Moving On

          Every spring, I become emotional, like many of us who work in secondary schools, as we prepare to say goodbye to the seniors who are leaving us soon.  We know that eventually we will see them receive their diplomas, move the tassel on their mortarboards, and watch them walk away.  We have been preparing for this time, but it is still a mixture of emotions when it finally occurs. We are proud and happy for them, but it is still a sad time for us.

            

         Even though this is my first year in a school that is new to me, I am feeling just as sentimental as any other year I can recall.  Perhaps this is because the Class of 2012 is a group of very kind and considerate individuals, although that can be said for many classes. Maybe it is because my first meeting with them was when we came together to honor Nick, their classmate who had committed suicide three days before the beginning of their senior year; as a result they have had to experience pain and sadness during their last year here at Bosque.  Or perhaps it is due to their being so welcoming to me as their new Head of School in their final year.  Whatever the reason, I am as sad to see this class graduate as I have been to watch any other class matriculate during my twenty-three years of working in schools.

            

         I thought about the special nature of the relationship that develops between high school students and their teachers as I read a recent column by David Brooks about the rapidly growing field of online education.  Brooks says in “The Campus Tsunami,” “A brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion.”  As close as primary school students may become with their teachers, there is something different in the relationship between adolescents who are transitioning into young adulthood and those adults who spend all day with them at school.

            

         During middle and high school, teens find out who they are by differentiating between themselves and others, including their parents.  These are the years when a kind, sweet little girl who idolized her parents may become a sassy, moody stranger who barely gives them the time of day; or the loving, gregarious boy turns into a sullen, uncommunicative young man who barely mumbles as he disappears into his room for hours on end. Fortunately, we may not see this “acting out” at school.  We observe young men and young women who are intellectual and personal works-in-progress; they grapple with ideas, they ask piercing questions, and they roar with laughter.  If fostered by the culture of their school, they like to engage with adults in thoughtful conversations around meaningful issues, and they are genuinely curious about a wide variety of subjects and ideas.

            

          On a daily basis, over the course of one year, and during the span of a high school career, the alteration in our students’ outer appearance is mirrored by the changes in their inner personality.  We are shocked when one of them has grown six inches or changes his hair to a completely different color. In a similar manner, we are happily surprised when the shy student who never speaks up suddenly voices a sophisticated opinion unlike anything she has said before or the usually outspoken young man demonstrates a new willingness to listen to a classmate or changes a long and strongly held opinion.  It is these moments of our students’ sudden epiphanies that excite us as teachers and enable us to care about our students even more than we already do. 

            

         What is all too often ignored is that the relationship with our students is symbiotic.  What we give to them in terms of knowledge, skills, or new ways of thinking is returned to us one hundredfold in terms of joy, exuberance, and a sense of purpose for our lives.  As a result, we all gain from this partnership, and when the students leave, we experience a sense of loss. Even though we know that there will be new students every year, it will never be the same since each person, and consequently every relationship, is different. 

            

         So, as the members of the Class of 2012 try on their robes and hats, as they finish their final assignments, and as they look forward to college, we wish them congratulations on the completion of their high school careers.  We also thank them for making our lives better and richer for being a part of our community.  Beyond what they have learned about math, science, history, or English, we hope they have learned the importance of relationships in their lives and they take this knowledge wherever they go and, in the process, enrich the lives of others as they have enriched ours.

Lessons From Lincoln

     As a way to build interest for the upcoming Bosque Book Fair, we have been featuring teacher and staff members sharing passages from their favorite books at morning meetings, and the campus has been emblazoned with posters showing pictures of these adults with their chosen books. To the surprise of no one in my family, I chose Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.  I have always been fascinated by Lincoln, and the more I learn about our sixteenth president, the more intriguing I find him.   However, with everything that has been written about Lincoln (I have heard that the only person who has been written about more is Jesus), Foner's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Lincoln offers us a different way to look at him as we trace the change in his attitudes about slavery in particular and African-Americans in general.  In the process, Foner provides educators and parents with meaningful lessons we can teach our children.  

Many people have heard the stories about Lincoln's first observation of the inherent cruelty of slavery while on a flatboat from Louisville to St. Louis, the Oval Office meeting with Frederick Douglass where Lincoln first  became acquainted with an African-American on a personal level, and his respect for the black soldiers in the Union army in the war's waning days. While these anecdotes are poignant, they may in fact exemplify some of the crucial lessons we can teach middle and high school students about the relevance of Lincoln to their own lives. 

