Teach Boldly

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!

I was blessed to spend 10 years at Regis Jesuit High School Girls Division as teacher, Dean of Students and Assistant Principal for Faculty and Curriculum. While my administrative roles were my primary roles during those years, I taught at least one class each semester when I was serving the Girls Division which was very important to me.

My time at the Girls Division followed nine years teaching in the Boys Division: nine years as a teacher which came after four years as a student. I was very familiar with all boys education when I made the move to the Girls Division, far less familiar with all girls education since I had never taught all girls. In my first year in the Girls Division, it had been nine years since I had taught any girls. 

I was not alone. As I recall that first staff, less than a handful of our faculty had taught in an all girls environment. Some of them had, and some had gone to all girls high schools, but our collective experience was limited. We spent a lot of professional development time learning about and discussing all girls education and the development of young women, academic, social and spiritual. We talked about what this would be like, how we would conduct ourselves, what it meant to be engaging an all girls school. 

These were heady and exciting conversations.

They had little to do with what I would find in reality.

What I found was that young people desire the same things overall: to be heard, to be treated with respect, to be challenged, to be loved. It was true, I think, that young women could express their need and desire for these things more readily than young men, but I realized that I did not need to modulate much of who I was as an educator (and a fairly experienced one at that point) with the young women.

But one experience stands out that did illustrate a difference: my standard practice on the first day of school to this day is to put students in some kind of seating chart, usually an alphabetically arranged one. Once the class has settled I ask if anyone from the back needs to move to the front for any reason. This pursuit is made easier now as our learning management systems note students with hearing or sight issues and I can address these concerns as I make my seating chart but, for years, I would ask if anyone needed to move. I cannot remember many boys that said they needed to do so but, if they did, plenty of boys in the front rows would volunteer to relocate further back. 

I do remember this exercise was quite different during my very first class of girls.

Upon asking the question, two or three girls raised their hands to move. Assuming there would be no issue with relocating them to the front, I asked the girls in the front rows if any wanted to move.

None did.

I do not remember how I negotiated this moment, but I do remember, for years, speaking about this as a difference in my experience of all girls. 

Frankly, What I found in my years in the Girls Divisions was that all of the positives for young women were there. The sense of sisterhood was very strong. The connections the students made to one another were powerful. Young women felt they could be themselves and were freed from societal expectations and restrictions. The young women I taught noted an ineffable quality of “sisterhood” upon their graduation and that was powerful. 

But I became concerned over those years about the manner in which the girls thought about and talked about boys. I was worried that the environment we had created was so far away from reality that the benefits were outweighed by the distance between the students’ experience at school and away from it. I was worried that the more challenging aspects to being with all girls all the time were potentially damaging. I was fairly certain that this was not the best model of education (to be fair, I observed similar shortcomings in all boys education in the 10 years I spent at Regis Jesuit Boys Division and I wrote about that in an earlier post). 

Looking back now as the principal of a co-ed school, I feel that this is the model of education for the whole person that works best. Perhaps I would select a different model were I in a different context, but I do not think I would. I am very blessed to have spent 10 years in an all boys setting, 10 years in an all girls setting and almost 10 years in co-ed settings. 

What a gift all of this has been. 

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!

The Dean of Students in a typical school setting deals with student discipline. The job description of the dean would read something like this: the dean makes sure that rules are clear, works to support staff in enforcing them, communicates with students who have missed the mark in some fashion, deals with significant behavioral issues and, regrettably, sometimes has to recommend students leave the schools in which they are enrolled. 

But the work is so much more than that. The impact this work has on the school and the impact this work has on the person in the role cannot be easily described in bullet points or a series of short phrases. An effective dean knows that relationship is at the core of the role and an effective dean has a truly transformative influence on the life of the school and the student body.

I have worked with wonderful deans of students. I have worked with less than wonderful deans of students. My results in the role fall somewhere in the middle of these two poles.

In all honesty, I did not truly wish to be Dean of Students at Regis Jesuit High School Girls Division when I was offered the position. Yes, I had applied for it. Yes, I wanted to do a good job at it but my reality was I wanted to be an administrator more than I wanted to be a dean. This was the available role, however, and I was more than happy to accept it.

My office in that first year of the school was a closet in the back of a classroom. The office also doubled as the fire alarm, sprinkler system control room. Its walls were covered with exposed conduit and pipes – long before Chipotle made it cool – and the door had no window.

The very first time I had to speak privately with a student about a disciplinary issue and the door swung shut behind her, I realized we were alone and that was a bad scenario. My entire career flashed in front of me and it was shorter and less interesting than I had planned on it being. 

