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!

Disclaimer as I begin this post: I came to understand and appreciate the administrator I discuss here in so many ways over the course of the 20 years we worked together. A person of commitment and passion, this administrator remains one of the hardest working colleagues I have ever journeyed alongside. This administrator’s desire to improve Regis Jesuit High School was, in my opinion, unmatched during my years there. While I often did not agree with this administrator’s perspective or goals and quite often found myself at odds with this administrator’s leadership tactics and philosophies, I can truly say, without snark or irony, that I learned as much from this administrator about being dedicated and being a leader as I did from anyone else I have encountered in my career. 

During the first ten years of my Regis Jesuit tenure, I was a classroom teacher who took on other roles, but I was not an administrator. As a classroom teacher, I both dreaded being observed by admin and wanted to be observed by admin. In my years at Bishop McNamara, I had grown used to being observed and receiving feedback. I still conduct my observations in very much the same way they were administered to me at McNamara because I liked and continue to respect the practice.

At Regis Jesuit, I was not observed my first year. At all. 

But I did have an administrator, the administrator mentioned in the disclaimer, drop by my classroom. Once.

On the last day of school my first year at Regis, the community celebrated something of a field day. It was called Raiderfest and it took place after a shortened schedule for all students. The end of each day at the school was signaled by announcements before the final bell was rung and this day was no different. Students would be dismissed to Raiderfest after announcements.

I have noted earlier this year in a post that I was a jerk as a young teacher, a teacher with a ton of ego and a lot to prove, and I made it a point that my students DID NOT TALK during afternoon announcements. I threatened and admonished them if they did. I had a whole series of repercussions worked out if they deigned to speak. My recollection is the boys in my class were typically very quiet during announcements.

On that last day of the year, my first year, the administrator mentioned above determined that everyone would be absolutely silent during afternoon announcements before Raiderfest would be allowed to commence. On reflection, I am sure that there was something important that the students needed to hear that day. This was long before email and announcements were a means – almost the only one – to communicate with the student body. I am certain that something important was in the offing that afternoon.

But it was the last day and the classrooms around me were pretty pumped up, pretty loud and pretty impatient. I had kept the boys in my classroom quiet for what seemed to be an eternity and, finally, I relented and allowed them to speak a bit. In that moment, a different administrator came over the PA saying that announcements would not begin until everyone was quiet.

At that point, I said – and I do remember this as clear as if it happened yesterday – “Gentlemen, let’s be quiet. Maybe we are part of the problem.” At that precise second, the administrator who is the subject of this post walked into my classroom, pointed at me and said “you are.” 

The boys’ eyes went wide as they quieted down, my temper rose as the administrator raced down the hall to the next room and my anger simmered.

Once announcements were concluded and my students were deposited at Raiderfest, I stormed – the correct word – the administrator’s office. 

In line before me to speak with him with what I was sure was a very similar issue, was a teacher I very much respected who was my mentor. We exchanged glances before he went into the administrator’s office. They spoke in raised tones – my mentor rarely raised his voice – for a moment and then my mentor departed and I was summoned.

I do not remember the preamble between me and the administrator. 

I do remember saying “it is really unfortunate that the first and only time you were in my classroom this year was to show me up in front of my students.” 

And I remember leaving the office on that comment.

Mic. Dropped.

The administrator and I never again spoke of that moment. 

While I look back and think I could have handled that afternoon more professionally, I know that it convinced me of something I have carried with me for over 20 years: good administrators need to be present to and in relationship with the teachers and staff and, while I struggle to do a good job of this each-and-every-year and know that I have a long way to go to be who I want to be in this aspect of my leadership, that day established it as a priority.

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!

During my early years at Regis Jesuit High School, I served as a co-moderator for Student Council. I believe I held the position for my first 6 years at the school, 2 years apiece with individual colleagues. My first co-moderator is a professor at a very prestigious university. My second is a professional photographer. My third is a high school administrator. Counting me, 50% of us went on to high school administration. From this fact, I draw 2 conclusions: first, being a student council moderator is a pretty good stepping stone to becoming a high school administrator and, second, the other half of us made the right choice with our lives.

