Teach Boldly

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

Monolith

Originally published in February 2021

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.

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 Facultones are a defining chapter in my 30 years journey in education. 

One of the facts I enjoy sharing about myself with new people is that I was in a cover band for almost 20 years, off and on. When I share this, I am very, very quick to accurately point out that I had a talent of blending into the background of a group of more talented people than I. My skill on guitar is nominal. At best. My vocal talents are similarly limited. But I find myself more than skilled at being a part of making a group sound good. 

I have played and sung in various liturgical music groups since I was in my early teens. I started singing and playing bass guitar (an instrument my first girlfriend taught me how to play). When I went to college, I decided I did not want to lug my amplifier with me and taught myself to play a six string. Later in life, I bought a 12-string and found it made me sound like I knew how to play better than I did.

Along the way, I fell in with various groups and collections of people who liked making music, too. This all started in my early years at Regis Jesuit when a couple would host teachers at their home for dinner and poetry circles. Hey, it was the mid-90s. Don’t judge. These poetry circles would, inevitably, turn into music circles and people would bring guitars and sing together.

After a few years of these events, someone suggested that a group of us should form a band and play dances and weddings and the like. 

I was excited by the idea having been in a cover band in high school, the two names of which were Noise on Tap and The Side Effects. I was eager to join.

About five of us, a keyboardist, two guitarists, a bass guitarist and a vocalist came together. We did not have a drummer (we would forever have issues keeping a drummer in the band), but we had an energy and we started to play together at people’s summer parties. For my part, I would plan my entire 10th anniversary party with my first wife around getting the band a gig.

We called ourselves “The Facultones.” I did not come up with the name, one of our guitarists – perhaps the nicest person in the world – did and he lasted in the band approximately one gig, it was just not his cup of tea.

In the years that followed, more than 20 people would migrate in and out of The Facultones, but a handful of us were fairly constant. We had incredibly talented people in the band, We had marginally talented people (like me) in that band. We all had a wonderful time in The Facultones.

We played dances, proms, Christmas parties, graduation parties, a wedding or two, summer parties, auctions and fund raisers – we played wherever anyone asked us to or where we invited ourselves to. We made a demo tape (that I cannot find; I wish I still had it!). We practiced in classrooms and homes and garages and at all times of the day and night.

At one point, I wrote a highly fictionalized account of the group called The Facultones. Too on the nose? 

I still have paper copies of set lists and electronic copies of music and chord sheets. I have notes and photos. And memories. 

I have a ton of memories. Love and Memories, one might say…

The Facultones was one of the most fun parts of my educational journey, perhaps the most fun. I miss that band to this day.

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

Leadering: Achieving Balance and Blend

Originally published in March 2017

Over the course of the next few weeks, Teach & Serve will be discussing “leadering” activities.  In essence, these are the critical steps, as I see them, that individuals take as they become leaders. These are the universal gates through which they pass. These are their shared signposts they come across.

These are the things leaders do as they go about “leadering?”

1. Knowing Oneself
2. Identifying Weaknesses before Celebrating Strengths
3. Honing Communication Skills
4. Exercising Authority Appropriately
5. Achieving Balance and Blend
6. Humbling Oneself
7. Letting Go

Of the seven leadering activities I have identified that potential leaders can undertake in their development, achieving balance and blend may be the hardest, especially because something like finding balance takes time, and potential leaders, when they are younger, do not typically have a lot of time to spend on doing much but what they have to do.

I like the concept of balance – the idea that we must find balance in our work and home lives. It is obviously very important to mental and emotional health that balance is struck. If we are all about work, we have pressures weighing on us from home. If we are all about home, our work life suffers. This is not rocket science.

When I heard DeWitt Jones, photographer for National Geographic talk about balance and blend, I was really taken by his words. Balance is good, but it implies a 50/50 ratio. Blend, on the other hand, leaves room for liquidity, room for dynamism, room for flow.

In any case, a leadering activity that will truly assist potential leaders is finding the balance and blend they will need to have in their own leadership life. As they progress toward leadership positions, discovering when enough-is-enough in terms of work, taking time out for recreation and family and fun, setting appropriate boundaries for themselves and in consultation with their employers is leadering at its best. Learning from those experiences will make them stronger leaders when they assume those kinds of positions.

When I was conducting interviews for the high school at which I worked, I would ask candidates how they would say “no” to me when I asked them to do too much. It was a difficult question, I bet, and many likely thought it was a trick question. I do not, frankly, remember, in all the interviews I did, anyone knocking that question out of the park, but I asked it for a reason. I wanted candidates to know that it is okay to say “that’s too much, I have a life” beyond the job.

Leaders who exemplify balance and blend in their own lives illustrate to those they lead that having balance and blend is not only okay, it is desirable. It is critical.

Find the balance. Find the blend. Use your leadering to help you do so.

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.