Do you like Pickles? Get your jars ready!

Supt Blog Vol. 1 No. 4

I would suggest taking a few minutes to check out the Empty Pickle Jar video.   Whether or not you are an avid follower of Simple Truths messages, this one is worth watching, re-watching, and reflecting on as an mother (parent), spouse, leader, and educator.  We recently watched this video as an administrative team.  During that activity, the administrative team was asked to write their priorities on a golf ball.  What are the major things in your life?  Family, Friends, Church, and Community.  The BIG things in life!  

From there, we talked about the pebbles in the jar.  The pebbles are the things that matter to us at our place of work - the students, the instruction, the programs, the families, and the community we serve.  The pebbles fill in around the golf balls and help us feel whole, give us a focus for our work, and provide us with feedback on our worth as educators.  With golf ball and pebbles in place, one may say the jar is full.  But as the video goes on, we see that there is always room for sand.....pesky sand.  

Sand is what bogs us down, gets in the cracks, and even fills up the jar leaving less room for pebbles and golf balls.  Sand represents the trivial things that won’t help us shine the pebbles or drive the golf balls in our lives.  As the video shows, if begin with sand in our jar, we won’t be able to add the golf balls and pebbles later.  You have to START with the golf balls.  

We cannot be lead learners, coaches, spouses, parents, friends, mentors, and team members if we don’t know what our golf balls and pebbles symbolize.  We have to embrace the big things, the critical elements of focus, address the sand that fills in the cracks, and then brush away the excess sand that may bog us down.  As administrative team members, we must help each other when we focus more on the sand and less on the pebbles.  

It is a challenge to let go of sand even as it slips through our hands because little grains are ALWAYS left behind.  However, our strength and impact comes when we stand up at the tee and drive the golf ball down the fairway.....Or if you play more like me, when we take the time to find it in the trees and toss it back into the fairway.