On the Road, and Why It's Worth It

My flight and hotel reservation reminders arrived in my inbox today, which is how I know the next stretch is real.

Over the next week and a half, I'll be on Cape Cod meeting with districts, in Ohio for the ICAA Conference, and in Durango for the Colorado BOCES Association's quarterly conference. Three very different places. The same conversation in all of them: what it takes to give the people who serve our students a workload they can actually carry.

I wanted to write this one a little differently, focusing less about a problem in special education, and more about what this season of building has been like.

Cape Cod. A few days of sitting across the table from district leaders, which is still my favorite part of this work. I learn more in one hour with a director who's honest about her staffing than in a week of reading reports.

Ohio, for the ICAA Conference. Ohio has taught me a lot this year. Educational service centers carry an enormous share of the work there, and the people inside them think about their whole region, not one district at a time. I'm grateful for the invitation and excited to learn from the room of education leaders.

Durango, for the Colorado BOCES Association. I'll have a few minutes in front of the BOCES directors to share what we're learning about provider workload. BOCES leaders are some of the most creative problem solvers I've met. They stretch scarce specialists across huge distances, and they do it proactively and strategically on a daily basis.

Building a business is not the highlight reel.

It's early mornings and late nights, usually in the same day. It's a to-do list that grows faster than you can cross things off. It's something breaking the night before a demo, and fixing it at a kitchen table at an hour I won't print here. It's making every decision yourself, then living with it.

It's also humbling. As a director, I knew my job. Now I'm learning new ones every week: contracts, security, pricing, the patience it takes to wait for a district's budget cycle to come around. I get plenty of it wrong the first time. I'm learning to ask for help sooner, and to say no to good ideas so the great ones get my full attention.

The people.

The director who takes my call on a Friday afternoon and tells me exactly what isn't working, both in the app and in her department. The provider who says, "Nobody has ever asked me about the parts of my week that aren't on the schedule," and then talks for twenty minutes. The superintendent who used to sit in my old chair and gets it in the first five minutes. The readers of this newsletter who hit reply, sometimes with one line, sometimes with a story that stays with me for days.

Every one of those conversations changes how I think. I'm a different leader than I was as a director. More patient, I hope. Better at listening before answering. Far more convinced that the people closest to students already know what needs to change, and mostly need someone to make their work visible.

That's the growth I didn't expect when I started. I'm grateful for it, and I know there's a lot more ahead.

If you're on the Cape, at ICAA, or in Durango in the next couple of weeks, I'd love to grab a coffee and hear what's on your plate this fall.

And if you're not, I’d still love to hear from you! To learn your experiences and what's keeping you going this year. I'll bring your answers with me on the road.

Thank you for reading, for replying, and for the work you do for students every day.

-Eric