It’s early, and until we have students and teachers and a community and such, it won’t be what I want it to be, but the Science Leadership Academy has a web site.

It’s strange because I didn’t build it, the folks at the Franklin Institute did. Obviously, I wrote the content and worked with the designers, but it’s not me who did it. I’m not used to letting folks do that kind of thing for me… I mean, sure, I’ve had folks I worked with, but I always fiddled with the code as well.

I think that one of the things that will be a challenge for me, letting go of the things I enjoy. I’ve loved being a teacher, a coach, a tech coordinator, and I think that will serve the school well, because I think that my energy for the things the teachers will be doing will be a good thing. I think the only hard part will be on a personal level, because I still have my passion for those things too.

And yes, there are the administrators out there who decide it’s time to leave the classroom and do something different because, at least in part, they are sick of teaching. But for me, that wasn’t it — not by a longshot. I really did see the last few years of my career as a chance to make a difference on a larger scale. At Beacon, I was able to balance new responsibilities with keeping a hand in the classroom and on the court. It will be harder at SLA to do that for all the obvious reasons, although I will be keeping an advisory, which I think is really important.

I keep searching for the way to finish up this entry, and I’m not sure I have any answers here yet. Again, I think it is a good thing to have school leaders who haven’t lost their energy and passion for the classroom. I know that I look forward to walking into classes at SLA and watching amazing teachers teach. I just think there will be days when I miss doing it myself. That’s how I feel about the website. It’s a great early site… and I didn’t have the time to do it, and the FI folks are great about tweaking it for me. I just miss playing with it myself sometimes.