Dear HUUSD Staff-
I write to you today as we all ready ourselves for our students to arrive next week during a pandemic, in a state of emergency. What a summer it has been! (what summer?) My message as we start this year is absolutely without a doubt one of gratitude, admiration and highest praise for all the hard work, lack of sleep, cognitive stretching, and downright resilience and grit our HUUSD staff and administrators have brought to this crisis. Your concern for others and degree of selflessness shines through as we tackle reopening our schools. Few realize how much EVERYTHING needs to change to pull this off. I appreciate you all more than you can know.
The year ahead will continue to bring many challenges and uncertainty. How we continue to navigate this crisis, COVID, because it is unpredictable and uncontrollable, depends, in large part, on how resilient we are. Resilience is the ability to recover from difficult experiences and setbacks, to adapt, move forward and sometimes even experience growth. If I believe anything it is that the quality of our relationships will see us through. No one has to “go it alone”.
We must strive for and support each other in maintaining our optimism with a focus on what is realistic, moral compass, cognitive and emotional flexibility, and social connectedness. Our mindset, as we travel this year’s journey together, must carefully accept what we can’t change about this situation and then ask ourselves what we can actually change. We all have those days when we feel the situation before us is bleak. It is especially important at these times that we don’t dwell on negative information and instead look for opportunities to find the positive within the negative.
Our inservice gathering and school reopening will not resemble past years. We aren’t allowed to gather in groups to inform, celebrate, acknowledge, and send each other off. I decided to include my address from last year HERE. You may remember my address focused on resilience and grit ending with a beautiful rendition of “The Weight.” I encourage you to watch it again or for the first time if you are new to the district, since we cannot be in person. The messages are even more relevant and needed as we embark on this new school year.
Welcome back! Below I have shared a few items I have come across that resonate with me.
With warm regards,
Brigid