No Count Down Yet

I haven't mentioned this for at least a week, but I'm retiring at the end of this school year. After our faculty meeting today where we learned about the testing schedule for the rest of the year, I'm the envy of all my peers who have to keep working. What genius figured out that kids learn by endless rounds of standardized testing? I won't go into my educational philosophies except to say I'm glad my children are all out of high school and that I will soon be done with public education too.

That said, let me climb down off the soapbox, some of my blogger friends have suggested I put a countdown gadget on my blog. I am counting down the days but I'm not adding that counter yet. If you live in the Middle Atlantic States you will understand after this week. All the weather forecasters on TV, online, on the radio, predicted we would have a big snow storm on Wednesday. Maybe as much as ten inches. So our school along with dozens of others, canceled classes for the day. Now we have to make that day up later. And March isn't over yet. We could have another storm or pseudo storm.

So I'm going wait before I put that countdown on my blog. I'd probably have to adjust it if I did it now. I'm fortunate enough that our school superintendent is a friend. She told me once making the call for snow delays and cancellations was one of the most difficult parts of her job and one impossible to get right. You can't please everyone. I wasn't pleased we had school off but I understood why our leader made the call she did.

Knowing you can't please everyone is an important part of life. You'll only suffer stress and unhappiness if you're sacrificing your goals and desires to try and please everyone else. There will be bad reviews, unfair criticism, and disgruntled readers. When you put your baby, your book, out there you have to be ready to roll with the punches. You can't please everyone all the time.

So who didn't you please this week? Did you get a big snowstorm this week? Ready for spring yet?