Tomatoes in Your Face

I’m currently in the thick of start-of-year meetings, preparing departmental curriculum and student programming. Goals are big this time of year. Personal goals, department goals, school goals. And I’m a big proponent of forming SMART goals with my students, and giving them feedback throughout the year. It’s a great way to keep them engaged and also provides good material for parent meetings.

For many of our tasks, it’s super useful to create a roadmap to get there.

BUT.

Here’s where the last few years have taught me something. We’ve all had to abandon some goals over the past few years. Not because we aren’t good enough. But because the world keeps doing a 180 on us and the goalposts keep moving. Being “prepared” seems less about knowing what’s coming than being able to swivel toward whatever emerges as the most pressing need.

Just as last year started to feel somewhat normal, Russia invaded Ukraine and we were scrambling once again. I work at an international school in Slovakia, which shares a border with Ukraine, and we have several Russian and Ukrainian students at our school.

As a Dean of Students, my days were filled with onboarding refugee students, managing trauma, and assisting students who were organizing fundraisers and protests. These were not my goals at the start of the year, no matter how smart they were.

So there’s a place for goals, but we need something else. We need openness, flexibility, the ability to prepare for the unknown. By their very definition, SMART goals can’t prepare you for something non-specific.

Being an effective educator today is not just about goals; it’s about having the right mindset – a mindset that is calm, secure, adaptable, and ready for whatever life throws at it. Because let’s be honest here: I don’t know what “the new normal” means, but I know that life is having a veritable foodfight with us right now.

So in anticipation of tomatoes flying at you, take a listen to this guided practice. It may not allow you to stand there serenely while seeds are dripping down your face, but it might just allow you to smile a little bit when they hit you.