This is our finest hour

    Do you remember the scene in the movie Apollo 13 when guy said "It would be the worst disaster NASA's ever experienced." and the Ed Harris character said, "With all due respect sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour."?

       After all of the problems that had taken place over the past few days, he believed in his team at NASA and he believed that the astronauts would return safely to earth.  He knew that it would be the hearts and minds of the dedicated professionals at NASA that would ensure this outcome.

       Have you ever looked at your school or school district and said "This is our time to shine.", "We could be the best school district in the country.", "This is our finest hour."?

       Dedicated professional educators working together can do amazing things in the most difficult of situations.  We live in a world with answers to the most difficult educational questions.  Where we don't have clear answers, we have years of experience and mountains of desire to help all of our students to succeed within our staffs.  The daily decisions and the year-long goals of every teacher have the potential to achieve world-class results with every student body in every school in our country.

       Teachers live in a world that sometimes makes it easy to see the obstacles and hard to triumphs.  In the same way that students who are motivated to do well can overcome limitations in ability; so too can schools and school systems achieve great things when they believe that great things can happen.

       Of course it takes hard work and lots of collaboration.  Nothing in life worth doing comes easy.  But it can certainly happen.  Do you believe it?

       Is this your finest hour?