This blog is going to be a rambling mess and I don’t care. I recently was with a group of educators and was talking about how I passed a car on fire on the way there. One lady responded to me that she saw a car the fireman had just let burn. “It was like a car you would see in Africa” was that comment she said. She immediately retracted it and said well not in Africa but you know it was all burnt up. I said nothing to her. This failure on my part is embarrassing. My fear of rocking the boat or looking like a troublemaker in front of new people held me back. I failed. It reminds of a @sporticus blog where he writes about how he watched another coach berate a child and didn’t step in. Right now I am all talk and very little action.
Second meandering thought. I recently pulled up this doc by accident from Edcamp Voxer (now Edcamp Voice). The doc has some people’s blogs on it from the online Edcamp. @DavidBillikopf was the first entry on it. I remember him as being very friendly and interesting because he worked in the prison system and that is so foreign to me. I click on his blog and was immediately saddened and reminded how short life is. This reminds me to cut out all the crap and really focus on the here and now.
Third meandering thought. I love school. I love kids. I am so thankful that I am an untested area where I can honestly do what I feel is best for kids. I am saddened that other ts don’t have this same leeway.
Fourth meandering thought. There are fantastic leaders out in the world. I met the superintendent of a school district and in a ten-minute conversation, I was blown away with what she was doing. She told a story that I immediately saw was getting the right people on the bus. This is the second super I have met in the last couple of weeks that has renewed hope for me that school is much more than just test scores and coercion.
Last thought. Crepes are delicious. They are even better when eaten with friends.
#slowchatPE 
Random thoughts when expressed lead to our underlying values, thoughts, and reflections. The burning car story reminds me of a powerful quote that I blogged about last week (http://www.pyppewithandy.com/pyp-pe-blog/what-are-you-willing-to-walk-past), “The standards we walk past are the standards we accept.” We all do it. We all know we should say something at times and don’t. It’s a lesson to us all to think about what standards we walk past and what our responsibility is in regard to these standards that we might walk past.
The story of David is a reminder that life is fragile. As Steve Jobs says, “Life is short, don’t waste it living someone else’s dreams.” I have learned this lesson in my own life but need to continually remind myself that life is indeed short. Time is the most valuable commodity we have.
The third message about doing what is best for kids is important. The teaching values that we hold must always align with our actual actions. At times, there is a disconnect between our values and our actions. Striving to connect our values and actions is life’s greatest challenge.
Your last message of the superintendent is one of ‘hope’ in the system. That there is a lot of good out there still despite bad that exists. Hope is what drives us. We must always remember that we ourselves are responsible for creating hope every day.
The last message about crepes is the most random! But at the heart of it is that life is better we when experience it with others. We need others. 🙂
Thanks for this blog post dude.
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