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!

While my first two years at Bishop McNamara High School provided me with a wonderful introduction to the profession of teaching, it was my early years at Regis Jesuit High School during which I developed into the educator I would be early in my career.

I look back on my impressions of that guy now over the distance of decades and I am not sure that, the high school principal I am, I would want to hire that version of me for my own staff.

I am fully aware that that guy was a product of his time and that education has gone through significant philosophical shifts in the ensuing years. I am fully aware that I have gone through significant shifts in the ensuing years. I am equally fully aware that I was kind of a tool back then.

In my early years at Regis Jesuit, I prided myself on being a no-nonsense teacher, the kind of teacher who did not plan to smile until Christmas. I wanted to be a teacher that my students feared. My overriding goal in the classroom was control. I needed to have it and it needed to be total. 

I remember the kinds of assignments I gave, the 50 question vocabulary tests, the quote tests wherein I would give a line or two of a book or play and expect the students to remember who said it, why they said it and why it was important, the lengthy reading assignments, the deadlines that were unreasonable, the zeroes I would readily write (yes write) in my gradebook. 

I remember my ego, because my early years in teaching were all about my ego. 

Perhaps the best/worst example of who I was back then was when a student would challenge me about something to which I did not have a good answer. This could have been about a point of fact, an interpretation of a passage, a mistake I had made grading an assignment. My answer back then would typically be something to the effect of: “Excuse me… how many letters do you have after your name? When you have a few, get back to me.”

Ugh. 

I hope that I have come a long way. I sincerely hope that. I know at least this – and this is something I certainly did not think when I was starting out – I have a long way to go and a ton to learn. 30 years have taught me that.

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!

If I try very, very hard, I think I can recall each person with whom I was hired at Regis Jesuit High School. Considering we signed our first contracts over 20 years ago, that feels like something of a feat to me. This past spring, May of 2022, the last hold out – the last person from my first year at the school who had been there continuously – departed. There are no teachers on staff from the hiring class of 1994 any longer.

It was a large group of new hires; the number approached 20. At the time, we were told that this was the largest new hire class in the history of the school. In the 20 years that followed, it was the largest I experienced bracketing the year we opened a new division of the school… but more on that in a future edition.

Our specialties ranged through the academic departments, though athletics and through extra curriculars. Within the first year, many of us found ourselves in leadership positions. The school found how many of us were excellent teachers. And we found in one another fast friends. 

Kathleen and Steve and Kelly and Tim and John and Chris and John and Mike… and more. 

Looking at the list, our parents were, collectively, not that creative with first names, were they?

There were not 10 years separating the youngest of us from the oldest of us in age and we were living very similar lives.

I remember the departments we worked in, the classrooms we shared, the dances we staffed. I remember us going to one another’s weddings and having children. I remember when the first of us left and what that felt like.

There are more stories to tell, and I will tell some to be sure, but I am not a good enough storyteller to convey what these people meant to me and what they – and those early years at Regis Jesuit – still mean to me.

We were a team and we could be a force to be reckoned with. Though it is very much cliche, we had each other’s backs. Always. Perhaps too often. We were all but blind in our loyalty to one another. They were there for me and I was there for them.

I cannot imagine another group of people I would have rather begun a 20 year journey with than these.

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

Next One Up

Originally published in November 2020

I am a fan of the Denver Broncos. A big fan. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t cheering on the orange and blue and, throughout most of my memory, cheering them on has been an easy and fun task. They have been competitive for a very long time … the last few years notwithstanding.

Recently, however, they have not been competitive. Some might say they’ve not been good. People who know football (I am not one of those people) would say they have been bad. And pundits have been waiting for the team to hit the proverbial rock bottom. 

They might have done so last Sunday. 

In 2020, everything is affected by COVID. The NFL is not an exception to this rule. In a fairly labyrinthine and fascinating turn of events, the Denver Broncos played a game this past Sunday without a quarterback active on their roster. The circumstances that caused this predicament will likely be the subject of a future blog, but the fact is this: a multi-billion dollar football franchise played 60 minutes of football without a quarterback.

This is not to say someone didn’t take snaps and attempt some passes. Someone did.

His name is Kendall Hinton, a practice squad wide receiver who hadn’t taken a snap at the quarterback position in years before 2:05 last Sunday afternoon. Again, he was a practice squad receiver. Not an active player. Not one of the best 53 who get a jersey every Sunday.

Practice. Squad.

Denver was hammered by the New Orleans Saints 31 – 3 in a contest that was not nearly as close as that score indicates as the saying goes. 

What happened in the game was predictable. 

What has happened since was not. 

I have been so struck by the amount of praise Kendall Hinton has received in the last few days. I have been taken aback by the NFL stars – present and former – who have praised this young man – a man the age of my sons. I have been surprisingly moved by the comments and love of his teammates. 

The NFL has a saying: “next man up” –  meaning that, if someone is hurt, the next player on the depth chart steps in and steps up. And the team doesn’t miss a beat, presumably.

Next man up.

Next one up.

Kendall Hinton probably had dreams in his head of shocking the world and beating the best team in the NFC and writing a Cinderella story and becoming the subject of a streaming movie. He likely wanted to bask in success, watching himself on SportsCenter. He must have wanted the day to turn out differently than it did.

He was harassed. He was thrown around. He was beaten. Badly.

And how did he respond? He thanked the team for the opportunity. He thanked God for his chance. He thanked the fans and his teammates. 

He was grateful. After the pounding he took, he was grateful.

This next one up was the right one up. He didn’t look at the hand he was dealt and say “no.” He didn’t curse his situation. He didn’t run away from the incredible challenge.