I opened the door and we talked in hushed tones.

In my two years as dean, I dealt with dress code and tardy students, I was lied to on more than one occasion in ridiculously, demonstrably foolish ways, I confiscated a firearm (which, in the early 2000s landed very differently than it would have with me today), I facilitated a body search for drugs, held detention and, generally, found myself chafing against the role.

Dismissing one of my favorite students in her junior year because of a series of increasingly worse infractions may have been the low point for me in the work.

I think I was a good dean, but I know I miscast myself in the position. 

In my third year, I would segue into an assistant principal role for which I was much better suited.

My time as a dean was relatively short and simple. The school had a small student body and no senior class when I departed. I had it pretty good. I simply was drained by often seeing students in their worst circumstances which is when I was typically in contact with them.

To this day, I live in awe of deans who stay in the work for years and who handle the pressures of the role with grace. These are the women and men who thrive when students are at their worst and help them turn the corners to find their better selves, the better way. These are the women and men who are mentors and role models. These are the women and men who make the school a true community.

I live in awe.

Time Capsule reposts blogs from years past.
In the eighth year of Teach & Serve, there are more than a few from which to choose!

Expectations Change. Get Used to It.

Originally published in November 2020

Perhaps because the majority of us who are educators remain locked away from our students, teaching from our homes and considering what next year brings, the topic of change is more relevant than ever because, even though we are not in our buildings, we are about to turn the calendar page to May and, for most of us, May means the end of the year. For about a fourth of our high school students, though the final rituals this year will look different, May means they end of their time with us. 

And though the conclusion of the Class of 2020’s high school careers have been altered, we hope their time with us has been time well spent. And we hope that our coming graduates are different now than they were when they joined us. We hope they have changed. 

We know that things change, that people change. As educators and institutional leaders, are we not all about change?

Students come to us as one thing, they leave another, hopefully positively influenced by their time with us. We anticipate and expect them to change. If they were not changing, something is horribly wrong with how we have structured our environment. They are changed. They must be.

We anticipate changes in curriculum and the tools we use to teach (if we do not anticipate changes here, we should get out of the game). If we did not anticipate changes before, surely in light of what we have faced over the last months, we do now. We know that curriculum and the tools used to deliver it will change. We (hopefully!) embrace this idea, get ahead of this idea and are inspired by this idea.

But when expectations of us change, how do we react? When we are confronted with the reality that those for whom we are responsible seem to have new expectations of what we will do, how we will teach, the manner in which we will lead, how do we respond? Do we face such changes with the same enthusiasm we apply to the ones mentioned earlier or do we have a reaction which suggests, “hey, you knew this about me – you knew this is who I am and how I do things”?

Look, expectations of teachers have changed radically in the past weeks. But expectations of teachers have always changed and will continue to do so. Expectations of administrators have, likewise, changed and will continue to do so. If you believe who you are when you started this work is who you will be ten, fifteen, twenty years into it or ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, I seriously encourage you to think again.

If we are not changing, looking for new ways to do things, for new ways to interact, to teach, to lead, then we are not suited for work in schools.

We are surrounded by change. Why should we be exempt?

Expectations of us change. Even at the end of the year.

Get used to it.

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!

The first years of Regis Jesuit High School Girls Division were incredible. The days were certainly long and there was hard work to be done, but the energy of doing something new – of creating something – was palpable for our entire staff.

The initial year when we were off campus and flying all but solo was special. I can still almost remember everyone’s classroom – how it was set up, where it was in the building – and I can name every teacher and staff member who was with us that first year. The school would grow exponentially (something that no one was sure of when we opened) over the next five years in terms of enrollment and of staff to serve the young women. While I had a hand in almost all the hires over those years and in more than a few admissions decisions and while I think we did great things, hired great people, brought in great students in the years to follow, those first years were remarkable.

The individuals on that first staff wore multiple hats. The principal taught Spanish classes. The Assistant Principal taught math and oversaw the counseling program. Each teacher taught more than they strictly should have and each moderated a club or coached a sport. All of our staff members took on multiple responsibilities far beyond what their job descriptions required of them.

For my part, I was the Dean of Students, I was one half of the English Department, I was the yearbook co-moderator, I was the public address system.

We did not have a PA or a bell system that first year. In order to share announcements and morning prayer, we brought the entire student body together before class and I read announcements and helped facilitate prayer. Because we had no bells, our teachers had to dismiss their students promptly and on schedule. They did. 

I loved moderating the first yearbook for Regis Jesuit Girls Division with a staff of freshmen and sophomores who would put the first yearbooks together over the next few years. 

