Category: Principal’s Pen

“There’s a lot of blood sweat and guts between dreams and success.”

Bear Bryant

The human body is capable of far more than we sometimes realize. It is generally believed that humans can go about three weeks without food, around ten days without sleep, and about three days without water. Well before we ever get to these breaking points, our brain kicks in and begins to tell us how big a fool we are for even pushing it. Most of us can’t get through a day without having a good dose of all three.  We are capable of far more than we give ourselves credit.

Several years ago, Melissa and I were making our way down into the Grand Canyon on a quick day hike when I noticed a man in the distance making his way up the trail. While it isn’t unusual to see people with one or two walking sticks on the trail, I couldn’t make out from the distance what he was holding in his hand. It was at an odd angle and unusual enough to pique my interest. Over the next half an hour, we gradually closed the distance between us until we were only a few hundred meters apart. It was here that I realized the man moving towards me, less than a foot from the outer rim of the trail and a drop well more than a few hundred feet, was blind. He had a guide behind him to help make sure he didn’t accidentally walk off the side of the mountain. Still, he was largely making the climb out of the canyon entirely on his own. I overheard his guide telling another group that they were finishing up a multi-day loop. Not only did the moment make me appreciate the view a little more, but it also reminded me how much we are capable of if we are willing to push ourselves. 

Growth comes down to our ability to control three things in our lives: our attitude, our effort, and our self-discipline. Suppose we consistently show up with the attitude that we can grow, achieve, and develop into something better than we are at this moment. In that case, we are well on our way to improving ourselves.  

If we find the grit to keep going, even when it’s not as fun as we expected, harder than we expected, or a bit darker than we expected, we can achieve amazing results. Our attitude and effort will unlock experiences and opportunities that we may never even consider possible.  

Of the three, however, our self-discipline may be the most critical. The story we tell ourselves about ourselves matters. Far too many individuals arrive with the attitude and the grit to grow but neglect the importance of controlling the narrative we are telling ourselves. Without a good dose of self-discipline, we hit the snooze button far too many times, have that extra donut, never lose the last ten pounds, and self-sabotage our own development. 

The same is true of our children. The picture may look a bit different for them while in school, but the reality of attitude, effort, and self-discipline is still the same. I began developing this idea of attitude, effort, and self-discipline, which I believe are at the core of our growth in my senior year in college. I was about to graduate and was preparing for interviews for teaching positions. For almost thirty years, I have watched over and over as students who exemplify these three character traits gradually outwork and outgrow students who still need to develop one of them. I have watched students break the cycle of poverty, become the first in their families to graduate from college, and go on to successful careers. Most of them approached their education and their growth the same way. They worked harder than others, showing up when they had every excuse to stay in bed. They came with the right attitude even when their life situation told them they got a crappy deal in the genetic lottery and should blame the world for all of the perceived wrongs in their life. And they were incredibly self-disciplined. They didn’t allow the story they told themselves to derail them from their chosen path. They showed up daily and continued to grow; Success came for them by stringing one good day after another.  

I have to be careful not to name names, but having been a small part of many of their stories, I am so proud of what they have become and the model they are for others around them.  They remind me that even on the tough days, I need to keep moving forward.

Moving Forward is one of the most important decisions we can make in life.  It allows us to grow, learn new lessons, have more energy, enjoy more peace, and overcome our adversaries.  

Dr. Peter Nieman

It’s interesting that I ended up both an elementary teacher and eventually an elementary principal. Let’s say I didn’t have the most productive career as an elementary student. First grade was challenging, and a personality conflict with the teacher made it even worse. I didn’t think she liked me very much, and the feeling on my end was mutual.   Much the same thing happened in 5th grade. I perceived I had been wronged by an unapologetic teacher and proceeded to go to war with her. It unearthed my mother, and it took me several years to overcome the lost learning and instruction that I missed simply because I was stubborn and hard-headed. Looking back, I could have handled the situation better, but in my defense, I was an elementary school student and only beginning to struggle with the self-discipline needed to confront the productive struggles I would face as an adult. If I’m honest, I do have a bit of that stubborn streak; part of it was inherited, and part of it was learned. Still, a dog on a bone mentality isn’t easily surrendered and, in some cases, has served me very well, in others, not so much.  

In middle school (at the time, it was still considered Junior High School), I learned to embrace the productive struggles I would face. As I did, I began experiencing more academic success. Some of it came with maturity, but my introduction to athletics and several excellent educators and mentors also helped. I was finally able to close some of the reading gaps that I had faced since early elementary school, which led to improvements in my grades, my attitude, and my general enjoyment of school.  

