Endings & Beginnings

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My last official day at Malvern Prep is not until June 30th, but today I spent some time cleaning out my office.

The quotable cards in the picture above have been on my bulletin board since 2012 as reminders to push past fear, conventional notions of "failure," and status quo bias in order to create transformational learning experiences.

And also to remind me that when things haven't gone well, sometimes it just "is what it is." I love what Coach K shouts from the sidelines during practice: no matter whether players have scored or turned the ball over, he always reminds them to focus on the "Next play!" (As a die hard Dean Smith fan, I can't believe I just quoted Coach K, but you can't argue with his wisdom.)

Today was part of the ending of my time at Malvern Prep, but it also bleeds into the beginning of the launch of Basecamp.  In fact, this is the first blog post I am composing here (vs. Teaching Excellence, where I had been blogging since 2009).

Basecamp is about working together, inspired by mission, to create an optimistic future.  As my friend and thought partner Viktor Venson puts it, we educators are in the "human potential business."  The only way to achieve our potential--and to help students achieve their potential--is to push past the fear, to learn and grow from "failure," to do the thing we don't think can be done... and to be resilient when things don't go as we expected.

So here is to endings and beginnings, always rooting ourselves in mission, always aspiring to envision an optimistic future, and always finding the team to pull it off.

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