            One lesson may be that in life, we often face choices between two compelling moral alternatives rather than a good and a bad choice. While Lincoln knew that slavery was wrong, he also firmly believed in the necessity of the still young American republic as an example of democracy for people all over the world. On the one hand, he said, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is not wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel," but he also plaintively said in 1858, "If all earthly power given me, I should not know what to do" when faced with the threat that abolition could cause the country to be torn asunder. Even after Fort Sumter was attacked, he said in a letter to editor Horace Greeley, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."      

As the war continued, though, he came to realize that ending slavery was a vital part of this conflict. In his second inaugural, the often-described agnostic Lincoln portrayed the war as the price imposed by an angry God on America for engaging in the sin of enslaving its people.  “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ " It is important for our students to understand that just as our country's greatest leaders have been torn between conflicting alternatives, so they will find themselves having to decide between the equally good or similarly bad. Consequently, they should be slow to judge themselves or others. 

Perhaps a second lesson to learn from Lincoln is a willingness to change one's mind when faced with new information.  In an era where politicians are viewed as being wishy-washy or indecisive for changing their minds over the course of their careers, our students can learn that a steadfast commitment to one's opinion in the face of changing facts might actually reflect cowardice or a lack of intelligence rather than a stiff backbone.  We can use Lincoln as an example of courage as he changes his mind during his presidency. The same person who said in 1858, “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people,”  later proposed in 1865 what are known as the Reconstruction Amendments -  the 13th, the 14th, and 15^th - which transformed former slaves into voting citizens.             

On the final page of his outstanding book, Foner explains what may be Lincoln's greatest gift and perhaps the most valuable lesson we can impart to our students.  Foner shows that Lincoln's most important trait was his ability to grow while in office.  As Foner says, "Lincoln did not enter the White House expecting to preside over the end of the destruction of slavery. A powerful combination of events, as we have seen, propelled him down the road to emancipation and then to a reconsideration of the place blacks would occupy in a post-slavery America.  Of course, the unprecedented crisis in which, as one member of Congress put it, ‘the events of an entire century transpire in a year,’ made change the order of the day.  Yet as the presidency of his successor demonstrated, not all men placed in a similar situation possess the capacity for growth, the essence of Lincoln’s greatness. ‘I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln,’ the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child wrote one week before his death. ‘With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continuously; and considering how slavery had weakened and perverted the moral sense of the whole county, it was great good luck to have the people elect a man who was willing to grow.’ " 

            Many schools have a sentence in their mission or philosophy statement that discusses lifelong learning; typically we mean that we want our students to continue studying, learning, and growing in their intellectual capabilities.  While we should certainly hope that our graduates always learn new information and acquire new skills, we should also want them to learn that, as they digest more facts or become more analytical, they may be challenged to question what they had always considered to be true. Like Lincoln, they need to be firm in their convictions; but they must also realize that, as Lincoln understood, growth requires stretching oneself in new and different directions and maybe turning toward an unexpected path.  Instead of criticizing our students for changing their minds, we should applaud their open-mindedness, reaffirm their bravery, and encourage them to grow in every way possible.  Perhaps the most important skill we can teach our young men and women is a willingness to be works-in-progress their whole lives.

The Culture of Prom

For the 23rd or 24th time last weekend (but who’s counting?), I attended a high school prom. However, I did not rent a tux, I did not wear a boutonniere, I didn’t buy anyone a corsage, and I arrived home long before midnight. (Granted I did not chaperone the entire evening like some of our teachers, and to them I offer thanks.) All in all, it was a wonderful evening. I enjoyed watching our students, whom I am accustomed to seeing in jeans and t-shirts, arrive in evening gowns, tuxedos, or suits and soon slip off their high heel shoes or jackets so they could dance comfortably; they seem to be having a good time. I wondered if the prom played as mythic a role in their lives as it did when I was in high school, but it seemed like it did not. For that, I was happy for them. After all, there is only so much of a life-changing impact a dance can have.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a photo essay from Mary Ellen Mark's book, Prom, that traced photos of couples on prom night from 1986 to today. The article is linked below. In these pictures, one sees excitement, anxiety, resignation, and every other emotion that one would expect of young men and young women at this highly anticipated spring ritual. While Mark’s photos came from across the United States, I recently learned how common the custom is across cultures of holding a spring dance near the end of one’s high school experience. In some cases, this may be a borrowing of an American experience, but in other cases, it is an important indigenous rite of passage for students to celebrate before they either begin the next level of their education or head into the work force.

