I took nearly a year break from my weekly blog, and I’m increasingly feeling the pull to get back after it.  My break wasn’t really about taking a pause in my daily writing practice.  I still try to put in 30 minutes of writing early each morning.  I finished a book manuscript (more on that in the next post) and started on my next book project, which in those 12 months is already nearly halfway to completion.  

I think my pause was more about the self-imposed deadline of getting something up each week.    I wanted to step back for at least a few months to see if things in my daily and weekly routines would change significantly if I wasn’t putting pressure on myself to share something each week.  I think it’s a good thing to know that the desire to write and share regularly is something authentic, and I’m definitely feeling that.  I am more convinced than ever that for me, an important part of my professional practice as a school leader is writing regularly about the work and what I am learning.  It is no coincidence that one of the major components of the National Board Certification process is promoting the “reflective practicioner.”  My blog has become one of my primary venues for processing and reflecting on my work as a school and systems leader.

I also felt that my blog posts were becoming increasingly formulaic, as if my writing was a performance.  I certainly understand why that might be the case, as there are very real pressures and forces at work when you are in a position of leadership and are trying to strengthen an organizational culture that is increasingly focused on consistent quality and realizing an ambitious vision of transformational learning and personal development for kids.  From my very first posts as an Executive Director with Santa Ana Unified, I knew that a public venue for my thinking would have implications for my leadership internally with the organization.  Almost always, those implications were positive ones as I felt I was sharing my genuine efforts to create game-changing schools and programs, but you can’t help but feel limited at times in what you can say.  

So, I’m hoping to keep things a bit more informal and open up to share a little bit more about what happens behind the scenes in my daily and weekly leadership practices that I perhaps didn’t write about as often as I would like.  I have to remember that my blog is primarily a tool for my reflective processing, and so I want to share more about my mistakes, failures, and consequent adjustments and adaptations to try to strengthen my contribution to the work.  I think writing more authentically could actually simplify and speed up my writing process and allow me to post with a bit more frequency.  

In any case, I’m excited to be back on the blog.  I’ve had more people than I would have expected comment about how they enjoyed my posts, and quite frankly I’ve missed it as well, so it is definitely time to relaunch.  I also have some very big news related to the writing projects that I have been working on, but again will save that for my next post.  Thanks for reading!