I know the President's Blog should be used for my own personal rantings (which I admit, will be a challenge to keep up with!), but I found past-president Dick Iannuzzi's statement on leadership and the challenge of pursuing one's vision printed in April's NYSUT United inspiring, so I'm going to share my reactions and the link here this week.
Dick's work has been a testament to the challenges that come with leading soldiers through a mine field in which there are few safe places to step. From the sidelines, it's probably easy to point to the cindery of the brave and identify the places they should not have tread. Yet without fully knowing the threats of standing still, or the hope that lies beyond that field, we're sometimes left to take stock only in where the soldier should not have put his foot down. But at some point, he has to put his foot down.
Dick's piece on leadership ends with with the words of Theodore Roosevelt, which I'm sharing here, but I invite you to read the entire piece (linked below). Mr. Iannuzzi was a great leader during some of the hardest times NYSUT has faced in decades, and a father figure to many teachers and leaders in the union movement.
"It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.