What I wish I had known then and better understood now is the critical importance of embracing the productive struggle of learning something new. It is supposed to be hard. Many of us never get through the initial battle and attain some degree of competence when acquiring a new skill. Think about those resolutions you made two months ago. How many of those are you still sticking with now that it’s mid-March? I remember some years ago wanting to learn to play the guitar, but I couldn’t stick with it long enough to get through the initial struggle. I gave up and moved on to something else. If we are honest, we have all probably been there in some way or another. We found some new hobby or idea only to give up when it started getting difficult.   Sometimes, our children may feel the same way about school when learning successes don’t come easy.  

While we can work with them, give them great experiences, and read to them regularly, being a successful student will still require a bit of grit to get through the struggle that is sure to come. For some, it comes early and often; for others, it may sneak up on them later in life.   Arriving at school with the work ethic necessary to face the productive struggle of learning is critical to a child’s overall success. Athletes know this; games are won many times on the practice field and in the weight room. The team that puts in the work brings with them an advantage. When making strides to get stronger, the athlete heads to the weight room and sees very little in terms of results after the first day. They may be a bit sore, but they probably can’t see that they look very different from before their workout. But, when you string enough days of sticking with it together, the results become apparent, and athletes who keep it up soon separate themselves from others based on how they address the productive struggle with grit and determination. The same is true of life in general. I encourage you to evaluate the message you are sending to the little eyes that are watching you. One of the most important lessons we can teach the upcoming generation is the value of putting in the work both in learning and in life. 

I was blessed to grow up where and when I did. I spent much of my childhood at and around my grandmother’s house, which is only a mile east of my current school. However, in the early 1980s, Kentucky Avenue was only a stone’s throw from the elementary school where my mom worked in the office, where I would have my first job, and where I would eventually (even though it’s in a new location) find myself leading.  

Childhood in that time would be utterly foreign to students and parents today. Summer days at my grandmother’s would consist of a full breakfast and cartoons, and then somewhere around 10:00, we would be banished to “go outside and play  .”We would walk all over Hazelwood. We would go over to the school and slip into the old gym far away from the office to play basketball and swing on the climbing rope. I’m still amazed that elementary schools were good with having 10-year-olds climb a rope straight up into the rafters nearly two floors above with little to no protection from falling. It was a very different time!   We would leave the gym without letting anyone know, head to the post office to check the mail, and visit with the postmaster. We would head to Toot’s hardware and visit with “Toot” Nichols. This was the hardware store where I would pick up my first pocket knife. I still remember him having a giant moose head on the wall. After making our rounds, we would wind up at the counter at the Hazelwood Pharmacy around lunch. If we were lucky enough to have some spare change, we might be able to order a cheeseburger or a real deal cherry coke!   To this day, I can’t stand the bottled cherry cokes; they don’t hold a candle to those from the pharmacy.  

Looking back, I was given the opportunity to explore, embrace curiosity, and search for adventure. I was given permission to wonder, and I wouldn’t trade the wandering spirit that the streets of Hazelwood cultivated for anything! I understand that the world has changed, and it’s more difficult to give students these kinds of experiences today. But we must try. 

We can start fostering curiosity by giving our students and our children opportunities to ask questions. I hate to admit that as I reflect on how I parented, I probably didn’t provide as many opportunities for questions as I should have. It’s easy in the hustle of our buddy lives to forget the importance of allowing children to figure it out for themselves. Our temptation is to give them the answer and move on, leaving very little time for wonder or productive struggle. 

We can foster curiosity by providing them with a wide variety of experiences. Giving children the freedom and space to wonder and seek answers to questions we may not be asking. Depending on the experience and your comfort level, this might also require us to give them just the right amount of guardrails to keep them safe while they both wonder and wander. 

Finally, we can foster curiosity by showing them how to dig deeper and understand that they can find answers to questions in various ways. Many of the lessons I learned in childhood came from watching the adults around me model it for me. I encourage you to pay attention to how you model learning to the young people in your life. What kind of learner do they see when they look at you. 

Looking back, I was blessed to spend so many summer days learning independently through these adventures. My little brother recently posted on Facebook that our parents have no idea how many miles we rode on our bikes during the summers around Hazelwood. I wouldn’t trade those miles for anything and desperately want to find a way to recreate it for the next generation.

