15,000 Views

I never imagined that this blog would grow this big. Of course I wanted to share my thoughts and hopefully get a few reactions but thousands? My blog was visited 15,000 times. Sure that might be a lot to authors, academics, twitter gods, but I’m just a Principal with a strange hobby of typing hard on my phone while my baby sleeps, or I kill time on the porcelain throne. It’s an honor to be well received and supported. It’s encouraging. But thousands?

C’mon dog.

Never thought that was possible. I started off thinking maybe I’d write a book one day. But this turned into something different, something more. I’m connecting with folks on social media, and some posts even went semi viral. Shit, if anyone shares or comments it’s pretty damn awesome. I mean that’s more than 0, and way more than if I never launched this thing.

Origins

I started off wanting to write about leadership and serving oppressed students. I was moved by Zaretta Hammonds work on Culturally Responsive Teaching. I considered, in order to make this happen, what leadership moves would be needed?

This promoted me to think about what frameworks and concepts helped me. Which work and which don’t? Why? When do you use each one? This brought me to think about books, videos, conferences, and useful tools.

Open Space to Create

Then I let the wind blow me. What ever book came across my desk, or YouTube clip, article. I got to see if it moved me enough to write. If I noticed something creating change I was able to write about it. I could reflect on conferences. Truthfully, this allowed me to synthesize ideas, distill takeaways, and think about that could be applied.

My blog is an awesome outlet and can be quite cathartic.

I mean, as a leader I have so many thoughts going through my mind. So many ideas I want to try. Things I want to share, discuss, and in a perfect world, implement. This space let’s me work some of this out, reflect, and sometimes just blow off some steam. It’s the space where I can more authentically be myself but also get the space to fully flush it out. As a leader there is definitely an economy of language.

You can’t be up there talking forever.

No one wants to read all your memos, no matter how many I games you break up the text with!

There are only so many things you can speak on, that people will actually listen to, let alone act on. Here, I get to let go and speak. Preach. Teach, and reflect on teaching.

What’s next?

Who knows where this will go. More blogging. A book, a business, some trainings. For now, I’m linking up with cool folks. It definitely is making me a better principal and a better leader. I’ll take that for now.