I hope you are enjoying some well-deserved rest and relaxation this summer. You’ve worked hard all school year, and you deserve a break.

By one estimate from BusyTeacher.org, the average educator makes about 1,500 educational decisions every school day. That’s four-to-five decisions a minute over the course of six hours in the classroom.

That’s a lot of decisions, and it helps explain why educators and support professionals are mentally drained by the time the afternoon school buses pull away.

It’s also astounding to consider the impact of those countless decisions. Sure, some are simple, like how to progress through a reading lesson. But other decisions we make are impactful, such as how we might help a student who is struggling with anxiety or depression.

One thing is clear: Those thousands upon thousands of decisions add up over the course of a school year to make a tremendous difference in the lives of our students.

One educator who over the course of her two-decade career undoubtedly changed the lives of her students, her colleagues, and her PSEA brothers and sisters is Korri Brown.

Korri, PSEA’s vice president, passed away unexpectedly in May during the Association’s biannual House of Delegates in Philadelphia.

Her loss is devastating to the PSEA and education communities. I counted her as a close friend and confidant. I think about her every day and grieve her loss.

Korri was many things – a strong leader, a tireless advocate, a caring educator. She was also an optimist. She found the good in everyone and always looked to the future with hope. When you ran into Korri and asked her how she was, she would say, “I don’t have a complaint in the world.”

Korri was one of those educators who made thousands upon thousands of decisions every day in her classroom and her local that reverberate to this day.

She serves as a model for us all. In just 41 years, Korri made the world a better place and built a legacy that will carry forward for many years to come.

You, too, are making the world a better place – one student, one decision, one minute at a time.

So, take some time this summer to reflect on that and appreciate it. Once the school year starts anew, the hectic, exhausting, never-a-dull-moment days will sweep you away.

But maybe you’ll take a moment during the madness of it all to think about the decisions you are making and smile to yourself, knowing that what you are doing minute by minute is truly remarkable.

Thank you and have a great summer.  

Email Rich Askey:

raskey@psea.org