If you’re an educator, it’s typical for your mind to start racing on Sundays as you think about the great lessons planned for the week, hoping and wishing the weekend wasn’t a traumatic one for your students, and just simply relaxing and at times dreading Monday (Monday is my favorite day of the week by the way). Well my Sunday routine has changed because of an encounter with an 11th grade student a few years ago. As a principal, I’m more reflective, strategic, and intentional about my planning for the week. You see on a Monday morning a few years ago an 11th grader walked into my office and stated “Dr. J, I wrote this scripture down when I heard it in church yesterday. It reminded me of what you and the teachers do for us,” and he walked out. I immediately grabbed my bible to find the scripture.

Isaiah 42:16

And I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are things I will do; I will not forsake them. As an educator, I believe we’ve been strategically placed in our position to provide hope to the hopeless child. As we continue this school year, let this message be a reminder to the responsibility we have as educators and leaders to lead our students and communities.

We must be that stone of hope on a mountain of despair, we must provide that mustard seed of faith to our students, and we must do this with a great deal of resiliency, resolve, and intestinal fortitude. Let’s consistently remind our scholars that they’re awesome, amazing, and appreciated. Let’s remind them that the sky is not the limit, as we have footprints on the moon, and let’s understand that we must see the invisible to achieve the impossible.