It takes great courage, a certain fearlessness, to pursue and to choose the heartprint of the PLC life.
To become an inspirational teacher and leader— to dig deep down and find the proper passion and compassion, energy and engagement, joy and gratefulness – takes courage.
Your desire to influence others, to collaborate, to teach and to share with others, to be more professionally transparent - every day – takes courage.
In the words of Helen Keller, Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all! And, the PLC life most assuredly calls us to become part of a great adventure!
Your Heartprint, however, is not just revealed in those moments of great heroism. Heartprint exists within the common everyday, mundane, and often-unseen moments of our professional lives.
That something extra you did for a child last week, that no one will ever really know. The lifting up of a colleague, when illness or personal difficulty set in.
We each have a great teaching and learning story to tell… And it’s very personal – Because our emotions and our fears about what will and will not work are different.
For some, to have the heart to work in a collaborative team and take collective responsibility for evidence of student learning takes great courage.
For others, not as much…
For others, to ensure that no educator is left alone and allowed to drift away from a state of... - takes courage – especially to do so with a never ending patience and grace.
To take initiative beyond your current comfort zone when you participate in a PLC culture and a professional life that provides hope and joy and notices others – takes courage.
Your heartprint as part of the PLC life will reveal your willingness to become intimate with your work – which means you connect your own sense of success and personal well-being to the success and well-being of your students and colleagues…
Courage and heart will be the X-factors in sustaining the change to move toward such a collaborative culture one day, one event, one team at a time.
Courage is the virtue that is needed if we are going to change the status quo that often engulfs us…at our schools. And avoid the entropy that can choke us.
The PLC culture is about taking ourselves and our students to those heartrpint places they have never been before…
And we cannot go to those “no limits – how good can we be - Gonna take you higher” without courage and the HEART that will be required.
Courage gives us the energy to move forward!
Courage gives us the confidence to move forward!
Courage - often discovered in those quiet low energy moments… enables to leave a legacy that declares:
I was here and I made a difference!
In 2013, USC Professor Dallas Willard stated:
A person is essentially a collection of conscious experiences. Far more than just bodies or just appetites, we are our experiences.
That is why we treasure the good ones.
A hope that your experiences within the PLC life will shape you into the hope of being better for others tomorrow.
In the words of our mentor and colleague Dr. Richard DuFour:
“Will you act with a sense of urgency, as if the very lives of your students depend on your action? Because in a very literal sense, more so than at any other time in American history, they do.”
Thank you for the courage to find your heart in this season of your professional life…Timothy D. Kanold
Timothy D. Kanold, PhD, an award-winning educator, author, and consultant, is former superintendent of Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125, a model professional learning community district in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
