educators. I wanted to share these with you in the foolishly optimistic hope that some good can yet come from my Colorado travails.   I am not a great skier.  I’m the kind of guy who considers it a monumental feat to simply avoid the urgent care clinic. I had the ignominious distinction of probably being the only guy on the mountain to be approached not once, twice, or even three times - but on four separate occasions on day one by Keystone ski patrol with the prompt, “Dude!  Are you alright? That was a colossal wipeout, bro.”  (Actually, the first two referred to me as “bro” and “dude.” The latter two who approached me to help gather my ski apparatus that was scattered over the debris field of my latest wreck referred to me as “Sir” - as in, “Are you oka...

When I say it's really simple, what I mean by that is that it's very easy for me to dispense advice.  Adhering to it could prove challenging!  But here are a few basic lessons to contemplate as you embark upon your teaching career at Norris: Gratitude is the right attitude.  We are privileged to be in education and to have the opportunity to work with young people.  It is a wonderfully inspiring life to be an educator.  Be thankful you get to live this challenging and rewarding adventure!  We all have moments where the gratitude slips and the cynicism spikes, but let's not let those fleeting moments define us.  The compassionate response is usually the correct one.  Students will frustrate you.  Their behaviors will perplex and annoy you.  And some of them, well, you'll find their limit-testing behaviors downright annoying.  The punitive reaction, though, will seldom bring about the results you really want.  If you're real...

Happy Fourth of July! Though it is still not something we do frequently enough, it is common on Independence Day to recognize the commitments of those who serve in our Armed Forces to protect the freedoms we hold so dearly.  That is an appropriate gesture, and one of the things our Norris school community is very proud of are the many students who have made the choice to serve our country as soldiers.  We must  also recognize that numerous Norris families have endured great hardships over the last several years as parents of our students have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.  The resilience and cohesiveness of these families is inspiring, and we should all continue to do our part to encircle those affected by deployments in the broader family of our district and reach out to them. Another facet of freedom that is appropriate to contemplate on the July 4 holiday is the impact teachers have on helping a democracy flourish.  Unless we are free to learn, t...