Keep Your Powder Dry

Keep your powder dry!    That was an order to live by for Civil War soldiers receiving their standard issue Model 1855 Springfield rifled musket.  Basically, it worked like this: pour the gunpowder down the barrel, tamp it down with a ramrod, add the minie ball (ammunition), and follow that with “ready, aim, and fire.”  An excellent marksman could get off 2-3 shots per minute.  Other than having great aim, the key part of the process is packing the powder.  Without the powder, the minie ball has no force behind it.  Packing the powder down was essential for the proper reaction to occur.  Of course, none of this mattered if your gun powder was wet.  Wet gun powder was essentially useless to the entire process.  Thus, commanders preached constantly on the necessity to keep your powder dry.  In the multitude of chaotic situations that these men were placed in, the reliance on dry powder was something that could not be taken for granted.  They had to put their gunpowder into special flasks designed to pour out its contents directly into the barrel.  Never was that gunpowder to get wet.  Keep your powder dry or suffer the consequences was well understood.

We are about two weeks away.  Sometimes at this time of the year, it gets a little chaotic.  We have ISTEP…online for two grades over a two week window with repeated connection losses and disconcerted kids not including the many that are today finishing make-up exams on the last day of the testing window…but I digress.  We have quarterly testing , major projects, banquets, evening programs, the handing off of student information to next year’s teachers, student misbehavior, updated IEP’s…and that’s just a start.  The bottom line is that things get a little chaotic at this time of the year.  It’s important that at this time to keep our powder dry.  Our powder would be our focus, our mission, our direction. Our aiming point is the same as it has always been = this needs to be place where kids want to be and are challenged every single day. There is nothing easy about that.  It’s not supposed to be.  Set the expectation to the kids that we are getting after it through May 31^st.  Check the tell-tale signs of kids visualizing summer break.  Now is the time to ramp up what we do best.  Now is the time to put on the finishing touches for next year.  Now is the time to uphold what your expectations have been all along.  Now is the time to keep your powder dry.  Don’t let anyone rain on what you are trying to do.  We get to do what others only hope to do or wish they could.  We get a chance to make a difference for every kid every day.  Stay dry.