heckit's blog: February 2019

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

FU M.r Lee

Yesterday afternoon as I was at about my site attending to students, I came across this pithy rant. My initial response was one of anger and annoyance, wanting to instinctively have it washed off, from a broken windows mindset, thinking graffiti will just replicate itself.

But taking a photo just had me mull it over. I was the object of someone’s anger and hate. And it became a badge of honor; I had earned my stripes as a leader, as it were, and someone had taken the time to put into writing to their insult to me. Hey can you at least know how to punctuate the abbreviation of Mister. Well today, that little detail revealed the writer to me as I was helping one of our newest and most challenging students to me as the student worked on class work. Now, my response was much more measured and compassionate and not so personal. It expanded my agency, which is the true mark of freedom. I had before more me choices (not just one) of how I might now respond to this and also choices in how this might be a learning opportunity for him yes, but more importantly for me: how might I help this child repair the damage, learn from the experience and give him more agency in dealing with positions of authority? . That is the true skill of a leader is to have the flexiity to respond to an address on many levels and the skill to have him respond to your advantage or eveyone's advantage.

He didn’t bite at might invitation today. But I have tomorrow and the following day.

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