I met my wife when we were both in ninth grade. On my first trip to her house, she introduced me to Snowball. He was a gentle, midsized horse with a huge heart for his owner. Over the next few years, we would take several rides together, and I learned that Snowball had a bad habit. After a few hours on the trail, he liked to take a nap. If you were lucky, he would decide to take it while everyone had stopped for lunch, but many times he would take it as you walked the last few miles of the ride. You could tell that he was napping because he wouldn’t be nearly as careful with his feet, and then he would trip, wakeup, and hopefully catch himself before both horse and rider hit the ground. He usually did, but there was always that moment between tripping and waking up that left the rider in limbo, hoping that he would right himself before he hit the ground.

As Melissa and I take weekend hikes, there will usually be a joke about Snowball. The joke usually happens at the end of the walk when one of us is tired and misses a step or neglects to step high enough to clear a rock or stump. If I can be honest, after hours on the trail, I can settle into a bit of a trance and, like Snowball, take a bit of a nap on the trail. I know it’s not smart, and I need to be more aware, but time and fatigue take their toll, and it’s easy to drift off and not be fully present in the moment.

Each Friday, I go through a process to prepare for the upcoming week. Usually, late in the afternoon, I take about an hour to look at schedules and priorities and make sure I am ready for all of the events ahead of us. I borrowed a one-page weekly planner that I found several years ago and modified it a bit to make it my own. One of the things that it asks me to do is select a word for the week. Last week that word was “Present.” One of my goals was to stay fully present in the activities that I engaged in throughout the week. Being fully present takes energy and gets more challenging as fatigue sets in. Fatigue leads to mistakes. Fatigue slows down productivity.  

As we think about intentionally staying present in what we do, we must remember the tension that fatigue creates for us and those who work with us. It is true for both educators and students. While we have students in school, we still need to be attentive and watch for the errors caused by the fatigue of a year-long battle.  

Several years ago, I found myself at the end of a long hike in the southwest, walking on a small ledge. A missed step could easily be catastrophic and possibly fatal. I knew that I had a tendency to get sloppy with my foot placement late in the day, but on this day, I was fully aware of each step I took. There was no drifting off on this day; I was fully present in the moment. As we settle into the tensions associated with the prolonged battle, we must be fully aware of the emotional toll it has taken on each of us and make sure each step we make moving forward is carefully and deliberately made. 

I got a pocketknife for Christmas when I was 13 years old. It was an olive green lock blade buck knife with a bright shiny blade that was sharper than any knife I had ever had in my life. As we usually did on Christmas, we left mid-morning for my Grandfather’s house. He lived out in the country, on a farm, well past where the pavement ends. That Christmas morning, while the family prepared lunch, I sat on the front porch to whittle. Or to at least try and learn to sculpt with my blade. Unfortunately, my practice did not go as planned, and I ended up with an inch long gash on the index finger of my left hand. When mom saw it, we immediately headed for town to find someone to sew it up. I did my best to get her to at least wait until after lunch, but she would have none of it. After all, I was a growing boy, and lunch at Grandpas was usually outstanding. I had my priorities. Unfortunately, we headed for town, not waiting for lunch.  Five stitches later, I was all sewed up and hungry. It took more than three hours to get stitched up, and I never got Christmas Lunch at Grandpas that day.

Over the years, the scar has faded but was still recognizable enough to use it to remind my nephews at Christmas to be careful when using a knife, especially before Christmas dinner. While the scar faded, my love for knives didn’t. It seems I have always had a bit of a fascination with knives. As I have grown older, I pay attention to the quality of blades and the kind of steel used. It doesn’t matter if it goes in the kitchen or your pocket; I enjoy a good knife as much as anyone.  

Knives need to be sharp and ready for whatever task might come their way. When cooking in the kitchen, nothing bothers me more than pulling out a knife to find it so dull I need to saw my way through the next cut. When I was younger, I ruined more than one blade learning the finer details of using a sharpening stone. Sure, there are many new devices and tools to help you get just the right angle, but I find the practice of slowly running a blade across a stone to hone an edge both relaxing and rejuvenating. For me, it is a bit like therapy. Sitting quietly at the kitchen table with a couple of knives and just as many sharpening stones of differing textures is relaxing.  

Sharpening requires two critical components. It requires both Focus and Friction. Without focus, you will quickly find yourself making another trip to the doctor to sew up a wounded or missing appendage. You must also focus and be keenly aware of the blade’s angle and pressure as you move it across the stone. The wrong angle or amount of pressure, and you will never reach your desired results. As you can imagine, focus is essential. The right kind of friction is just as important. Working through sharpening stones of differing textures and resistance one by one will gradually leave you with just the right edge on a blade. Honing a knife is a deliberate, intentional process. By moving patiently from one stone to another, carefully selecting just the right amount of friction, you can make the blade just a bit sharper than it was before. 

