“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your actions.”
– Dalai Lama
As we approach this holiday season and the end of 2016 many people are busy getting the “new year’s resolutions” … eat better, exercise more, spend more time in nature, etc… The end of year is a fine 
time for reflection and contemplation.
Did we accomplish what we set out to accomplish in 2016? Did we do the best we could for ourselves, our families, our co-workers, our communities? Did we listen enough to opposing viewpoints? Did we stand up for what is right? Questions like those and so many more fill our minds and hearts as the work world slows down, if only for the week between Christmas and New Years Day.
Whatever we did in 2016 … it’s coming to a close.
2017 allows us new opportunities, new learning, new challenges, and new realities! As this year comes to a close, and as I write the final blog post of 2016, I realized that my blog, in effect since July 2013, has about 300 posts.
So in roughly three and a half years I’ve written 300 posts, responded to about 100 comments; there have been 50,000 page views with an average reader spending a minute and a half reading the posts. Google Analytics reports that there have been 23,458 users engaging in one form or another with the blog. 40% of the blog readers are regulars and 60% of the readers are categorized as new visitors. This is pretty cool – in the context of one person’s blog. Is this significant in terms of all bloggers? Is this significant in the blog world of superintendents? Depends on the context of review.
Readers of this blog hail from the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Japan, and some 1100 sessions unidentified.
The title of this blog post Perspective and Context came to me after viewing the following video that gives perspective to how earth relates to the rest of the “universe”. The context is “space” and size:
Our universe, this blog, your identity – all form ‘parts of wholes’. Wherever we are in time and space, from wherever we hail, we are significant and meaningful. Ideally we always add value to our family, our community, our world. We, though, are but a small parts of a larger reality.
Regardless of our perspectives, our importance, our 
value, we must be mindful of context. We also must be mindful that each new year allows us to learn more, to grow more, to do a better job than perhaps we did last year.
The new year allows us to “reset” to redo, to start whatever it is we’re doing with fresh eyes. Perspective and Context guide and define our thoughts and actions.
Earlier this year in the Deerfield Public Schools District 109, we spent time looking at two films: Beyond Measure and Most Likely to Succeed. Both were shown to hundreds of people in our community. Both challenged long held assumptions about public education and the forms of instruction best suited for our future. Both challenged our perspectives and caused a review of our context. I wrote blog posts about these films and the viewing experiences.
As we approach 2017, I’m equally as energized with hope and vision about the realities we will create here in Deerfield, IL, and Riverwoods, IL (my small parts of the world) on behalf of students, staff, and community. We are on the forefront of causing change, perhaps forcing change in some contexts on behalf of the future we are creating – like it or not – we in education are future creators.
Are we supporting structures and systems that perpetuate the 1893 era thinking and needs and context? Or do we change our perspective and support structures designed for future context.
Happy New Year 2017
Best wishes to us all to consider our perspectives and to consider our contexts, and to realize the value and power of change for innovation, improvement, and the future.
