Dear Colleagues

You are not superhuman!! And neither am I!

I am going to repeat this mantra all week as I remind myself when I feel down that I am doing too much and not enough all at the same time. I have on my heart this week to let you all know that despite some of our best efforts things will fall apart. For example last week we had several power outages on Wednesday. This was totally out of our control and thankfully it was on a Wednesday. But seriously....I like most of you, get really bothered when technology doesn't work.

As educators we work harder when things get tougher. It is our nature since we will do anything for our students. This is your weekly reminder that you all are amazing in so many ways and often you can pull off superhuman moments, hours, but not 24/7 and certainly not long term. So let's all give each other some GRACE. Look out for a friend or colleague who is struggling. Tell someone you appreciate them. Share a lesson or resource. Be sure to join forces to divide the workload. If you are working in silos reach out to your teams and colleagues because it is not sustainable. 2020 must be a team effort.

As I learned a long time ago we must go slow to go fast. Which simply means pause, reset and rethink where 2020 will take us before moving too fast and loosing what opportunities this challenging year can give us. Maybe students can also benefit from going slow. We may not get through all of the curriculum this year. It is going to be okay anyway! We may not be able to teach all of the standards this year. It is going to be okay anyway. We may not become experts in every tech tool or software. It is going to be okay anyway. We will survive this journey together when we have each other's best interests in mind. Please know that despite all the anger I have towards the year 2020 our students and colleagues will be okay.

In the last few months we have made all of the upgrades in technology that I envisioned would happen in the next 5 years. I have had my celebratory moment and my pity party all the same time knowing that is not how I envisioned our technology growth as a district. We will need to go slow in order to go fast. I will continue to share these weekly newsletters with info about technology but please know you do not need to jump in and use everything. And that is truly okay.

Sending you lots of positive energy and GRACE,

Carolyn Blennau

Check out my video update:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2AlNcs4JDRMXvCHrmWmByp5542g1ZkU/view