When my granddaughter was three years old, she and I sometimes played hide and seek. This is what would happen.
I would say “…9…10! Read or not here I come!” And when I would then call out her name, followed by asking where she was, she would immediately respond, “I’m under the table!”
The game was always that short. She was just so delighted to be found.
All children are.
And it takes all of us to find them.
The message next to the door to the employees’ entrance of a hotel in downtown New Orleans would serve well posted on the entry wall of all our schools.
I was wandering around this evening after sessions had ended Day One of the 2024 National School Board Association conference when I saw the sign.
Jamie Vollmer is right, the title of his book saying it all: “Schools Cannot Do It Alone.”
We’re in this together.
The future of our country is dependent on the job we do today.
We.
Us.
All of us.
We want to see the beauty of their smiles, the joy of their discovery.
We want them to know what they will need to know all the rest of their lives.
We will want them to know – by our example because education is about life – where they can find strength in sorrow.
We will want them to discover that joy is possible even in pain.
We will want them to one day, when they have children of their own, to likewise pass on how precious is the pursuit of knowledge, and of life.
We.
Us.
All of us.
