Thirty-eight flaming torches...

I'm sitting here, exhausted, at 8:36pm.  I know that the majority of this is temporary.  This is my first full week back to work, and it's an emotional and mentally exhausting thing, going to a new school and meeting new people.  Plus, there's my kids.  Three years old and five months old.  So yea.

Point is, I want to sleep.  I want to sleep very badly.  But I'm still sitting here, because I feel like it's important to document my recent thoughts...and attempts... and failures.  (But if there's a typo, I apologize.  Please don't tell me about it until tomorrow.) 😉

Yesterday in our county we had an amazing showing of support and encouragement for the new school year.  Our employees (almost 5,000) of them, showed up together at a stadium for a convocation, representing our schools and voicing our excitement for the school year.  Curtis Zimmerman came (bless his heart, he was in a suit in a bazillion degree weather, but that suit was sharp!) and spoke to us.  He said my new favorite quote.  And when I say new favorite, I mean I've already started making a canvas of it that is going in my office!  Anyway, he said: "Failure is an event, not a person."

I don't know that I have strictly associated failure as an event or a person, but I feel like I probably have associated more with the person than the event over time.  I hadn't really thought about it until hearing that.  And when I say associate, I don't mean blame, because I don't really think of failure with a negative connotation.  I just feel like when I've talked about things failing in years past, I've always thought more of who was doing it than what was done.  And I have a feeling that is fairly "normal"--as in many people do that same thing.



No wonder we have to work on growth mindset, amiright?  So back to why I'm writing about my failure.  I have what you call the "dreamer's disease."  I love thinking of all these new and cool ideas and ways to get things done.  And one of my big pushes has been to make a channel on Youtube.  I feel like it's so easy to create videos now that smartphones are everywhere, and this ubiquitous app can help us reach a new level of communication and involvement.  So I've been hocking this suggestion to anyone that mentions talking with parents.  But then I realized that in my dreaming I haven't worked on the logistics of a Youtube channel myself.  I'm preaching like it's the best thing since sliced bread and I haven't even tried it.  So I did.

And it was challenging.  I don't want to say hard, because it wasn't beyond my or any other novice's skill level.  But I had a vision of how I wanted it to look, and for the life of me today, I couldn't get it right.  My tester friends would see one video and not the other, and eventually I decided to take a break from it and come back later.  I did some research and played around with it for quite a while.

But I fixed it.  I did it.  It now looks just like I want it to when you first arrive to the channel.(https://www.youtube.com/user/treehrgrove for all your Anxious Annies out there who are dying to see it lol). I could have totally seen myself give up on this and just stop talking about it.  Stop advertising it.  But I couldn't let go of this idea and this process because I believe in the possibility of it, the potential of it SO much.  And I believe that teachers would feel so accomplished from it.  And I think students and parents would benefit from it.  And if I'm going to feel so strongly about it, I am going to make sure that I can help a teacher that wants to try it.

This whole little mini-journey I took with Youtube today reminds me of teachers who want to try something totally different in their class.  They usually see something that just captivates them and they get so excited about it and its possibility.  And then life happens.  School happens with the meetings and PLCs and paperwork, and that bulb starts to fade.  It's sad, and it happens to so many wonderful educators.  Teachers deserve to get to experiment and be excited about new things!

I felt so accomplished today with my Youtube channel.  I feel like I'm on the brink of something great, and I'm anxious to continue it.  But I had to persist past that initial hurdle... and then the few after it.  But it was completely worth it to see and feel that success.  And isn't that true for teachers with their students?  The kids deserve it.  They deserve every little bit of innovation and excitement and energy and passion that we can squeeze out each day.

So teachers, as you juggle the thirty-seven flaming torches this school year and you want to add one more, I encourage you to do it.  Because if you push past the setbacks and failures, you may discover a feeling and intensity that you never knew existed.