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…
Last spring, we heard a lot about teachers being heroes but we’ve lost that narrative thread of late. That’s okay. Most educators did not choose their vocations to be lionized. However, we should take a moment to note the ingenuity of educators.
New approaches to old tasks have exploded during these last 12 months and I am certain I have not taken enough time to appreciate them. Writ large, these have resulted in advancements that grab headlines – the vaccine I am lucky enough to have received being one of those. This is a good thing. Achievements and innovations such as this should be celebrated. Last spring, we heard a lot about teachers being heroes but we’ve lost that narrative thread of late. That’s okay. Most educators did not choose their vocations to be lionized. However, we should take a moment to note the ingenuity of educators. It has been astounding.
Since the spring, we have seen teachers rebuild their methodologies over-and-over again, adapting what they do to the world that changed around them. They have instructed students entirely asynchronously, they have instructed them in hybrid models, they have instructed them in smaller groups, socially distanced settings, in new ways. Counselors have had to create new ways to connect, coaches new ways to coach. They have continued their work while reinventing it at the same time. We should never lose sight of this fact and we should celebrate them. Educational personnel all over the world shifted their ways of proceeding in moments and shifted them again as the weeks of this pandemic turned to months. I do not ever want to lose perspective on what this has meant.
Students, too, have adapted their learning, their interactions and their perspectives. As we have moved through these last two academic years, perhaps we have not focused enough on what they have been asked to do. (We have also not talked enough about the costs to them in this process, and those costs must be addressed.) Students have shown themselves to be what we know they are: adaptive and responsive and ready to take on challenges presented to them.
Closer to home, I have witnessed our athletic programs, our coaches and their staffs, contort their approaches and programs, serving the needs of their student athletes in every new context no matter the time it takes or the ways they’ve had to rebuild. I have watched our club moderators move competitions entirely online and seen them wildly succeed in this new manner.
Last evening, our school conducted its annual auction. As a private, Catholic school, the tradition of an annual auction is baked into our DNA like yeast in bread. Last year’s auction was one of the last public events I attended before the pandemic significantly shuttered social life. This year, there was no way to gather the hundreds of people who would normally attend this event so our Advancement Department revised their plans, moved the celebration online and carried on.
Ash Wednesday is celebrated today and our Pastoral Department will, for the fourth time this year, conduct Mass via Zoom and shuttle Holy Communion and, today, facilitate distribution of ashes to over 450 people. We will do the same tomorrow for the other half of our hybrid-ly structured school. This has been a monumental and soul-warming achievement.
We have spent much time pointing to what has been missing these months – and there has been so much missing. We have spent much time justifiably mourning all that has been lost and those that have been lost. We have spent much time longing for the end of this period in our collective lives and that end is coming.
Today I wanted to spend some time celebrating the ingenuity of educators. They richly deserve this reflection and much praise. Their ingenuity has been astonishing.
We were all but quarantine free last week… the wood is being knocked on as I type. We did have a positive case reported, but the individual was already in quarantine so there were no contacts at school with which we needed to contend.