The Journal presents my weekly reflections on being a private, Catholic school principal during what promises to be a year filled with energy, excitement, challenges and possibilities…
I don’t ever want to come to terms with or to normalize in my mind is that it is okay to ignore being civil.
There have been far too many days during the course of serving a school during a pandemic when I have been left speechless. As a rule, I am typically not left speechless. Speaking on my feet, as it were, is a quality I possess and normally employ readily. While I am not always sure I employ that quality well, I rarely find myself at a loss for words.
But over the last months, I have – far more often than I would like – found myself staring blankly at a colleague or at an email or at the phone in wonderment about what I day next, what I write next, what I do next.
This has been an uncomfortable and recurring state.
I think this is due to the fact that, in light of all people are facing right now with the pandemic (which shows few signs of abating), with the election, with tensions in our country, with our lives, our homes and our jobs, we have significantly lowered the unspoken rules of discourse.
There is no pun intended there and this is not some stunning revelation by any means. Observers careful and careless alike have noted for years that civil discourse is not what it once was and, in fact, it is not particularly civil anymore. In social media, in politics, in the news, in viral videos, civil discourse has taken a beating. For years.
I know this. I’ve watched the degradation of it from a relatively safe distance.
For me, that distance has disappeared this year.
As the leadership at my school has made determinations about how we will best serve our students, faculty and staff and community this year, we have faced significant criticism and critique. We have received literally hundreds of phone calls and emails each time we’ve announced a shift or a new direction in our approach.
We have been challenged. This is to be expected as our community loves our school and feels passionately about it.
We have been doubted. This is harder to take as the work we do to serve our school is constant and committed and dedicated.
We have been insulted. Personally. I didn’t expect this.
When I went to “principal school” (which is what I consider my almost 3 decades of serving students in Catholic high schools), I knew that not everything I was going to do would please everyone. I knew that tough decisions were part of the vocation. I knew that I would have to live in a space that is difficult for me – a space where not everyone will be happy.
Early in my career as an administrator, I was instrumental in asking a student to leave the school I was serving. This was, in my opinion, the right decision but I will never forget the parent of this student saying “we will take our child somewhere that the administration cares about its students. That’s not here.” Those words stung. They still do. Though, compared to this year during which I have personally been called a fool, a coward and a liar, those words seem a gentle embrace.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with the incredibly hard choices we in school leadership are making this year. I don’t expect teachers to agree, staff to agree, students to agree, parents to agree. That is not the gig. I have come to terms with the fact that I cannot make everyone happy. I even understand that, if everyone is happy, I am likely not doing the job well. I get it.
What I don’t ever want to come to terms with or to normalize in my mind is that it is okay to ignore being civil. There have been too many times I’ve been tempted to fire off an angry email to a parent, to dress down a colleague, to slam down the phone (or, more likely, to viciously press “END” on my cell). I don’t want to ever let myself do that.
That I didn’t see the dissolution of civil discourse directly affecting my work is unfortunate. That it is directly affecting my work is a shame. How I deal with this defines who I am.
We had a real uptick in our cases this week with seven new positive cases in our student body. The amount of quaratines for teachers and students forced us to go back into distance learning. This is a stunning disappointment. All of the cases are from contacts that did not occur at school, so that is a good thing. However, at the end of the day, that fact didn’t help us keep our doors physically open this week.