This morning on my way from the car to the office, one of my mentors revealed that she made an amazing discovery last week. She needed to provide teachers with examples of what they needed to do for the end product of the course she was teaching. But this discovery was not new to her or to me. We’d both discovered it some years past separately in our classrooms. We had simply forgotten it at some point between The Classroom and The District. And we both acknowledge it and realize it.  And yet there are still lessons out there we learned in the classroom we will rediscover at some point.

Which makes me wonder, why is this? Why do we forget the lessons of the classroom so easily?  Is it that having adults in front of us makes us look at learning differently when in reality it isn’t that different?  Is it simply a factor of time? Is it that our skills are rusty because we’re not teaching as much as we used to?  Is it any and all of the above or some factor I haven’t yet considered or a mix of factors that is situationally dependent?

Whatever the case, for those looking to make the leap to a leadership position here is my unsolicited advice:

• You will forget what it was like to be in the classroom because you aren’t in the classroom. That is an inescapable fact. Just accept it. But the earlier you come up with a way to deal with that fact, the better off you and the people you serve will be.
• Document what you know about learning and what helps others learn. Sooner rather than later because time is still your enemy, just in a different way.
• Don’t make drastic changes to your teaching just because your students are now adults and not children.
• Continue to be a student of learning and help those around you be students of learning. Help them keep their soil fertile and their minds flexible and open, just like you would for students in your classroom.
• Be ready to support, support, support. Yes teachers are highly educated and motivated adults, but they have just as much going on as the kids you taught with more responsibilities. They are more mature and have more tools to cope, but they also don’t have the time allotted to being a student of learning that your students had allotted to what you taught. Support is critical to success.

I’d love to hear the thoughts of others, regardless of position, on Twitter and in the comments section.