Dear Learning Coaches,
We are celebrating Appreciation Day during our first annual Spirit Week—taking a moment to recognize the hard work and investment you’re all making in this unique educational solution for kids. After all, we’re heading into the coldest (if not darkest) days of the year, the real mid-year hump, when the fun of starting a new year and the promise of mid-winter holidays are now spent. You and your students may be looking across a pretty wide chasm until new warmth and the change of seasons puts a spring in your step. What better time to take a moment to look around!
Since your students are probably feeling the same way (“Can’t we move to Australia?”), this is exactly the moment when what you’re doing with them and for them is most important. No way to hide now—and no reason to hide: The reasons why you started this mad adventure in the first place can stand on their own, clear in the cold light of mid-winter.
You do this because you need to. You’ve made a decision to make a serious difference in the life and learning of a child—an individual difference to this child, now. This difference is grounded in the belief that the work you can get that young mind to do today will lead that child to new adventures neither he nor you can currently imagine—but wish for, nonetheless. (Raise your hand if you think my parents knew I would be Chief Learning Officer of an on-line education company one day. Raise your hand if you think they’re OK with it today. Yep, I thought so.)
Unfortunately, we can’t take your trip for you. There is no “royal road” to learning, to paraphrase Euclid’s response about geometry to the impatient King Ptolemy. However, as one K12 student told her Learning Coach years ago, there is a unique road for each child to learning—and she finally realized she had to get to work to pave it herself!
So take this day to remember why you set out on this long road, knowing there would be bare, cold patches along the way, and take heart—many have gone before you, and many are on the road with you. All of us are working to make this road better for your children and you. We deeply appreciate the miles you’ve come, and the miles you have to go!
Sincerely,
Bror V. H. Saxberg, M.D., Ph.D.
Chief Learning Officer
K12 Inc.
Get full details about Spirit Week Activities here.
