Courage
In fourth grade, I was Pocahontas in a classroom play. That memory came flooding back to me the other day as I wandered around the Jamestown area and was reminded of the early history of our country. The familiar stories of John Smith and Pocahontas were there, but so were the stories and graves of the lesser known colonists – those who had the courage to give up all that was familiar, put their lives at risk, and venture to this new world.
Seeing all this, caused me to think of the courage involved in being a middle level leader. While we don't generally put our lives on the line when we go to work in the morning, it does, never-the-less, take a special type of courage to do what we do. I love the Albert Schweitzer quote, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” As leaders, the main thing is not what we say but what we do – and living out our convictions takes courage.
Courage is visible when we advocate keeping the basics of middle level philosophy in place at our school despite pressure to give it up for the sake of “the test” and it’s visible when we confront a fellow educator whose actions are not in the best interests of students. Courage is necessary to back up a teacher when faced with an angry parent (assuming of course that the teacher’s actions were above reproach) and it’s necessary when meting out consequences to the school board chair’s child in a disciplinary situation. It takes courage to walk into a staff meeting and lead the staff in a discussion of a less than popular topic or to stand up in front of the group and ask forgiveness for a mistake that you’d made.
Don’t take your acts of courage for granted. I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that the word courage comes from the French word couer meaning heart, because at the center of every high-performing middle level school beats the heart of a courageous leader! What acts of courage will you perform today?