I always wanted to remain in the classroom even when my ambitions and my career path led me into administrative roles. That the school needed me to teach (and I taught members of that first class of sophomores all three years they were with us) was a happy coincidence. I taught every year I was an administrator at Regis Jesuit. When I moved on to Mullen, I would have to fight to do so, but that is a story for another post.

I was also Dean of Students and tune in next week for more on that role.

Suffice it to say we all were serving the school in many different capacities and serving, I think, very well. Though the work was taxing and our environment was challenging (the aforementioned no PA, many of the restrooms were elementary student sized – tiny toilets and low sinks – the outer wall of the “gym” was about 18 inches from the out of bounds of the basketball court, we had to lay carpet tiles on the cafeteria floor every Friday, and so on) the camaraderie was unlike anything I have ever experienced. 

How many hats is too many hats? I am still, almost 20 years later, trying to answer that particular question. I have not found that limit.

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!

Sometime during the eighth year of my time at Regis Jesuit, talk began circulating about a change in the life of the school. Regis had been an all boys institution for over 100 years and, though I knew there had been periodic conversations about adding girls to the student body, none of them seemed particularly real nor did any seem as though they would take hold. 

That changed rapidly in 2002. 

As I understood the dialogue at the time (a dialogue that had, unbeknownst to most of the rank-and-file at the school, been going on since 1998), a group of families with daughters approached the school noting that there were hundreds of fewer “seats” in Catholic schools in the Denver Archdiocese for girls. There was an all girls school in the Archdiocese, but it was much smaller than Regis Jesuit. The fact was that more boys were able to attend Catholic high schools than girls. This was a persuasive argument, it seems, to the board of trustees at Regis Jesuit at the time, and they voted, not to go co-ed, but to open a separate division of Regis Jesuit that would serve young women while the original flavor Regis Jesuit could continue to serve young men.

I have written in one paragraph about the brave and bold decision this board made and I know that it was a much more prayerful, complex and amazing decision than my description of it makes it appear. This was an incredible choice and announcement, rocking the foundation of the school, of Catholic education in the Archdiocese and of the lives of thousands of young people. 

It was astounding.

I was personally very excited. I had a daughter myself and was often struck by the fact that she would not be able to attend the school I was pouring my heart and soul into. I was struck by the inequity of that fact. I was struck by what I perceived as the injustice of the situation.

I immediately wanted to join this new staff.

The so-called (and, in retrospect – in my opinion – poorly named) Girls Division would open with a 9th grade class of about 125-150 students and a 10th grade class of transfer students who, by agreement with the Archdiocese of Denver, could not come from Catholic schools. I believe we had over 130 9th graders the first year and 44 sophomores. 

I write “we” because I joined that staff as the first Dean of Students of Regis Jesuit High School Girls Division. More on that in a future post. 

The first year at the Girls Division was the second most exciting year of my career (the first being my first year as principal of Mullen High School). Our staff numbered just over 20. We were housed off campus as the new building the boys at Regis Jesuit would move into was a year from completion. We were basing everything we were doing on the 100 year tradition of Regis Jesuit but also making policy and decisions as we went along. We were led by a first time principal, a very new assistant principal and, me, a first time dean. None of us had worked in an all girls setting prior to this year. 

It was so energizing and, for me in my 11th year of teaching, it was just what the doctor ordered: an ability to serve the school I loved in a brand new capacity.

And the adventure was just beginning… 

Time Capsule reposts blogs from years past.
In the eighth year of Teach & Serve, there are more than a few from which to choose!

Preaching What I Preach, My Friends

Originally published in October 2016

We tend to be overly nostalgic about our college years. I had a great time in college, to be sure, but, again, the best years of my life were not concluded when I turned 22. Likewise, we wax poetic about our early years in our first jobs. No, they weren’t really as great as we remember them. I never believed the high school years were the best years of my students’ lives. I cringe when I hear that sentiment voiced at orientations or graduations. I mean the high school years are, literally, spent between the ages of 14 and 18. Am I supposed to believe that my best years were over almost 30 years ago? That would be a depressing thought, indeed.

However, there is something very special about these periods of our lives and about the people with whom we share them, and it’s a platitude I’ve shared with many a student in many a class at many an occasion over the years that I’ve only recently come to know as true.

I’ve been thrice blessed over the course of the last 30 days to reconnect with old friends. I literally almost typed “old, old friends,” but I feared that might imply that the people I am talking about are elderly. They are not. They are my contemporaries which means, by any definition by which I view myself, that they are not old at all!

