Let’s Keep Working Back to our Normal

When so much of our normal world was “shut down” and taken away, all of us worked to adjust to a new way of getting things done. A big part of that for me was finding a way to get as much information out to staff and our community as quickly and efficiently as I could. We accomplished this by using technology to reach out to people for information sharing and then questions and answers to help everyone maintain their equilibrium and satisfy that innate human need to understand what is happening to and around us. 

It worked really well while so much was changing so quickly and so much needed to be shared to keep everyone informed. Now, hopefully things are beginning to slow down and the need to continually communicate is less urgent than the need to restore, refresh and reconnect relationships with people. As hard as we all worked to stay informed, something got lost in the translation. When we need to efficiently exchange information, we can do that, but the two-way exchange and conversational connections get lost. While technology is great for some things, it is NOT the way to build deep and sustainable relationships. I am grateful I was here for 14 months before the world went upside down to meet and know people and yet there is so much more to do. Now is the time to get back to the people part of the equation. So, I will be ceasing my monthly town hall meetings with the community to begin again the Coffee and Conversations and Appetizer and Alliances sessions I hosted before the pandemic. My hope is that people will come out to meet with me in person, have some quality conversation and build connections to support our shared commitment to giving the best education and environment to our students.

I will be posting the days, times, and locations on our website. Please check out our new website if you haven’t already at mvs.k12.mi.us. We have learned so much about how to get things done in new and diverse ways. Our website is a phenomenal accomplishment we will continue to expand and improve as part of our extension of Covid silver linings. Many things we should maintain, such as our cool website, and some things we should work to restore. I think personal connections are one of those things. I hope to see you IN PERSON sometime soon at Coffee and Conversation or Appetizers and Alliances. Keep in touch, we have a lot of great things to talk about.

Dr. B