LM Nov2020

Message From the Executive Director Goal Setting Is Key to Retaining Hope During Challenging Times

Dr. Brent Clark

the educational leaders in your community. As we look out over the horizon of our economy and society, I would encourage every one of you to set short, medium and long-term goals with a bright dot out on the horizon that signals the pandemic is behind us. You have to build the hope. It’s the only way that I know to suggest to you to lead and manage your way through this morass and back to better days and nights. Setting the goals is therapeutic as well as a sense of gaining a control mechanism over an otherwise unwieldly period of time in our society and world. Having put seven months behind us—the good weather is behind us—and facing the winter when we will all be indoors more, we really need a serious dedicated personal self-care path that we can follow out of the woods. And if it’s available, engage a friend’s group as goal setting partners as this could help you stay motivated and on track to collectively work our way forward. One day this all ends and life will return to many normal activities and routines, but until then, we have to have a personal strategy to help navigate the challenge. As superintendents, we need to not only go all in with our own plan but keep an eye out for our colleagues. The struggle is real and only we can understand and truly help each other along the path—we need every superintendent standing when this pandemic ends—and we can make that happen if we help each other along the way and begin to set goals for life after COVID.

In three decades in this business, I have never seen the struggle so real and immersive in every direction as it is right now, seven months into the COVID-19 pandemic. What superintendents are tasked with is making health decisions that they simply are not trained to make, all in the guise of “local control.” We’ve asked repeatedly for clear guidelines and health metrics to help school leaders make informed decisions around in-person, hybrid and remote learning. Instead, superintendents have been forced to interpret and act on public health data, often on their own. As a result, communities have been pitted against each other and are divided within. Caught in the middle of all this are superintendents. It didn’t have to be this way. I won’t rehash and re-litigate the past seven months. My concern is you—the Superintendent of Schools— and what I can do to help you push forward. My worries about the well-being of our school leaders grow by the day when we all assess the conditions on the ground, listen to what is happening in our state and realize that there’s truly no end to this in the short term. This can quickly erode hope and optimism for the future and a person can easily melt into the abyss. Today’s message is my attempt to tell you otherwise. Yes, all of the above is true IMO. However, as leaders we each know about retaining hope, goal setting and the necessary diligence of doing the work. That’s the essence of what I want to impress upon each of you as

3 LM November 2020