This next one up was grateful for the challenge, for the situation, for the hand. 

Over the course of this year, we’ve all be confronted by terrific obstacles and challenges. We’ve been harassed and thrown around and beaten. All of us.

I’ve awakened sore from the beatings. 

But we all could use the “next one up” vibes that #2 brought into a football game on a Sunday in November. We could all use the next one up feeling that he took into a no win situation. We could all use some Kendall Hinton in our lives.

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!

Returning to my alma mater, Regis Jesuit High School, was something of a dream come true. I was 24 with (almost) two years of teaching under my belt. I had moved back to my hometown. I was hired in a group of teachers that included one of my high school classmates. 

I was very excited. Teaching at Regis Jesuit had been a goal of mine since my high school days and, though the school had moved, it was still familiar and comfortable.

Well, mostly comfortable. There was one challenge that was very much that: a challenge.

For a long time before I was hired, for decades in all truth, there had been very, very little turnover at Regis Jesuit. The stability in staff was likely aided by the fact that enrollment had tapered off for years and, when teachers left, there was not always a need to replace them. Therefore the staff when I was hired was comprised of almost entirely familiar faces.

Very familiar faces.

Many of these were faces I had stared at for hours on end when I was their student and was in their classes.

And they were now my colleagues.

That was a challenge. These were women and men who had inspired me to go into teaching, educators who were legends in my mind. Mr. Taylor, Mr. Saulino, Mrs. Carson, Mr. Buckley, Sister Benita, Mr. Gold, Mr. Lechuga, the list went on and on and on. I was standing in the shadow of these giants and it was so much easier to be there when I was on the East Coast. 

“You’re going to have to do it.” Mr. Taylor really said to me one morning.

Ralph Taylor was one of the reasons I wanted to teach. He was a Regis institution, a talented teacher with an encyclopedic knowledge of English and a ready wit. I had been in his team-taught American History/Literature class for just over a semester as a student and it was, perhaps, the most impactful educational experience I had on that side of the desk.

“I’m going to have to do what, Mr. Taylor?” I know I replied.

“You’re going to have to call us by our first names, Jeff.” 

It would take me months to develop enough comfort and confidence to do that, months of working alongside them, months of learning they were people – wonderful people, but just people. Just teachers trying to do the best job they could.

Just like me.

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 time at Bishop McNamara High School is very special to me. I know that much of who I am as an educator was shaped in those early years – those first years – at McNamara. I was lucky to work with wonderful people, to serve under amazing mentors and to have students who were happy and motivated. Though I often felt overwhelmed, though every day was not perfect, though there are things I look back on and know I would change if I could go back and do them again, I loved those two years. They made me who I am three decades later.

The call to leave the Washington, DC area and to move back home to Denver was very strong, strong enough to pull me away from a comfortable position and one that was bringing me great joy. 

Wanting to start a family, however, not wanting to have children in DC where the crime rate in the mid 1990s was extremely high and wanting to be close to my parents when kids came along were persuasive data points in my wife and I making the decision to move to Colorado. This was a decision aided by the fact that there was an English teaching opening at my alma mater, Regis Jesuit High School, and that my parents had a family friend (my former Geometry teacher) who was an assistant principal at the time who let them know I might have a good shot.

I flew home for the interview which I had been told would be with the principal, a man who was not at the school when I had graduated six years earlier. In those intervening years, the school itself had moved to a new campus in the south Denver suburbs and I actually got lost on the way to my appointment. No google maps in 1994! I arrived on time, however, and ended up interviewing with my old yearbook moderator and one of the nicest men I have ever known who was the English Department Chair and a new assistant principal who happened to be my former Algebra I teacher. I learned the next fall that the principal was off campus dealing with the terrible situation of a student falling from a cliff during a field trip to Red Rocks Amphitheater (that knowledge should have dissuaded me from ever wanting to be a principal!). The student was not seriously injured.

A few days after the interview, I was offered the job, was all too happy to accept it and my wife and I began plans to move home.

I would remain at Regis Jesuit for the next 20 years.

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

Transparency

Originally published in January 2018

I love the concept of choosing one word on which to focus for the next twelve months. I am not entirely sure who began the initiative or how the concept got moving. But I am glad that those educators I follow on Twitter have been celebrating it. Their enthusiasm has inspired my own over the last few years and I thought carefully about what I would choose as my guiding word and principle this year.

My One Word for 2018 is TRANSPARENCY.

Talented leaders are brimming with qualities that make them inspirational and effective. They share those qualities freely and without expectation. They serve those with whom they work as part of the vocation of educational leadership they have chosen. And they have many qualities in common.

Of these, the quality I most wish to adopt, expand and emulate in my own life is transparency.

Leaders who are transparent (people who are transparent) in who they are, in what they do and in how they lead do not leave people guessing. They do not make decisions that seem out of the blue, left field or nowhere. They do not catch those around them flatfooted. Leaders who are transparent communicate with those around them consistently and as a matter of course. They are not hiding agendas because they have no agendas to hide. They are up front, genuine and authentic.

Leadership is challenging but so is followership. Followership can be made easier by leaders who are transparent. When followers know what to expect and what is expected of them, when they know what drives leaders’ decision making, when they know what leaders are thinking and why they are thinking it, being a follower is both easier and more fulfilling. Leaders who operate from a perspective of transparency take the guesswork out of followership and take the guess work out of who they are.

It is easy to know who a transparent leader is. She is not hiding anything.

We could use more transparency in our world. We can certainly use transparency in our work.

As I grow in 2018, as I continue to improve myself as a person and as a leader, I will work to be transparent. I will work to be authentic. I will work to be genuine.

I will work on my #oneword2018.