Each year, we celebrate “Back-to-School” time in a number of different ways.  To the general public, it usually starts with store sales and ends with parents posting pictures of their child on the first day.

For teachers and leaders, it is so much more.  Even if they don’t want to, teachers begin thinking about the next year, before they end the current year.  Leaders on the other hand are always thinking about it - or at least they should be.

Traditionally, back-to-school means a return to some minimally altered version of what happened the year before.  It works...because it’s familiar and it doesn’t cause a significant drain on human or financial capital.  

Needless to say … 2021 did not provide that luxury.  Although extremely tragic, the upheaval of COVID-19  has made us approach many things differently.  Honestly, education as a whole needed an injection of innovation.  Truthfully, it still does. 

Life and school as we know it can’t ever be what it once was.  This is an opportunity to examine how you have operated and see how you can reinvent yourself, your work and your world.  It’s time…and no, things probably won’t go back to the way they were - at least not anytime too soon. In order to go back this time, we must move forward.