I’ve been in Philadelphia for three years, and the School District has had three different leaders. There is not a single cabinet level position that is held by the same person that was holding it when I start. The district has absorbed over a quarter billion dollards of cuts in that time. One of the ancillary issues around that is that is that much of what people talk about is, not surprisingly, the palace intrigue and the latest personnel and structural changes, rather than talking about the big ideas around education reform, rather than talking about how we can transform our schools to reflect the world we live in today.

This summer was no exception to that rule as people wondered who was going be where, and what positions would and wouldn’t survive the latest changes. And, in the end, it’s too easy for people to be distracted by the intrigue and lose track of what matters — what it means to teach and learn in our schools.

And even if we don’t get distracted by that, we can drift too far from the practical to the theoretical, and we can worry and wonder about a thousand things.

But the great thing is that there’s an antidote to all that talk. And that antidote happened today. The kids came back. They came back with all their energy and excitement and passion and life. And today, after the laptops went out and the schedules were filled out, we were reminded of what matters most — the kids we teach.

SLA flat out crackled with life today. Kids were happy to be back, not just to see their friends but to see their teachers, to see their school. And I spent the afternoon walking in and out of classes, watching the process of building classroom communities resume and restart as teachers and students got down to the work of the school year.

And the building just felt right. We had our kids back.

That’s the best lesson we relearn every September.