Editor's Note

January 2005

Laugh if you will, but I love a good New Year's resolution. So what if the same one gets repeated year after year and turns stale by March? There's something heartening in that brief and shining moment when, as ritual, we pause to ponder what a new beginning could mean. More mindfulness? A more giving soul? A cleaner house? Oh, the joy! 

I thought a lot about fresh possibilities during the holidays and the weeks before as we prepared this issue of NEA Today. Mostly it was because of you. In our cover story, "Closing the Gap," educators show what happens when they embrace the idea that every child can succeed. The wonderfully creative approaches some of you have dreamed up to shrink the chasm between kids who are making it and those who are not have everything to do with an exploring spirit—one that nudges you to turn down different paths and think "new way," "new attitude."

Lucky for you, inspiration abounds—in the form of enthusiastic, never-say-can't colleagues like Lucille Clay, the cafeteria pro whose busy world we captured in "Say Lunch?". Like her, many of you see each day as another opportunity to make something good happen. 

I think of Sally Sharp, a New Jersey member who telephoned me recently just to gush about the day-to-day victories at a place where victories once weren't expected. "I drive every day to a school that's surrounded by drug addicts and poverty and things you wouldn't believe," she told me. "But when I get inside, it's like a little oasis. What goes on is awesome." Her colleagues at Creative Arts High School in Camden, she said, get goose bumps just thinking of ways to nurture the talents of their students. And ah, the return. 

So, hats off to you this New Year. Keep stepping, exploring, resolving. And don't worry that in 2005 you still may not phone your mother-in-law every week, or put an end to nighttime munching and drop 20 pounds, or read the complete works of, well…anybody. Put it on the list anyway. It's about hope—and that, as you know best, has legs.

Editor-in-Chief Marilyn Milloy