The student council I moderated was, primarily, a programming group that put together dances and blood drives and the like. We staged Homecoming Week and Mission Week and tried to make sure that the students were having fun. 

Being a student council moderator in an all boys context was very interesting at least from the perspective of gender. I found it a challenge to motivate young men towards creativity in planning homecoming themes or in designing decorations or t-shirts. This is not to say that all young men were not capable of these activities and that all young women have more of a predisposition to them, it is to say that, in my experience, this observation held true.

Regardless, I can say that it was not always easy to get the students of student council energized about our activities.

Except for pep rallies. Man, did the boys love pep rallies. They loved getting their classmates riled up, they loved introducing our sports teams which, somehow, always involved bringing the spotlights from the theater into the gym to highlight the sports stars. They loved the cheering and the frenzy.

They loved the damn pep rallies.

I often thought the amount of love they had for pep rallies was in direct response to my revilement of them.

I hated the damn pep rallies.

My disdain for them may have been solidified by one of the worst decisions I ever made as student council moderator. 

There are moments I look back on over thirty years which inspire but one thought: what the hell were you thinking? 

The plan went like this: bring the boys (all 750 of them)  into the gym. Turn off all the lights. Shine the spotlight on one of the student council members. Announce that he was about to throw Big Macs into the stands. Switch the lights back on. Let the throwing commence and the chaos begin!

Great plan, right?

With the boys seated, I flipped off the lights and a low murmur started to build. It rolled, louder and louder and became more intense and frenzied and I immediately realized that plunging the students into darkness was a very bad idea, indeed. Before the spotlight even came on to light our student council, Big Mac maniac, I switched the lights back on entirely forgetting that these particular gym lights took a full minute to cycle completely back to life. At that very moment, the student council kid did what he was supposed to do: when the spotlight hit him, he started firing Big Macs into the stands with ferocity. 

And the screaming started. Boys were shoving one another to get a hamburger, they were yelling and laughing and jostling and lunging.

Being a teacher means being helpless sometimes. I sure learned that lesson that day.

No one was injured. The students had fun. I had a long talk with the principal.

No harm, not much foul.

But I still despise pep rallies.

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

Emboldened by the Homilies, Embarrassed in the Hallways

Originally published in March 2016

… starting soft and slow, like a small earthquake and when he lets go, half the valley shakes …

Neil Diamond, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show

There’s little like the feeling of hearing a good homily or listening intently to a sermon or sharing that touches the heart and the mind. There’s a certain energy I feel when I’ve heard a terrific reflection – an energy that enlivens and emboldens. Like many people, I have been touched by homilies when I am at mass and other religious services be these homilies given by priests or deacons or lay women or men. I have heard words that have inspired, challenged and moved me and have left liturgies inspired to talk, to change and to do.

Likewise, I have gone to thousands of hours of workshops on teaching and administration, have heard from educators at professional development opportunities –  conferences and the like – and have embraced the messages they’ve given. Leaving these PD opportunities I have walked away ready to change my teaching or my leadership. I have been motivated to be a better educator by what I have seen, what I have heard and the passion with which the message was delivered.

Inevitably, following these experiences, I head back to my life – to my desk or to my classroom – considering implementation of what I have heard, of what I have learned. And, without always being conscious of this fact, I begin a certain calculus: if the changes I have been inspired to envision deal with me and me alone and if they don’t represent much risk, they have a pretty good chance of happening. If they involve my relationships with others or require me bringing others on board for whatever change I am envisioning, they may well happen, but will take some work. If the changes are significant and will necessitate shifts in myself and others from ways we’re comfortable proceeding to ways we are not – ways that are new and different – then they chances they will occur fall. Tremendously.

So, personal easy changes I am willing to make. More challenging changes that involve others, I would like to make. Vast paradigm shifts for me and those around me, I am afraid to make.

Inspiration, where have you gone? Where was the boldness of the moment after the homily, during the applause at the conference, when I was writing my notes about a speech?

