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…
… that has become, for me, the key to trying to understand the dynamics currenlty at play and the central question is this: when we disagree, do we even care about getting to a common frame of reference?
I have been thinking this week about discussions and dialogue. Over the course of the past months, I have been priviledged to engage in many conversations – on the phone, over Zoom, in person, via email – with many different people, colleagues, parents and students. The subject of those discussions has been variations on the theme of how to “do school” in the midst of this pandemic.
While the particulars of these chats vary from mask wearing to how our school is doing its hybrid model to passing period length to cleaning protocols and beyond, the heart of the matter has been education in the time of COVID-19. I have thought about or talked about little else professionally for months.
The differences of opinions expressed in these conversations have sometimes been significant. Strongly held beliefs tend to inspire strongly worded emails, raised voices in conversation and firmly stated positions. The outcomes of these conversations have ranged from productive to problematic.
As the more challenging of these conversations have concluded (conclusions for me, by-the-way, are rarely actually at the end of said conversations; I tend to ruminate on these chats – electronic or otherwise – for longer than is strictly necessary or healthy) I have been left wondering why they went sidewise or didn’t resolve in anything resembling accord.
The problem that I face (and I am not alone) in many of these chats is that I am convinced by virute of my experience in education, my reading on the pandemic and my attentiveness to how it is affecting this vocation that I love, that my opinion on how our school should proceed in addressing the various challenges we face is founded and informed. I believe it is more founded and informed than that of those who have not spent 3 decades in this work and whose responsibilities are not to over 800 students and over 150 staff members.
In my heart of hearts, I truly feel this way and not because I don’t respect and value those with whom I chat or because I think they have nothing to offer in terms of conversation and information. Frankly, I listen and think and remonstrate with myself over every difference of opinion I face. But, at the end of the day, I do hope that my experience and work in this vocation mean something.
This week, a petition was started with the aim to accelerate our school to adopting full capacity, in-person learning. Immediately. It acknowledges the hard work we are doing and speaks of the respect in which the community holds our leadership but proceeds from there to essentially question the majority of decisions that self-same leadership has made. Reading it one might believe that the writers and signers of this petition who have every right to express themselves and every right to disagree with our direction are operating from an entirely different frame of reference than we.
And that has become, for me, the key to trying to understand the dynamics currenlty at play and the central question is this: when we disagree, do we even care about getting to a common frame of reference? More pointedly: do I care?
I believe I do. I believe I want to proceed from a common frame of reference. However, I also believe that those of us who are on the inside looking out of what it takes to “do school” in this challenging time have more reference material on which to build that frame. This does not mean that other opinions should not be expressed and heard. It may well mean that all opinions are not equal.
We had no new cases this week… We head into our hybrid model of schooling next week, bringing half of our student body together every-other-day. I cannot wait.