While events such as prom do have some importance, it is refreshing to know that most students are able to view them from a proper perspective. A formal dance can provide an opportunity for young men and young women to let their hair down after working very hard in their academic courses or struggling anxiously over their college choices; however, like a suspenseful mystery or a cinematic thriller that provides an escape, the dance does not prevent one from having to face the real work that is still there the morning after the dance. It was heartening to learn that Bosque School does not engage in the ritual of choosing a prom king and queen, and I shared with a colleague that the only time one of my former schools did have a prom court, it was done by a raffle; this way everyone had a chance to participate rather than it being simply a contest about popularity or perceived physical beauty.

Maybe one of the most important lessons we can remember when planning events like prom is to ensure that they reflect the values of our schools. If we desire our schools to be places where our students feel valued in their academic pursuits and extra-curricular activities, we need to make sure that the social opportunities we provide live up to those tenets as well. We contradict ourselves when we espouse a wish for our schools to be institutions where everyone is equally appreciated and there is no social hierarchy, but then we select the prettiest girl and the handsomest boy to reign over all; as we know, adolescents have a highly refined ability to sniff out hypocrisy, and they realize that our actions speak even more loudly than our words. As the educators Theodore and Nancy Sizer pointed out in the title of one of their books, The Students Are Watching: The Moral Contract of Schools. Students are listening to what we say, but even more so, they are watching what we do.

Many years ago following my first year as serving as a Head of School, I heard then National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) President Peter Relic say, "Every decision we make in schools is a moral one"; that should include dances. Prom can and should be fun since it marks a transition in the lives of our charges. We want our students to enjoy it and be safe. Nevertheless, we want to make sure that even a social event like a dance on a Saturday night carries on the lessons we impart to our students Monday through Friday. As the writer Anna Quindlen says, “The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/prom-night.html?scp=3&sq=photo%20prom&st=cse#

Some Thoughts From a Student Arts Festival

I recently had the eye-opening experience of attending the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS) Arts Festival in Dallas. I went to support our Bosque School students who were acting, playing musical instruments, and singing in the festival; and I am happy to report that they were outstanding. They performed beautifully, they were appropriate in every context, and they were supportive of each other in every venue; in other words, they lived up to our expectations!

What was unexpected for me was the vibe at this festival. There were students from independent schools throughout the Southwest, and the manner in which they interacted with one another and appreciated each other’s work was impressive and humbling. For lack of a better analogy, I described it as Fame meets summer camp. In addition to their staged performances, students were breaking out in song or dance while just hanging out, total strangers were striking up conversations with one another, and the atmosphere itself fostered creativity and kindness among everyone. As a teacher said, “The kids are totally themselves here, and maybe more than at any other time.”

So, what was it that made this experience so exceptional? Why was this environment unique, and why can’t school be like this all the time? Beyond the obvious realization that students do have many classes besides the arts, and they do have homework and other impositions on their time, there were some elements that we could take from the festival that might make our schools very different places.

First of all, students were not competing with one another during the festival. There were no prizes or awards, so everyone could appreciate each other’s work without feeling diminished by others’ accomplishments. As a former high school and college athlete, I am all for competition, but I do wonder if we could find opportunities to de-emphasize it in our schools. Perhaps this might encourage more of the mutual support and admiration we saw at the festival.

This lack of competition in no way prevented the students from doing outstanding work. The level of talent at this festival awed us all. Students were doing their best even though they didn’t have to do so; they were expressing themselves just for the joy of it!

Secondarily, students were performing what they had learned from their teachers. However, there were opportunities in places like the Coffee House where teenagers could sing what they wanted or engage in the messy act of creation with others, with no other reward than making something new and exciting.

Don’t get met wrong. In an increasingly interdependent and competitive world, we must continually challenge our students to produce work that meets high standards and prepares them to succeed at the nation’s best colleges, where they will find themselves in competition with the world’s best and brightest. We disserve our students if we ask them to do and be anything less than their very best.

