Gettin’ It Right

At this time of year it is common and sweet to hear parents say things like, “Well, our little boy is all grown up and ready for school!” In fact, I heard my dear friend Karen Enszer Raquet say that exactly a month ago in Dallas as she talked about her son Jensen and how he was gettin’ ready for kindergarten!

Forty-some years ago, I suppose the same was said about a little five-year old boy on Montana Avenue in Cincinnati who was gettin’ ready to go off to kindergarten at Westwood School. In fact this little five years—going on six year-old year boy—had just been signed up for piano lessons with Cousin Evelyn as well. So much had happened in his young life to prepare him for Westwood School and Cousin Evelyn’s piano lessons…so much comes together in those five years going on six…

So, in a funny way, I could amend that time-worn statement a little and announce, “Well, our little school is all grown up and ready for school!” KA, our little school, is at the wondrous age of five years going on six…and wow…so much has come together in these years. I can get a little misty-eyed when I think of the progress and how we are all grown up and ready for school now!

I have been back in Jordan, back at work for 17 days—meetings with senior staff, greeting new faculty, helping them orient themselves to our school and to Jordan, full faculty meetings, department meetings, and now today our proctors return, our international students begin to return, on Sunday the new students arrive, and finally on Monday, the returning students return. And I gotta say, so much is going well. We are gettin’ it right.

Mona, our expert head of HR, has perfected the welcoming of new faculty. She meets them right outside their gate at the airport, whisks them though all the channels in the airport, offers them cold drinks in the van taking them to their new home, deposits them in the apartments with the air conditioning already on, beds made, and shelves and refrigerator stocked. Wow! That is a far cry from the days when sometimes new faculty got neglected and had to find a taxi and entered a new apartment with no food and no prospects for how to get food. Mona, along with the help of the Operations Czarina Ola, is gettin’ it right.

Each year we have surveyed the new faculty, eagerly inquiring on what else would have been helpful in their opening days. When should we go shopping (always and often!) and how much should you know about the diversity of our students and how can we generalize and characterize them. How often should we go out to eat? Oh, every night—no problem! Mona organizes trips to both fancy and the comfort diner food stops of Amman. By this time they have had 2 weeks to adjust and feel like Jordan is gettin’ a bit more comfortable.

This week when the full faculty met an amazing and unprecedented occurrence rocked my world. (Oh! The suspense mounts!) On Monday, our first day with the entire faculty, headmaster John Austin scheduled two hours for the faculty to meet in groups of 8-10 and discuss passages from a book by Mike Schmoker about teaching.

Did you get the unprecedented nature of this??? No???

The faculty talked about teaching. On the first day of a school year. Still don’t get it???

Well, this fall marks the 25th year I have walked into a classroom to teach, the 25th beginning of a school year, and this year marks the very first time, on the first day of a faculty year when the faculty has discussed teaching. Wow. Big Wow. Sad wow…

So that means that in the other 24 first days of my career a faculty did not discuss teaching. Yes, now you are getting’ it. We met in groups with our colleagues, discussed the passages of the book, and discussed teaching. This was the first first day where that has happened in my career. What do we normally discuss? Oh, you know, policies, and procedures, and blah blah blah. This year we discussed what we do. What discussed what we hope to do. We discussed the life blood of our career choice! Yes, we are gettin’ it right…

Julianne, the omniscient Dean of Student Life, has a herculean task in the beginning of the year. She estimated that her Office of Student Life team has about 3800 assignments to make at the beginning of the year: advisor/advisee assignments, duty rosters for every floor of every dorm, weekend duty assignments, I mean, there is so much! This week those packets went out, smoothly, calmly, triumphantly. Yesterday they finished stuffing the packets for the 450 students with all the pertinent information—the team laughing and efficiently gettin’ it right. I sat in on the meeting triple-checking everything for orientation, and it is set up like a German train schedule. I noticed that they had even thought when the new students might get lost, and set up posts with team-members in the right places to help any errant, lost souls. They have gone over the schedule with a fine-tooth comb, and wow—they are gettin’ it right…

As I met with my department this week, I eschewed some of the policy talk—one can always check on those things, and we spent three happy hours teaching each other something new. I had asked each member to come up with a cultural artifact to teach the department. I reminded them that we hadn’t flexed our teaching muscles in almost three months, and we should polish off those skills. One colleague assigned a short story to read the night before, and by the end of the morning we had enthusiastically explored a short story from Latin American history, a 19th century photograph from a southern university, a Chinese combination lock, an ancient cylinder of policies from Persia, a West African drum, an illuminated manuscript from 17th century India, a statue from early 20th century Cuba, the concept of a bull-ish and bear-ish stock market, and a 17th century Japanese print. It was exhilarating doing what we came here to do: teaching and learning. We are gettin’ it right…

So is everything perfect in this little five going on six year old school? Well, I went the other afternoon to check 2 magazines out of the library (just overnight actually too) and 6 people were trying to figure out how to make this happen. They were a little flummoxed. I don’t know if they had forgotten how to check things out, but it took about 10 minutes for the six of them to come up with something that should go a little smoother! Oh well…

And there was a car issue the other day…oh my, car issues always make my palms a little sweaty. I have had car issues over the years…

Last Saturday I went to the car wash—can you imagine what cars look like here after 10 weeks in the desert without a bath????? While sitting in my car in the right place waiting for the next available car wash dude, one of the young car wash dudes backed into my car. I had seen him coming, laid on the horn, yelled to watch out, all to no avail. Gee whiz…what now?????

They looked a little surprised that a car was in their path, they looked somber, went about the car wash (gee whiz, what now?????) and then the owner came out to discuss the situation. The language barrier became a problem for us, I called dear Tourkan on speed dial, and the owner offered to take the car to a body shop and get it fixed for me. Oh…lots of things are comin’ out okay!

I am not so naïve to think that we have solved all our problems, but when I look back to the school in its infancy, and rummage through the old blog entries from the days of “Scratch,” I marvel at the progress. I marvel at what we are gettin’ right…

One time at Hackley a mother spoke softly to me as she pointed out her son a little bit away. She said, “See that tall guy over there. That’s my son. He’s a sophomore. He looks all grown up, doesn’t he? He sure is tall—but you know what, those looks can be deceiving! He’s grown up tall, but he’s not grown up yet. He still needs our help.” What an astute comment about how we look and how we all need a little help yet.

We are certainly gettin’ it more right these days—I revel in that. Now, let’s get this year started and see where we can continue to polish and evolve!