Kicking Off Summer of 2019 with the Revised ELAR TEKS

On my commute home from Decatur today, I reflected on the rich conversations, thoughtful dialogue, and cognitively demanding work demonstrated by a small group of dedicated educators, willingly sacrificing their first day of summer break to deepen their understanding of our recently revised ELAR standards. As the day unfolded, it became more and more evident, how important headspace and time truly are if we want teachers to develop as professionals. Across the course of the day, we encountered words like morphology, recursive, and anecdote, which left us all feeling a bit inadequate and unsure about the future. Yet we persevered, carefully thinking about the best way to weave the strands together and honoring the integrated nature of these revised TEKS. I am in awe of teachers. We expect the sun, the moon, and the stars from them, and they always seem to deliver.

I am reluctant to refer to these extraordinary leaders and teachers as superheroes because as Donalyn Miller reminds us, "Any system depending on heroes to make it work is a bad system. The system needs to change." Instead, I will simply define them as efficient, hardworking professionals who want the very best for their students. Together, we can weather this season of change, scaling academic mountains alongside our kiddos.