“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. “
-Orson Scott Card
Working at a school is a game of whack-a-mole since . . .
- You solve one problem and another comes along.
- You figure out one class and another comes along.
- You finish one novel or unit or skill and another one comes along.
- You figure out a kid and then a different version of the kid comes to the next class period.
- One social relationship in your class seems remedied and then they come in with an entirely different set of baggage from that party or the social media exchange or that moment over lunch.
- You think things are going great and then you get feedback from a student, a colleague, a parent, an administrator, and you are thrown for a loop stressing over whether you can even accurately assess the right moles to whack. WHY DIDN’T I SEE THAT MOLE?! WAS I TOO FIXATED ON THE WRONG ROW?!
Or sometimes, working at a school can be more accurately compared to 12 people trying to untie the same knot with different techniques and at different angles at the same time. Sometimes it works really well. Sometimes not so much.
If the problem is clearer and the communication more true, it’s closer to digging a ditch together.
But all of us in this public-private-personal work of education can feel we are sometimes shouting into the wind. Our words are so often lost or heard differently than intended. And other times we are whispering into what we think is a single ear but is actually an amplifier, a microphone. That doesn’t usually go great either.
It’s almost too cliche to say, but we are ALL jugglers, like professional jugglers of way too many balls. (At least we are smiling and from time to time wear suspenders and bow ties?)
Above is a picture of herding cats. I think you get it.
But every single human I know working at our school is filled to the brim with good intentions and a heart in the right place.
I mostly like to think of us this way, in our diversity of flawed glories: a mish-mash of wildflowers sprouting and growing and changing at a million different rates in a million different colors letting off a million different fragrances and features. Or, as I like to say about the state of my housekeeping, “It may be chaos, but it is OUR beautiful chaos.”