I learned an important lesson early in life, “We must each be responsible for our own blade.” How sharp it is, what we do with it. It is ours and ours alone. Knives and learning have a lot in common. Honing takes a lot of work, and it is an ongoing process. This process helps us prepare for the future and the world that lies ahead. One way we do this is through reading. Former General and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis once said, “The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.” Reading sharpens our ability to see and prepare for the world ahead of us. Literacy and critical thinking are essential elements in the educational process. Sharpening these skills matters.

We must teach our youth to be constant learners, honing their experience with the experience of others. During World War II, Winston Churchill said that we each have a moment in our lifetime where we have an opportunity to do something special. I believe that my generation may be living in that moment right now. Along with responding to the challenges that we currently face, we must also prepare the next generation to respond when their moment comes. We do this through the critical skill of sharpening.

“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

–Winston Churchill

More than two hundred years ago this week, a band of unlikely American brothers stood together to protect the freedom and future of our young country. In the early 1800s, New Orleans became part of the United States and was already its most diverse city. In early January, the British turned their attention to the American west with plans to void the Louisiana Purchase and take the Mississippi and the land to its west for Brittian. The move would cripple the young country and profoundly change the history that we now remember.  The first move of their plan would be to take the Port of New Orleans.

The war of 1812 was in the process of ending, but word had not yet reached the band of 11,000 British troops that had sailed into the Gulf of Mexico with their sights set on the Port of New Orleans and the riches that awaited victory. The American capital city had already fallen the autumn before, with both the White House and the Capitol building burned in August of 1814.  In January of 1815, the best and most experienced of Brittian’s troops were leaving their boats for the American bayou. 

Standing in their way was an American general and future president. Andrew Jackson was undoubtedly an interesting and polarizing historical figure. Jackson was a Scotch-Irish lawyer and slave owner from Tennessee. As a young teenager, he was captured during the Revolutionary War. During his capture, he refused to polish a British officer’s boots and was left with a permanent scar across his hand and forehead for his discretion. He despised the British and lead a small army that stood in the way of the best the British had.

The ethnic hodgepodge that made up the small army held their ground and pushed the British back into the Gulf. The effort was helped along by both the poor planning and hubris on the part of the British. American casualties numbered around 60 while more than 2000 British soldiers fell trying to take the small port. Regardless of your opinion of Andrew Jackson, before the Civil War, among the slavery of the south, he somehow brought together backwater marksmen and militia members from Tennessee and Kentucky with Cajuns and Creoles. Both Black and White, Slaves and Freemen, fought for Jackson that day. Immigrants from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Scandinavia all came together to protect their new country from invasion. Many had only been Americans for less than a decade.  This great coming together saved our legacy as a country.

This week, teachers have struggled to find the words to describe the historical significance of what we witnessed on January 6th, 2021. For the first time since the fall of 1814, the Capitol of the United States was breached. I am not sure I have found the words just yet, but I know that history is full of stories ready to be taught. I do know that months after our capital burned, a diverse group of young soldiers found common ground and stood together in New Orleans.  

The greatest battle that day may not have been with the British. We are, at times, our worst enemy. The greatest defeat that day was with the divisive tendencies of the worst part of our nature. Sometimes, we seem to forget that we are countrymen. At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson said, “Natives of different states, acting together, for the first time, in this camp, differing in habits and in language have reaped the fruits of an honorable union.” That day and today, we were and are all Americans. That is the lesson that we need to teach our children. 

I must apologize that I have taken these once every year letters for granted.  In past years, I would usually ask for something crazy like a new gaming console or one of those new Ford Broncos that we might see some time in the next year.  I also usually end up being very satisfied with socks, underwear, and if I’m lucky, some chocolate.  However, I will not turn down the new gaming console or a Bronco if you have extra ones lying around that can fit in your sleigh with everything else that you’re carrying this year.

