I was thinking this morning about my group and the weeks we’ve had together so far. You live long enough and you do enough different things and you realize how rare it is to be with a group that shares a common purpose and cares about each other. As such a group develops, it makes the hard work, the crappy but necessary work, that much easier.

I had a few classes like this in high school (thank you Jean St. Pierre) and a couple more in college and graduate school. More often, though, when I had these experiences it was a club, a so-called extracurricular activity, or a post-work activity.

Teaching, though, means that I have to find ways to foster deep and authentic intentions regarding the work. I know that the more purpose I felt — let’s make this team awesome, let’s play out as a band, let’s build this organization — the easier it was to grind through the hard parts.

And I have to make sure that the group coalesces in a way that they start to pick each other up by reminding them why we’re doing what we’re doing.

“Human beings doing something cool together” sums it up.