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…
The ironclad idea that some seem to hold that their opinion is shared by everyone has been a stark reality this year. Call it group think, call it confirmation bias, call it an echo chamber, this phenomenon has been consistent and challenging.
The school I serve is set to return to full, in-person learning in a few weeks. We announced the decision to do so two weeks ago, giving the community significant lead time to get prepared, get acclimated and, in the case of our recently prioritized faculty and staff, get vaccinated. Our announcement was more than a month in advance of the shift in approach to schooling and II knew that this decision – much like every other decision since last spring – would be met with mixed reactions.
It absolutely was.
What struck me more in this case than in prior scenarios was the assumption by many that parts of our implementation plan were simply wrong and (here’s the kick) that everyone knew it.
We determined for various reasons that delaying our return was the right move. Nope, said many. This is absolutely the wrong move. We should be back in-person, full time, yesterday. Yep, said many. We need to wait to return until conditions improve as they are doing in Colorado. The later the better. We decided that we would keep one day a week as a Distance Learning Day. Yep, said many. That’s a terrific idea to reduce quarantines and give students and faculty and staff needed adjustment time to the weeks and months ahead. Nope, said many. This is not what we signed up for and you have to go five full days a week, now. We determined we would keep certain programs in place. Nope, said many. Prioritizing those programs takes away from critical class minutes. Yep, said many. We have to have those programs to be who we are.
What followed our announcement was a pre-planned series of meetings and a questionnaire to give people an opportunity to voice their concerns and questions. In those conversations and through these surveys, I heard or read a variation of the following phrase many times: everybody feels this way.
The ironclad idea that some seem to hold that their opinion is shared by everyone has been a stark reality this year. Call it group think, call it confirmation bias, call it an echo chamber, this phenomenon has been consistent and challenging.
There are no monolithic reactions. Just as there is no monolithic approach to education in this pandemic, there is no monolithic perspective about how we are doing that very thing. Over-and-over, this perspective has been driven home for me.The significant point here is that, as a school leader, I also cannot afford to be monolithic or assume that reaction to what I decide will be universally praised or universally derided. While I have known this for years, it has been in this year that this perspective has truly come home.
Our spread this week can be almost entirely traced to a party that a group of students (and, clearly, a family) threw this past weekend. We’ve had a handful of positive cases spin out of it. This pandemic isn’t over, friends. And this kind of behavior imperils health and our ability to be in-person, but you all knew that, right?