“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle

One of the great joys of working in public school administration is having the opportunity to visit classrooms, walk the halls of schools and interact with teachers, support staff, and children on a regular basis. On our central office leadership team we greatly value our visits to the schools and our intention is to be present, visit, interact, learn, “be” where the action is – in the classrooms – as often as we can. We track our visits so we can be sure to visit all of the schools and because we take pride on measurement and follow through. All of our “fancy” meetings and conferences and workshops and thinking sessions truly matter most if and when students and teachers are impacted. Where better than the classroom then, to see firsthand, the fruits of our labors in support of learning and growing.

Ideally our routine classroom visits are as non-intrusive as possible and over time they are becoming ingrained in our culture. Often the students know who we are and don’t even pay much attention to our presence, they continue on their learning and schoolwork. The youngest students though like to know who the “special visitors” are, especially in kindergarten and first grade. Today when visiting one of our school’s kindergarten and first grade classrooms and saying “hello”, one of the teachers introduced me with my formal title “Dr.” and one of the students asked “are you a doctor who examines people”, to which I replied “no, I’m like a professor doctor” … his response was priceless “oh, then you’re not even a real doctor!”. While his teacher asked him to apologize since he was not being nice (blurting out and giggling); his response was priceless – amusing – and revealing about context, frames of reference, and schema. Of course I accepted his apology smiled almost giggling myself at the humor in the interaction.

I’m not one to be impressed by fancy titles or framed certificates – though I am proud of mine of course … I enjoyed this little child’s amusement that in his world, with no baggage or judgement, his view of a doctor is quite different than the title I have and what it signifies in our profession. The little ones say what is on their minds!

Part of the purpose of this post is to share what I consider to be a funny story – one of so many we in education hear from the wonderful students all the time. Another purpose is to share how de-stressing it is to visit classrooms and interact with teachers and students, if even for a short time. And, finally, it’s refreshing to be reminded that we may not always be perceived by others to be who we are and who we think we are especially when we are viewed through different lenses (in this case from a giggly kindergarten student who blurted out exactly what he was thinking today at that moment).

While the business we are in is quite serious and quite important, it’s wonderful to be reminded that we should not take ourselves or our positions so seriously.