Let’s be honest: when were touched by someone’s words, when we’re challenged to alter our course, we’re not talking about the simple things, those things we can easily change in ourselves or ways in which we can quickly improve our environments at work, we’re talking about significant changes, sea changes.

It’s so much easier to smile about the homily and let it go. So many fewer feathers get ruffled when we say “yeah, I heard some really wonderful ideas at that conference last week” but we don’t really try to implement them. Our situations, personal and professional, seem somehow more secure when we’re not leading the call to action, the call to change.

I often feel emboldened by the homilies, but embarrassed in the hallways, as though my excitement over some message I’ve heard and want to share is somehow something of which to be ashamed, as if my interest in improvement and my desire to engage others on it is somehow silly.

For people who seek continual self-reflection and for institutions that are about perpetual self-renewal, embracing and preaching the message, singing the good news of who we are and what we can be is critically important.

Listen for what emboldens you, reach for what can improve you, search for that which will change your culture for the better. Don’t turn away from it. Don’t be embarrassed.

Be happy you heard the call.

It’s love, love Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show. Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes, ‘cause everyone knows about Brother Love’s show…

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!

When I am asked to share one of my favorite teaching moments of my career, I am very lucky to have a ton from which to choose. I have loved being a teacher and an administrator and these 30 years have provided me all kinds of wonderful experiences, adventures, misadventures and moments, all kinds of joy. I am filled with so many terrific memories.

If pressed, I return to the story I am going to relate in this post if only because this was a teaching event and experience that I have never been able to recapture or recreate. Once it was over, it was over.

Early in my time at Regis Jesuit, I was teaching English One with two other teachers. We shared all of the sections of the course among us. Educational best practices were shifting in those years and the idea that all sections of a particular class should be very similar in terms of content and approach was gaining traction. 

I always liked – and still champion – the notion that common courses should line up almost entirely when compared to one another. Teacher X’s class should be very, very similar to Teacher Y’s class. This is good for students and, at the end of the day, it is good for teachers. Students have like experiences and teachers have colleagues with whom they can design curriculum, assessments, activities and so forth. This has never seemed a controversial theory to me. I am ever surprised when I encounter resistance to it.

Regardless, in those years at Regis Jesuit, the two teachers with whom I was teaching English One felt the same way I did and we collaborated the hell out of that class. We planned together, wrote tests together, worked together. We were so lock step that we often gave the exact same homework assignments.

Upon approaching The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, knowing that all the freshmen were reading the same acts and scenes at the same time, I got an idea. 

The works of William Shakespeare, in my not so humble opinion, are not intended to be read, they are intended to be seen. While Julius Caesar is not my favorite work by the bard, the third act is really something else and I got to wondering how our students might be able to see it rather than read it. I am sure I brought this up to my co-teachers and we brainstormed.

The resulting idea was a “wouldn’t it be great” kind of thing: wouldn’t it be great if we could surprise the freshmen with a performance of Act III? How would that work? Could we hire someone? How could we only do it for the freshmen?

We chatted and planned and something really special happened: we determined that we wanted the faculty to put on Act III for the freshmen class as a surprise. We asked our principal if we could schedule a class meeting and perform the show. He agreed, energetically. We asked our colleagues if they would learn roles for Act III and if they would be willing to rehearse and to perform for the freshman class. I do not remember anyone we asked telling us “no.” We asked if they would give up lunches and early mornings to rehearse. They did. We asked our drama director to help us stage the scene. She agreed. We asked, and our co-workers kept saying yes.

The act had about 15 speaking parts. Teachers and coaches from all over the building joined us.

When the day arrived, the freshmen were assembled in the gymnasium. A class meeting started with the Dean of Students beginning to discuss an agenda with the freshmen that was made up for the day… then our first actor interrupted from the back of the gym as Caesar himself saying: “The Ides of March are come.” 

And we were off.

We were not professional actors. The staging was not perfect. Many of us never got “off book.” But it was wonderful. Our principal took a role. Our athletic trainer took a role. Our most veteran faculty member took a role. The entire school seemed behind the performance. 

We did this two or three years running and the staging of Julius Caesar Act III is one of the highlights of my entire career.   

