A late welcome to the new school year!

I have been wondering for a couple of months what I was going to write about for my first blog entry of this new school year. I considered LEAD 2021, our new district strategy, the recently published AP test scores from TEA, which showed how strong our program is vs. peer districts, or our new CTMS program, "Exito Hispano en CTMS", which focuses on integrating more minority parents into our school. I was also wondering if anyone was actually planning to read my blog this year! Then I read the news that one of the great inventors of our lifetime, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, passed away at a young age of 56. I remember being in college in Puerto Rico when my roommate Miguel Morales brought a tiny Apple Macintosh computer to our apartment. What a cool machine that was! Miguel loved to make fun of the old PCs, the one with the DOS commands, while he moved the Macintosh mouse from side to side on the monitor, clicking the different options on his screen Windows (well, we know who copied that idea and made millions of dollars after that!).

In my opinion, the greatest accomplishment of Mr. Jobs was not all the inventions at Apple, or his great vision for animated films implemented at Pixar. It was the fact that he lived one of the greatest comeback stories of our lifetime. Mr. Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985 and was rehired in 1996, to not only change the company, but also our lives. Who does not have an iPod, iPhone or iPad?  And what about iTunes?

As we start the new school year, it is important to remind our kids that things are not always going to go their way. Life has many challenges, and it is important to learn from all experiences and move forward. How we deal with adversity defines who we are. We should always tell our kids there is always a solution to any problem. Things are not always easy, but with a positive attitude, we can find a way. Mr. Jobs made a great speech during the 2005 Stanford University graduation ceremony, and I am planning to share it with my kids later today. In that speech, Mr. Jobs talked about his life story, and about doing what he loved. If you want to watch the speech, here is the link.