My Journey, My Pearls
During the summer of 2018 I was asked to guest teach with a colleague of mine at the University of Missouri, Columbia. The course was educational leadership, the students were aspiring school administrators, and my colleague was a friend and mentor. I was honored to be asked and felt well prepared to go in for two days to work with young professionals whose aspirations were much like mine about 30 years ago; and interestingly in the same building on the same campus.
The evening before I was to teach my friend and instructor asked if I would share my professional trajectory with the students, where I started and how I got to where I am today.
She wanted them to think about their own professional paths as they carefully plan for their futures. While it was tempting to take the request lightly, I decided this was an important part of my presentation to the students the next day. I remember being in this same place a few decades ago, looking up to those leaders who preceded me. At the time, I wanted to hear how they did it, and so I decided some focused preparation was in order. I sat on my bed in the my hotel room the night before my presentation with a large sheet of blank paper in front of me, trying to recall my voyage since high school and how I would describe it to a group of graduate students whom I didn’t know and who didn’t know me.
Remembering a technique I had learned called String of Pearls, I decided to begin drawing circles around the page in random order, large enough to write on the inside of each. After settling on about 12 or 13 circles or “pearls”, I then connected them with lines to denote the chronology for which I was about to reminisce. I decided to start during my senior year in high school, since that was about the time I began thinking about my life’s dreams, the goal of being a teacher and what I wanted life to look like for Patty Corum.
As my mind wandered and my pencil started writing, I noticed something about what was happening. The words that came did not designate universities where I had earned degrees. I didn’t write the names of schools or school districts that had hired me, giving me opportunities to teach and lead. I didn’t write the names of the towns or regions where I learned and worked. Why not? That would have been an interesting journey, from Liberty, Missouri where I was raised, to Columbia where I studied and received my first teaching job in the nearby school where I student taught, back to Liberty, my hometown where I finished a teaching career and entered the world of administration and then across the state to St. Louis where I began serving in Fort Zumwalt as principal and then the district office, finishing my career as deputy superintendent. Intertwined was a lot of travel on I70 to UMKC for a master’s degree and UMC for a specialist and educational doctorate. Impressive, right? Interesting, don’t you think? But that’s not what I was thinking about. Not really.
What I noticed instead, was that I was writing people’s names in the circles, names of professionals and friends and family who had so much influence on me throughout the journey.
The thoughts in my head were about the relationships I had, the experiences I devoured, and how many of those people reappeared throughout my journey and played different roles, from colleagues, to bosses, to friends, to mentors and then back to colleagues. I resolved that I was on to something, and as I filled in my circles and added even more, I realized what the journey was really about!
That night in my hotel room, I spent a significant amount of time thinking about people who served as role models to me, principals who nudged me to consider the path of leadership, people who challenged me to think more broadly or differently, family and colleagues who supported me and taught me. I thought about people who never left my heart or mind, even when I moved away or when they passed away. I thought for a long time about certain men and women in my life who were so strong and smart and courageous. The ones I looked up to the most were the ones who were supportive, kind, compassionate, hard-working, moral. Those were the ones I strived to emulate.
As I wrote names I noticed I needed more circles to represent my heroes, some who came and stayed, others who I got to know in passing and never saw again, and some others who I never knew but I read things they believed or watched them on tv and they inspired me.
The exercise was fun, and it made me smile, thinking of so many human beings, some I hadn’t thought of for years, but suddenly realized they had something significant to do with my journey, my happiness and my success. It made me search more corners of my mind as I thought about one person, who led me to another person and so on.
The experience forced me to ask some important questions like why did some come and go, and others stay? What about the ones who left and reappeared? Why? What made that happen? What about those who are no longer in my circle but have had such an impact on me? Should I reach out to them and let them know? Is it time to reconnect or simply be grateful for what we had in the past?
After a while, reliving my journey, I looked at my piece of paper with all those names. I revisited the task that had been given to me by the instructor. I was to share my trajectory – what led me to where I am today. And with that, I was satisfied with what I had. It wasn’t the district or the school or the building. It wasn’t the position or the degree. It wasn’t the university or the city. It wasn’t even the date or time that was important. It was the people I encountered during the excursion. It was a tour of experiences I had with other human beings.
It was how, together we lived those days and nights of study and work. It was how we collectively navigated the world around us, how we would respond to assignments and problems and issues and celebrations.
It was the relationships built with incredible individuals who had influenced me beyond my recognition. I realized then, this was not my journey alone. It was a journey of many, and on my piece of paper I was fortunate to be the common element, but I wasn’t unaccompanied. And I realized, I had a lot of people to thank for where I am today.
The next morning, I stood in 305 Hill Hall, a room where I had played many roles including student, graduate student, doctoral candidate and now instructor. Standing between a dry erase board and a group of aspiring leaders, I held my paper sketched with my string of pearls, a notion which now had new meaning for me, with a focus on “pearls.” I asked the students to begin to draw their own journey and to focus on the people in their lives who were important and influential. So badly, I wanted them to know the magnitude of possibilities when you reach out and open up to others. I wanted these students to learn a most important lesson: the unmistakable need to take care of the people whose paths you cross, to have productive exchanges, even when you disagree, to be open-minded and see what you can learn from them, and to be kind and generous and moral in your support of others. I wanted them to understand a notion I now embrace, “Ubuntu” which can mean, “I am who I am, because you are who you are.”