I wonder how many of those former students remember this? I hope many.

It was magical.

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!

My high school years were spent with young men. Regis High School, as it was called when I attended it as a student, was an all boys, Jesuit school. Though there was talk of adding girls to the school as I was graduating, I do not remember thinking seriously about the possibility of Regis going co-ed.

Of course, I was 18. I do not recall thinking too deeply about anything that did not concern me.

As a student at an all boys school, I had a wonderful experience.  I was very close to my classmates and truly felt that ineffable quality of “brotherhood” that men like me talk about after they graduate. I note here that women discuss the ineffable quality of “sisterhood” upon their graduations from all girls schools as well as I would learn years later, when I taught at the all girls version of Regis Jesuit.

As a man in my mid-twenties, returning to my alma mater and, as I mentioned in a prior post, feeling every bit of my ego, I had a significant curiosity about all boys education from the other side of the desk. 

What I found in my observations was that the positives were all there. The sense of brotherhood was very strong. The connections the students made to one another were powerful. Young men felt like they could be themselves and the lack of young women represented, for most of them, space from the vagaries of dating and tension that come when adolescents are together in social situations. 

But I became concerned about those very social situations and any other situation in which our students would encounter members of the opposite sex. I listened to the women with whom I was hired who discussed challenges they were facing that I was not and, taking all ego out of the equation – as much as I could – I understood the difference was our sex. I heard young women referred to inappropriately as a matter of course. I felt a loss of perspective in the classroom. As a young teacher, I saw another side of all boys education that was not as appealing to me as it was when I was a student (to be fair, I observed similar shortcomings in all girls education in the 10 years I spent at Regis Jesuit Girls Division and I will write more about that in a later 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. 

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

Who’s in Trouble?

Originally published in November 2020

In my years as an administrator, one of the teams on which I served to which I wish I could have offered more was the Student Assistance Team.

The Student Assistance Team was made up of administrators and teachers and directors. Anyone on staff could refer a student to this group. It was designed to catch students who might fall through any cracks in our program. It was designed as a place where kids could be discussed, plans could be made, help could be created. It was designed to keep kids on track socially and academically, to respond to their needs and to strengthen the overall community by assisting those who needed the most support.

It was a great work of which to be a part.

Many schools have groups such as this. All schools should have them. Schools ought to be about this. They ought to have these sorts of nets in place. They ought to have people committed to keeping their eyes on as many students as possible. They ought to know that protecting students is as important as teaching them.

Here’s the question: do we have these same kinds of supports for the adults in our buildings?

If we do not, we should think hard about developing them.

As leaders in our schools – as administrators and department chairs – part of our role in serving our staffs is knowing who needs to be served and how. Leaders must be as vigilant about the health and wellbeing of the adults in their charge as they are about the students in their charge.

This is not a lot to expect.

At the end of the equation lies the students. The operators in between the administration and the students are the teachers and staff, the adults in the building. To care about the kids is to care about those who are most closely in contact with them.

Leaders have to know who is in trouble on their staff. Beyond that, they have to try to help those who are in trouble.

When I was as assistant principal, my responsibilities revolved, primarily, around working with the faculty. Looking back, I know there was more I could have done, there were people to whom I could have been much better, colleagues I should have worked with in a far more compassionate way. However, I can say with honesty that I attempted to make it my work to know who the adults in my charge were, how they were and what they needed to be the best version of themselves.

Bringing the best version of themselves to all the did at the school made them better, the experience of the students better, the school better.

How would I ever know if a teacher needed to be non-renewed or replaced if I did not take the time to know them, to hear their perspective, to work with them? How could I advise my principal on hiring and firing if I did not try to engage and understand? How could I help if I did not know who needed help? I tried to connect because I thought it was critical to my role. I could have done better and, in many cases, wish I had, but I did understand that leadership required this of me.

Leaders who do not understand that knowing who on their staff is in trouble is as important as knowing which students might be in trouble are missing something critical.

Take care of those in need, adult and student alike. Make their lives as fulfilled as you can.

That is one of the critical roles of leadership.