With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!

Over 30 years ago, I made the decision to become a teacher. I was not just trying the life out. I was committed to it. It never occurred to me that I would do anything else. I was all but certain I would work in Catholic, secondary education my entire career.

So far, so good.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it still does.

I do not know how many years I have left in the work, but I pray it is many and that those years bring with them some of the blessings of the first 30.

These days, I begin each new year with each group of new teachers to Mullen High School with a prayer by John W. Schlatter that perfectly sums up my feelings about our shared work. I conclude this volume of Teach & Serve with his words:

I have a past that is rich in memory.  I have a present that is challenging, adventurous and fun because I am allowed to spend my days with the future.  I am a teacher … and I thank God for it every day.

John W. Schlatter

Watch for Teach & Serve Volume 9 beginning Monday, August 7, 2023

With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!

Part of what I love about the work of the last 30 years is seeing students graduate. People can argue about what are the most important rites of passage in life and I know that different cultures approach rites of passage in different ways, but graduation, for many, is one of the most significant.

As an educator, I take such joy in watching graduates walk the stage, shake a hand or two and receive their diplomas. While I will not suggest that, as a younger teacher who did not know many seniors in my early years in the profession I had such a positive reaction to giving up a few hours on an evening or on a weekend to attend commencement ceremonies, the veteran in me now just loves the day.

Loves the entire day?

Hang on.

I love the fact that graduates get to graduate and all that that represents. But the day itself? The event? As someone who plans it, who helps bring it together and, in my role as principal, who is ultimately responsible for it, I have to admit that the event of graduation can cause me some agitation. 

It is the most public gathering of the school year. It represents the mission of the institution. It is carved into posterity. 

It can be a stress.

Accounting for the 4 years I spent with the Jesuit Schools Network, Mullen High School’s graduation in May of 2022 was my 26th as an educator, my 14th as an administrator. 

Honestly, some of them – most of them – run together but more than a handful stand out. My children’s graduations are all special and I remember them clearly. Beyond those, 3 graduations are at the top of my memory… 2 because they are very recent, 1 because it was my biggest social media splash ever.

When I departed Regis Jesuit, I was an assistant principal in the Girls Division. My principal there had always magnanimously allowed me to speak at graduation. She knew I loved public speaking and I loved to wish the girls well as they walked the stage. In my final year during my final speech, I decided to take a selfie with the class and post it in real time. The Regis Jesuit Girls Division Class of 2014 afforded me the most “liked” social media moment I have ever had. I have thought to recreate this moment with other classes since, but no. This was a pretty special memory. Let us keep that one in amber.

Following the pandemic, we wanted to be sure at Mullen High School that we celebrated the Class of 2020 as best we could. Two things emerged from that planning. The first was that we invited the students to drive through campus, on sidewalks, around the buildings in which they had classes for four years, to commemorate their time at the school while teachers and coaches and moderators and staff lined the route and cheered. That was pretty amazing. This event was held in May on the day they would have graduated. In July, we brought the class together outside for an evening ceremony with masks, with social distance and with only 2 guests allowed per graduate. The faculty processed into our football stadium. The students followed and, as they got to their seats, lightning shattered the evening and we had to send everyone to their cars to avoid the storm. It was an incredible scene and we had a wonderful graduation when we got going again, but I vowed never to have graduation outside in the future.

I was overruled.

We had held a beautiful and all but flawless graduation on campus in 2021 and our president and many in our community loved it. I did, too, but I am a control freak and I did not like that we could not count on the weather when we were outside. But, following that graduation, the choice was made to hold graduation on campus in the stadium for the foreseeable future. 

In May of 2022, it snowed overnight before graduation morning. Inches. Inches of snow. It snowed the morning of the event. We were forced to move the event into the gym and, as we knew the storm was coming, we made plans and shifted graduation the night before. The morning of graduation, which was scheduled to start at 9:00am, the power went out. We had no power, no lights, no live stream, no nothing. We pivoted to an afternoon graduation, a 3:00pm graduation, in the hopes that the lights would come on. They did. We had a wonderful ceremony. Families and graduates were appreciative and joyful. I was glad it was over but I will never forget it.

Graduations are incredible events, no matter the circumstances. I have been privileged to take part in so many.

Bring on Graduation 2023 this weekend!

With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!

It seems to me that there are not enough adjectives in the English language (the language I know, but I venture to include all languages in this statement) to describe the feelings of bewilderment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Inconceivable comes close for me. What the world went through was inconceivable and what many, many endured (and continue to endure) was more than anyone should have to bear.

I spent a year writing about COVID and I do not really wish to write much more. The reality is that, no matter what I say and what words I choose, I cannot begin to adequately express the suffering and pain shared by so many.

Rather, what I present here is what some of what we did at Mullen High School in response to the pressures, counter pressures, internal pressures and external pressures brought on by the pandemic. 

We shut down to in person learning. We were not alone. At a faculty meeting prior to Spring Break 2020, I explained to the faculty and staff that we were going to take a few extra weeks off around break and “deep clean the school” and that we anticipated being back together after that short time. We informed the community. We took the weeks. We deep cleaned. We were not back after that short time. 

We went asynchronous. We really did not know what else to do. About four of us had heard of Zoom at that point and schools were moving towards this model. We moved, too. Following a series of phone conversations and FaceTime chats, we developed expectations and plans and rolled them out to our faculty and students. I was so proud of our teachers and so deeply gratified by what they did in these last weeks of the 2019-2020 school year at Mullen (my second year there). They were heroes. Remember when society said that teachers were heroes? That was a wonderful 15 minutes…

We went online and synchronous. As the 2020-2021 school year dawned, numbers were looking good in Colorado and we felt we could open in person. Then, in very, very late July, those numbers tanked. More meetings, these facilitated by Zoom, more conversations, more plans. We created an online model of instruction that we hoped we would not use for more than a few weeks. It was more than a few weeks.

We dealt with anger – from all sides. Mullen is a private, Catholic school. Our families work very hard to pay tuition to entrust their children to us. Many understood we could not be together due to the legal restrictions placed upon us. Many did not. We were faced with petitions and rage. We confronted anger and resentment. I dealt with personal attacks and vitriol. Mullen was not unique. These challenges continued when we moved to a hybrid model and, finally, back to school as a full community, albeit masked. We could not please everyone. We had vocal detractors. We were not alone and I understood the frustration. I shared it. I lost sleep, I lost confidence, I lost some of the authority and credibility I had gained. 

We employed way too many different approaches. I considered going back through my files and emails to catalog the many, many things we did to try to keep school going. As the landscape shifted, we shifted in response. We had hybrid schedules and one-way hallways and masks and quarantines and teachers cleaning desktops and students being sent home and vaccination clinics and more. My heart beats a bit too quickly for my tastes when I put myself mentally back in these spaces. I choose not to do so often.

We survived. We are still here. Mullen High School is still here. It is bigger than any administrator, teacher, student, parent, family or, it turns out, the pandemic. Mullen still stands, perhaps changed, but still here after 90 years. And I am still so very, very proud to serve the school.

Pandemic, I learned a ton from you and I do not mean about infectious diseases and contact tracing, I learned about commitment and teamwork and fortitude. I learned about desire and passion. I learned about rationality and irrationality.