iCommit

Like me, I’m sure many of you were shocked yesterday to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and idea man of the century. (I linked to the Apple homepage so you could see the memorial they posted on their website.)

There’s been a flurry of news bits and tweets and wall posts around his death, but all of them have a similar theme and I think that theme is as good as any to honor the man who changed our digitial landscape: Commit fully to your passions.

My family and I watched many different clips last night of people commenting on how committed he was. How he would come up with an idea, and regardless of what others thought, implement it with tenacity and courage, believing wholeheartedly in its success.

I wondered about how that looks in education, how educators commit themselves to the children they are responsible for. Perhaps now is a good time to take another look at our commitments, an opportunity to prioritize what is important...an opportunity to re-commit ourselves to doing what is best for kids.

Education, nationally, is in a constant state of turmoil and I know that many of you, like me, are overwhelmed with new standards, new pushes for teacher evaluations, value added growth models, etc. It reminds me of Eckhart Tolle’s book THE POWER OF NOW, and what he says about how we can really only control what is in our zones, in our reach, and in our immediate moments. There may be other minutiae that we have to deal with but we can’t control the future, only the present.

We can shape the future, though. Steve Jobs did with his commitment to his passions, his ideas, and the future he imagined for us all.

What are your passions? What can you commit or re-commit to today? In honor of Steve Jobs, I’d like to challenge each of you who read this blog to commit to something you are passionate about in education and share it here. Then follow through with your commitment.

I’ll start with my commitment for today:

I commit to working in the NOW zone. I want to do a better job of managing those things I can control in the moment and start pushing the “What Ifs” off of my plate. With all of the work I do with teachers around many different elements, the “What Ifs” sometimes bog me down and mask the scope of the real work to be done right now to benefit teachers and students. That’s what I’m committing to right now.

iCommit. What about u?

Godspeed to Steve Jobs. His family, both personal and professional, remain in my thoughts...