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…
… while things in my particular contexts may have evened out, we are only in the falling action of this pandemic, is the mindset I need to maintain for the weeks and months to come.
With the dawning of the new calendar year, the promise (for some of our faculty, staff and community, the realized promise) of the vaccine and the shifting in regulations surrounding quarantines and isolations, the school I serve has been able to return to campus at half capacity. In our hybrid mode, with half our students at home and half in-person, we are settling into a pattern that seems stable. It feels (“feels” being a keyword) that the center will hold, that this is sustainable, that we have found as safe space in the midst of this tumultuous year.
And yet, around the corner, or at the next meeting, or in the next email voicing an legitimate and unconsidered question looms the reality that, as a principal and as a leader, I have to hold on to for the good for our school: this thing is not over.
Over the course of the last two weeks of school, I have commented to my colleagues that things feel steady and calm. Our students are happy, our teachers are doing incredible work, our static has dropped. As we have moved from crisis to crisis since last spring with barely a moment to catch our breath, these days where school is moving forward relatively predictably can lull us into a sense of security.
I believe that might be a false sense. I have to guard against getting too comfortable at this point. Though I have an intense desire to look to the 2021-2022 school year in the belief (perhaps a vain one) that it will be “normal,” I only need to look at the science and the statistics and the struggles around our oasis to know that giving in to this desire would be a mistake.
Keeping my eyes on the reality that I have to maintain my posture for the foreseeable future, knowing that there are challenges still to come, acknowledging that, while things in my particular contexts may have evened out, we are only in the falling action of this pandemic, is the mindset I need to maintain for the weeks and months to come.
That’s okay.
We have miles to go before we sleep. But we have come miles since we awoke last spring.
Some members of the community have gone into quarantine as they have been in contact with people who have tested positive, but we have had (as of this particular moment!) no cases on campus in the new year.