A community is defined as a group of people who share something in common,such as a location, interests, values, culture, or goals-and who interact with and support one another.

For the last four years, our school community has come together in the month of March to share a story a day. Every day a different staff member shares a slice of life, an email is shared, and people read and comment- virtually and in real life. It’s been a fun way to get to know each other better. It has strengthened the sense of belonging in our school community.

I’ve also been reflecting on how this staff challenge has strengthened our writing community. This month has felt busier than in the past. Perhaps it’s writing daily myself, helping to keep the staff challenge going, and keeping up with my kids and their crazy schedules. I often feel that I’m not giving any of these things enough. In the SOL challenge, I feel like I can be commenting more or commenting with more thoughtful responses. In the school challenge, I’ve been so busy with all of the other school things that I feel like I don’t have time to observe the impact of what is going on.

I almost didn’t write today. I thought maybe I had hit my wall. But then bits of conversations with colleagues from across the day came back to me.

I started the day by thanking Lauren for sharing her writing with me early. She was scheduled to go live on our school blog on Thursday, but she had sent her post Monday night. “It was really beautiful,” I told her and she began telling me about how the idea had just had just come to her as soon as she signed up to write. I told her that her piece felt like the beginning of something bigger. “Maybe it’s a novel,” I said.

Later, Kate stopped by. Her post had gone live that day. Within her piece, she wrote about how she had trouble deciding on an idea and she named some of her possibilities. One included the process of letting her hair go gray. “That’s a whole chapter book,” she exclaimed as she told me about the things she has learned and experienced along the way.

Then, finally, as I was walking back to my office at the end of the day, Alexa stopped me to let me know she had started a Substack. “I forgot how much I love writing,” she shared. Just yesterday, I had encouraged her to submit a second slice for our school challenge. I knew she had another idea brewing.

These three separate moments, largely unprompted, told me that our community is growing in other ways. A spark of creativity and connection has been made. People have been impacted because they wrote and that has inspired them to write more-and talk about their writing with others. Our community of writers is growing. I’m hopeful it continues growing into April and beyond!

Where In The World Am I Writing From: My phone…in bed. It was a long day and like I said, I didn’t think I was going to write today.