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…
If I cannot get better, our teachers and staff cannot function at the level our students need. And that is an outcome I simply cannot have. We cannot have. None of us who are in school leadership can have it.
I have mentioned in past incarnations of this blog and musings in posts prior to this that a friend of mine who is a principal once told me that he had a sign on his door or his wall that said “If Your Issue Is Not about Students, Don’t Bring It Here.”
I have been ever impressed by that sentiment. I have been ever impressed by the idea that the principal’s office should be a place where concerns are paramount, where they have full-throated support, where they are the work of those gathered there. While I’ve never been gutsy enough to post that kind of motto, I have many times tried to ground myself in its philosophical underpinning.
As we navigate this pandemic, this outlook has renewed meaning for me – our students need us in ways we never could have anticipated before March of 2020, but there is an unspoken understanding that must be added, an obvious implication that must be spelled out: In order to identify what our students need in this environment – this deeply challenging landscape – and in order to serve them as they need to be serve, we have to serve our staffs. We must have those working most closely with students be in a space and a shape and a spirit to connect and diagnose and serve. We need our teachers, counselors and staff to be engaged, aware and energized.
That is a very, very tall order right now.
We are asking so much of them, too damn much if truth be told. They are rebuilding content blocks, redesigning curriculum, altering assessments and adapting everything. They are taking temperatures, opening Zoom Rooms, monitoring student health. They are doing more than they have ever been asked to do before. And, shockingly, they are receiving less praise from society than they deserve.
And it’s the role of the administration to serve them so they can serve the students.
I am doing a subpar job of this. I know that I am. I have to get better at this, and fast.
If I cannot get better, our teachers and staff cannot function at the level our students need. And that is an outcome I simply cannot have. We cannot have. None of us who are in school leadership can have it.
We are approaching Thanksgiving Week and, for us, it’s a week off.
Thank God.
Part of my mental work over the week will be, first, to be grateful for the dedication of the faculty and staff of my school. Second, it will be to find ways to lessen their load.
I must better serve them so they can better serve.
That, in my opinion, is the most critical work of 2020-2021.
We determined that this week and the week after Thanksgiving Break will be Distance Learning Weeks. Then we have more decisions to make. However, the city our school moved its COVID Dial to RED… and that’s a bad sign. Being remote didn’t stop our cases, however. We had 3 more members of our community test positive this week. I don’t want to imagine how many more it might have been were we in person.