Interesting to me is that all three of these companions came to me through my educational life. These relationships all spun out of my connection to schools and schooling and the bonds forged over those experiences seem to be stronger than I had previously imagined.

I was treated to an amazing day in Los Angeles by the first of these old friends. It was such an incredible experience of generosity on his part that the whole thing is frankly hard to explain. Suffice it to say that he allowed me to see and touch my own personal Disneyland. Incredible. We reconnected over Facebook a few years ago and hadn’t seen each other for over 25 years before he hosted me (and The Magister) at his home and place of work for 24 indelible hours.

He and I had known each other in high school. I was Schroeder to his Charlie Brown in a production of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown when I was a junior and he was a senior. We were on the yearbook staff together. We spent many a night at rehearsals or working on deadlines or at cast parties talking, dreaming about girls, our futures, our place in the world – you know, like high school kids do.

The second old friend was stranded in Colorado when a snowstorm shuttered airports all over his home state of North Carolina. He’d been in Denver for a fact-finding trip, studying exemplary schools on three precise days that I was actually away from my home city! We weren’t going to get to see one another but, as fate would have it, he was stuck in Colorado and I was able to return home before he left. The breakfast we shared on an early Saturday morning was the best meal I’d had in a long, long time.

He had been the Best Man in my first wedding, but we had met years earlier in college. We were selected to be Resident Assistants the same year. We were both English majors. We were both into music, though he was always (and remains) far more talented than I. I was Diamond to his Jade and when we lobbied for and were assigned to be RAs of the same dorm, we wreaked havoc as the greatest tandem ever… at least that’s what we thought.

Traveling to Xavier University on a work trip, I connected with my third old friend, primarily because the organization for which I work had asked him to be the keynote speaker at a major event we hold every third summer. Walking across the Xavier campus on a crisp January morning I could feel my excitement building to see him. Coming into his office – seeing the manner in which it was decorated and feeling the vibe my friend had created, I felt immediately welcomed and sank into comfortable repartee.

He and I were hired the same year at Regis Jesuit High School and he was part-and-parcel to my experience of my early years in education. We spent our work hours together. We spent our off hours together. We had a tight group of friends that shared life, day-in-and-day-out. I was Downbound to his Train, rhythm guitar to his lead piano, melody to his harmony.

Three friends in 30 days. I got to reconnect with three friends in 30 days. Each of the encounters were, in their own way, unexpected. It was something of a lark to see my first friend in Los Angeles. It was incredible luck to see my second friend at home. It was shocking when my boss told me “I have a great idea for a speaker for us…” and suggested my third friend. I got to see three old friends in 30 days. Three friends who had incredible impacts on my life when I was younger.  Three friends who came to me through my schooling as a high schooler, a college student and as a teacher.

Seeing them now, as a man in my later 40s, made me realize something I’ve often said to students that I don’t know that I’d ever really experienced and it’s a truth I don’t think it’s just true for me. The connections we make in schools matter. They count. They influence us in how we think, what we believe and who we are.

It’s not that I didn’t know that. It’s not that I needed to learn that lesson. I just don’t know that I had ever experienced it like I did last month.

My high school friend is living his life in the precise manner he wants to. I so admired him in high school because he always seemed so at home in his own skin and comfortable with himself is clearly what he is. Comfortable, warm, generous. If I have any of those qualities, I learned them from him when we were high schoolers.

My college friend is a deeply thoughtful, talented educator. He is driven to make the world around him a better place for his students and his teachers. A devoted family man with a resonant and contagious laugh, he inspired me in college and inspires me now. I wanted to be more like him when we were in college and I want to be more like him now.

My teacher friend is a true contemplative in action, just like he was when we signed our teaching contracts together. Even tempered and spiritual, I was forever in awe of his manner and his grace. His faith guided his life when we were young and still does. I often wondered how to model myself on his example and I still do.

Being in the presence of each of these men was something of a time warp. The intervening years from the last time we’d seen one another to the day we reconnected vanished. With each of them, I felt I was picking up where I’d left off, stepping into a well read and much loved chapter of my favorite novel and reading it all over again.

The friends we make in our youth have great influence on us. They help us conceptualize the world – help us make sense when nothing makes sense. Their example imprints on us. Their approval moves us. Their friendship makes us. Those words we offer as educational professionals about how our school friends will be at our weddings, the births of our children, our funerals, these are true words. I’ve preached them many times and preach them here, again, today.

The connections we make in school matter. There is wonder in them. There is grace.

And I was lucky enough to revisit three such connections in the last month to drive that point home.