Worth the Work

I’ve taken on a couple of deceivingly large projects recently.  They’ve been the type of projects that make you shake your head a lot and wonder how you got yourself into them, the type that take months instead of a few days.

I couldn’t help but wonder if these projects were “worth the work” when they expanded to fill so much time. Can’t blame me for wondering, right? We’ve all gotten ourselves into a mess like that for our kids. Right? Well, if you haven’t, I’m going to recommend that you do!  If you haven’t pushed yourself to a point where the workload seemed questionable, or where people shake their heads at you, you haven’t found the depth and breadth of your talents and abilities for making a difference in your school.

I had this vision of the perfect steps to opening the aquaponics set up at the pond at our school, and the outdoor learning stations that my students designed. I always have a vision or the steps in MY perfect sequence.

Friday, a great thing happened. My perfect plan and sequence got rocked by a wonderful teacher and her sweet class who couldn’t or didn’t wait for my plan. They saw the incomplete outdoor learning  station that would work with their lesson and they used it. Without me. Without the posted directions. Without the instructional video I planned to send. And it was WONDERFUL. They laughed. They noticed. They wondered. They talked. They learned!

You see, I kept telling myself it would all be worth it when everything was perfect and it was all ready to be opened. Priorities strike again!!! Perfect isn’t the priority. Learning is. And it is already happening!

Now that’s the fuel I needed to keep going!