Nevertheless, we want them also to be fully realized human beings who are not only productive but are also happy. We want them to be academically engaged and proficient, but we also wish for them to be well-rounded and eager to engage in a variety of activities. We require much of them; perhaps we should also allow them to have more opportunities to choose what they wish to do.

We began a weekly event at Bosque School this year called Musical Mondays, where students in the upper school perform on the first day of every week. Sometimes they perform in their school groups, but more often students play a piece of music with their peers that they themselves have chosen. It’s a beautiful moment when all of the students in the entire upper school applaud their peers, and it provides an entirely new insight into the personalities of the students who are playing. We have a window into the world of the students unfettered by requirements imposed by the adults in their lives, and they always amaze us. We also have a requirement for juniors and seniors to write their theses, and here again, we are able to see what interests and motivates them beyond their grades.

Moments like these show us what’s possible when those of us in schools give our students the chance and the time to pursue their passions and be who they really are. Just imagine what it would be like if all of our schools could have the climate and atmosphere of the ISAS Arts Festival, even if it were for just a while. Our students might blossom beyond our wildest dreams.

The Lessons from a Tragedy

As soon as the jury announced its verdict in the case of Dharun Ravi last week, I wondered what the lessons were that we could impart to our students. You may remember that Dharun Ravi was the Rutgers University student who had trained his webcam on his roommate Tyler Clementi while Clementi kissed another man in their dorm room. As you will also no doubt recall, three days later, Clementi jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge in a case that riveted us in 2010. Two years ago, we knew that the only thing worse than the death of this young man and the ruined life of his roommate, whose boorish prank had gone far beyond what he ever could have known, was if we failed to learn something from this tragedy. Now that a court has judged Ravi, we can look again at what we can tell our children so that perhaps history will not repeat itself.

While it was Clementi’s death that made headline news, the shock and pain that he experienced is shared by many other Gay/Lesbian/Transgender/Bisexual/Questioning (GLTBQ) teens who wrestle with suicidal thoughts. Study after study shows the disparity between the rates of attempted or considered suicide by gay and lesbian adolescents versus their heterosexual counterparts. Movements like the It Gets Better project may help young men and women in need of solace, but there is still much work to be done. Many commentators have pointed out that younger Americans seem to be more and more comfortable with gays in the military, in public roles, and gay marriage; however, middle and high schools remain treacherous places for adolescents to come out. Many years ago when a parent criticized me for speaking out on behalf of gay teens, I tried to explain that this was not about politics; this was about making sure that every child in every one of our schools feels physically and psychologically safe to be who she or he is.

Perhaps a second lesson is how we can teach our students to be comfortable with those who are different than they are and how to be vigilant in their protection of the rights of their peers. All too often, teens, like their parents, gravitate toward those people who most resemble themselves. While that may be understandable, it precludes their learning more about the world and the blessings that come from being part of a group of people with a variety of likes, dislikes, and interests. Although Lord of the Flies may have been written in 1954, the mob mentality that characterized that story can still seen today. As Tyler Clementi’s father pleaded after the conviction of Ravi, “You’re going to meet a lot of people in our lifetime…Some of these people you may not like. Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean you have to work against them. When you see somebody doing something wrong, tell them: ‘That’s not right. Stop it.’ The change you want to see in the world begins with you.”

Another lesson that we can learn from the dorm room events in the fall of 2010 is that we have given our teens tools that can damage lives far beyond their comprehension. It is not being a Luddite to fear how quickly machines can allow events to spiral out of our control. Like Dr. Frankenstein, we have created tools that benefit us greatly, but we have put them in the hands of children without training in ethics or morality. We know this intuitively, and we see examples of this on a daily basis, but we do nothing to change it, or we throw up our hands and acknowledge defeat. Some accounts of the Tyler Clementi story indicate that Ravi was neither evil nor homicidal; his actions were mean-spirited and cruel, but he most likely never realized where his malicious taping of Clementi would end. For that reason, we can be both infuriated and sad at the lives wasted from a nasty joke gone tragically wrong.

One young man is dead at his own hands and another may spend many valuable years of his life in jail. If we don’t make this profoundly painful story into a morality tale for our children, then shame on us as educators and as parents.