If I can be honest, I am much more appreciative of the simple gatherings with family and conversations with loved ones this year with everything going on.  I realize that, like socks and underwear, we might have taken these times together for granted.  Having family gatherings with pie, pound cake, and wassail was a forgone conclusion for the last forty-plus years of my life.  I can fix a pound cake and wassail and even have my grandmother’s recipe.  Unfortunately, they never taste the same as they did at her house.  I miss those days sitting in my grandfather’s orange leather living room chair opening Christmas gifts. I’m sure you remember the one I am talking about, it was orange!  Not a unique shade of Brown, it was ORANGE.  And I loved it.  If you have a way to recreate those memories, would you please permanently add that to my list.  I feel a little humbled to need to include these family gatherings on my list, but they mean more now than they ever have. 

I also realize that the fatigue of fighting Covid-19 over the past year has left all of us a bit tired and grumpy.  As you know, communities are fighting over masks, politics, and vaccines, and our community is no different.  I am sure that these are well-meaning people, and I would hope that you exercise some grace when deciding which of these fine people have met the threshold to be included on your naughty list.  I do have faith in our people, even the ones I can’t entirely agree with, and I will vouch for each of them.  If you have some special magic that might minimize our frustration with this mess, something that will make us more neighborly, I would like to add it to all of our Christmas lists.  

Finally, I would like to let you know that I have already received far more than I deserve, so if you need to use the space on your sleigh for someone else, I certainly understand. I will not take this as a slight.  But, if you feel the need to bring me socks, t-shirts, or underwear, remember that I am a bit of a stress eater, and you might want to go with a size larger this year.  

Best wishes and stay healthy,
Todd Trantham

I have never been great at waiting.  I would go to great lengths at Christmas to find my presents as early as possible.  It almost became a game for my brother and I.  Years ago, we were due to receive a new game console for Christmas.  My mother had made the mistake of leaving the receipt laying on the dining room table after a shopping trip.  We found it and knew that the console must be hidden somewhere in the house.  Since I was in Middle School, we had reached the age where we could be “trusted” to stay at home for short periods of time.  On a cold early December afternoon, while mom was gone to the grocery store, we set out to find our Christmas gift.  After about 30 minutes, we found it in the back of the basement.  In a dimly lit corner, covered by a quilt, was the new console and several much-requested games.   Since we had spent a good portion of mom’s shopping time, we decided to wait until the next trip to the store to go any further.   About a week later, mom left again and we put our well thought through plan into action.   We had everything we would need: scissors, packing tape, and a stopwatch.   We started the stopwatch and pulled the game console out.  We carefully cut the tape that packaged the console, took the console out, and hooked it up. We proceeded to play our new games for about 30 minutes.  At the thirty-minute mark, we stopped, carefully packed everything back up, and used the packing tape to make it appear just like it did before we pulled it out.  We placed it carefully under the quilt and made everything look like it did before we started.  As we were putting the packing tape back in the drawer where we found it, mom pulled up.  We have finished just in time.   

Looking back, this was a small part of a long line of examples where I struggled to wait.  Patience was never one of my gifts.  Even as I got older, I found that I needed to wait until close to Christmas to shop for gifts.  If I purchased these too early, I would never be able to wait and I would end up giving them away before we ever made it to Christmas.  One year, I gave my wife her Christmas gift a week early.  Not because she asked for it, but because I just couldn’t wait any longer. 

We all have faults, and at the top of the list for me is waiting.  I hate waiting.  I don’t even wait well when I am cooking. If the recipe says to cook in the oven for 45 minutes, somewhere around the 40th minute, I am ready to take it out and try it.  When the recipe calls for something to rest for 15 minutes after cooking, I only want to give it ten minutes.   I somehow missed the lesson in school about patience.   

A few years ago, I received my lesson in patience.  In a visit to the doctor’s office, he found an abnormality in one of my scans and wanted to wait a month and do another scan to make sure that there wasn’t a change in the results.  A change would indicate that the severity of the issue was more significant than he expected and would result in an aggressive treatment plan.  Over the course of the next month, I waited.  I waited and waited.  Fortunately, the results came back and all was fine. There was no change in my scans and I could breathe a deep sigh of relief.  Even though I realize that I am not great with the “In Between Time,” I have started to appreciate the necessity of these moments and the power that we can gain from waiting well.  Like a great cake, smoked pork or an amazing gift, some things simply can’t be rushed.  The waiting is part of the process.

We all have faults. The key to growth is taking the time to recognize the real us on the inside.  Understanding our faults helps us recognize when we might be cheating ourselves of the opportunity of the moment.    I have finally embraced this part of who I am.  I’m not proud that it led me to several moments where I opened the gift before it’s time had come, but I am far more aware of that part of me.   My patience is developing, but sometimes I still wish it would hurry up!

Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, 
practicing patience, and being persistent. –
Billy Graham