PLI closure

After 14 months of intense learning, bonding, changing and hoop-jumping our Principal Leadership Institute Cohort 12 comes to a close. I am still revising my LARP (thesis) but the end of the program is here. I am so grateful to the learning, the intensity and friendships I gained. I am a changed person. While I was not offered any of the administrative positions I applied and interviewed for, we shall see what the future holds.

I don’t know what the previous cohorts have been like. But this has been an amazing cohort. We are a transitional cohort: Lynda’s last cohort and Rebecca’s first. We got to know each other and bonded in the summer, worked exceedingly hard in the fall, LARPed (thesis writing) full time in the spring (and summer) and completed our internship this summer and LARPed some more. But we had D3 (our social committee) to remind us to have fun, and as we become effective social justice leaders we recall Emma Goldman’s admonition, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.”

We leave with the criteria of what a good school is, cognizance of the gods we serve and the gods we choose to serve, of the importance of identity, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion in our role as leaders, how to have courageous conversations, recognize data as our friend, build our educational expertise, do research, prepare and cultivate our communities for change, and hold our schools together for the purposes greater than ourselves. For ultimately we carry on the legacy of our educator forebears for this present generation, that they too, when it is their time, will be women and men of courage, vision, and social justice.

A priest once told me, “if you want to be happy, be grateful.” So let me live in the house of gratitude in acknowledging the gift of what the PLI Cohort 12 has been. We have been a blessing to each other, our collaboration & our initiatives, our conversations and conflicts, our affect and our accomplishments, our venting and validations. You have my admiration, gratitude and love. 

A big thank you goes out to Rebecca, who helped us to see that data can be our friend. If I recall sometime in the Spring she had us graph our stress and it put the our lives in perspective.

She has been with us from the beginning and was a constant reminder not to give up hope. “Si se puede.” Thank you Rebecca, I hope you see our gratitude to you in the teachers we support when things get dark and desperate, “Si se puede.”

At our introductory session we were given a Rumi poem to ponder. So let me end with Rumi.

“The way of love is not 
a subtle argument. 



The door there
is devastation. 



Birds make great sky-circles 
of their freedom. 


How do they learn it? 



They fall, and falling, 
they're given wings.”

So let us fall in order to be given the wings we need.

© 2012 Hector Viveros Lee

Violeta's niece and Nelson

 I appreciate my family coming out to see me.