The Journal presents my weekly reflections on being a private, Catholic school principal during what promised to be a year filled with energy, excitement, challenges and possibilities…
Primarily, educators like to know what’s coming at them so they can be ready.
Enter the 2020-2021 school year.
In my almost 30 year experience of working in high schools, I have noted that most of my colleagues like being in control. As high school educators, they are tasked with being in control – in control of their classrooms, of their curriculum, of their gradebooks – and the majority of the people with whom I have worked are comfortable in those expectations.
The overlap of the Venn Diagram of groups of my colleagues who like to be in control with those who are planners is pretty darn significant. Educators tend to be planners who break large tasks into smaller ones, who know how to block their units, who have their planning books and calendars and lists color coded.
Are there exceptions to this observation? Of course. In my experience, however, there are not that many.
Primarily educators like to know what’s coming at them so they can be ready.
Enter the 2020-2021 school year.
There is so much about this school year that is unknown and unknowable. Over the course of the spring and summer, those of us who have been engaged in preparing for this year have spent hours on permutations of plans and daily schedules and calendars that we know are not ever really going to be used. We have engaged committees in far flung conversations about what school could look like this year, what it should look like and, finally, what we think it will look like. We have put hours into ideas that are only ethereal possibilities.
There is so much that is unknown.
For our part at the school I serve, we have 3 separate “phases” of education this year: Full Capacity, Hybrid and Distance Learning. In this, we are not unlike the majority of schools and districts around the country and, honestly, the world. We have approximately 15 different bell schedules to accompany those phases. We have 3 distinct calendars. Though we are trying and will continue to try to make all of this clear to our community and to our staff, how can anyone keep track of all of this?
How can a classroom teacher, preparing her 4 classes for the first days and weeks of school be held accountable to know every nuance of the unknown?
As educators, we are planners and we like control. This school year presents challenges that are significant which could render our plans moot in a moment.
I am reminded of a quote from my favorite book, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany: “I trust that God will help me because what I am supposed to do looks very hard.”
God, help all of us through the unknown of this year.
By the way, no positive diagnoses this week… but we encountered more than a few challenges on the COVID front in terms of when members of the community should stay home if they have been exposed to someone who has been exposed to someone who has tested positive. More unknowns…