Helping Oneself Help Others
“You need to take care of yourself first. If you don't care for yourself, you can't take care of someone else.” -Kathleen O'Brien As a new school leader, I think that sometimes we forget to take care of ourselves and stop to reflect. This afternoon I got the opportunity to stop and reflect with other new assistant principals in the Boston area, thanks to a roundtable discussion hosted by the MSSAA in Franklin, MA. It's funny, the fact that as school leaders, we ask teachers to stop and reflect on their practice, to focus on student learning, and we ask students to stop, and assess their learning, and revise their goals, and to keep on going! As an administrator, we don't have many other checks, besides our peers and our superiors to stop and reflect. And often times, we all (other administrators) are also running around like mad men and women, assessing their ever-expanding to-do list, and trying desperately, all the while, to spend time in classrooms and w...