What’s your school’s forecast?

So I sit here in good ole North Georgia waiting and watching for the predicted snow and wondering and thinking about whether schools will open or not tomorrow.  I’m thinking that yes, forecasters can predict snow . . .  and yes, it helps us plan and prepare.  But that is only the beginning; it helps us ready ourselves, but it can’t limit the dreaming of possibilities for the day to come.  We don’t get snow often enough for our response to be predictable.  Our responses rest on the possibilities. My kids are planning for possibilities.  They are counting on the snow so that they can drag out the like-new sleds and climbing the hill behind the house for hours of play.

Now, let’s consider schools, do we create spaces for students to plan for possibilities or do we limit the possibilities by the predictability?  Yes, yes, I can hear some rumbling from some readers.  I know that students need structure and routines and predictability – that in fact, it’s these structures that create stability to learn and my wonderings are not so much a challenge to those important givens. 

It’s more a wondering of how much more we could foster in schools by asking our teachers and students to dream possibilities and enact a framing of education that actually rewards risk-taking and amplifies the innovative.  We often are constrained by predictability – we don’t see what’s in front of us.  Just like when you arrive home and don’t remember driving to get there.  Or you walk across a lawn only to trample a smattering of individual wild flowers.  I’ll never forget a moment when I was researching at a school close to the University and in my hurriedness, I nearly crushed a purple wild flower.  A student stopped me just in time and plucked it and handed it to me instead.  Kids usually see the world with a much greater acuity and appreciation than we do as adults.

We go through the motions of doing school because that’s the way it’s always been done.  So, take my challenge to see your spaces with new eyes, take on the role of the anthropologists and see the cultural world of schooling around you with renewed focus. Make the old, new. Reconsider the obvious with a critical stance.  Slow down and take time.  Wait and look and listen and learn.  Think about the language we use to describe our settings, our students, their families, our colleagues.  As Margaret Mead once said, “Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.”

Let me suggest that you check out principal Chris Wejr’s post http://bit.ly/f1vVCp on www.connectedprincipals.com blog on The Power of Positivity: The Friday 5.  I’ve taken his challenge to contact five parents every Friday with a positive message.  The connections I made this past Friday were powerful and full of joy for me and the parents I made contact with.  It’s a good example of changing the obvious and exercising the possibilities.  When does a principal call parents?  Usually with not-so-good news.  Not nearly enough with positive affirmations, so I’m determined to change that up. 

Just got word – no school for Hall County, Georgia tomorrow.  Guess I gotta go plan for possibilities.  Let your days SNOW with possibilities.