One More Day

As I speak with prospective faculty members on the telephone, or via skype, I am often asked what a typical day is like at KA. While bells go off at the same time every day, no day, naturally, is really “typical” because somewhat unpredictable things are happening every day. But I do try and talk them through our “typical” day—and I always say, “The days are long here but the weeks fly by!” I don’t know if that gives them the perspective they need, but it is how it feels to me.

Just for fun, let’s look at last Monday as a glimpse into what life at KA is like in this early March of our sixth year. I got out the planner and looked over the day to see what I accomplished.

I started the official professional day about 6:30 am writing an email to the student body about the upcoming play I will direct. This is a play that I was not supposed to direct, but circumstances changed for another teacher, and I was asked to rustle up a spring play. The process of the play choice can take me weeks, but that wasn’t the kind of time I had. I chose a play I found in the bookstore of the National Theater during the job fair in London a few weeks ago. It is a British play called The Exam and it is a comedy-drama about teen-agers who have to muddle their way through the ordeal of a high-pressure exam. The dialogue is sharp, the adults are the loony, unstable ones, and the teens have to survive a powerful, and even absurd, barrage of self-doubt and parental pressure. I needed to devise a rehearsal schedule and stoke their excitement about the auditions the following day.

After I checked on the printing of some documents for later in the day, I realized I wasn’t going to get to one thing on my checklist for the morning—writing to all the faculty undergoing the pilot appraisal program this spring. That has been on my To Do List for a few days, and again it got jettisoned.

My first appointment of the day is with my treasured colleague, Lilli. Lilli is off the following night for a conference in Bahrain, and we needed to meet about the appraisal plan, but more immediately, we needed to sift through the dozens of requests for professional development monies and decide who gets what money. The deadlines for some summer conferences are fast approaching and we needed to allocate the money. We have a generous amount of money, albeit a fixed amount, and needed to check and double-check on the conference or workshop and decide whether or not it should be funded by the school. Within the next day I will have given out $125,000!! Oh, my—the excitement and triple-checking of the numbers to make sure we can allocate enough to everyone!

After Lilli stepped out to go to class I had an appointment with a student who had sent me a cryptic email the night before. He wanted to meet with me and noted that perhaps I “might be the only person in the world who could possibly help” him. Oh, the pressure! So the student came. The topic was not about academics but about a love triangle. I could help him?!?! But this was a serious topic to him and as he described the problem with a girl and a best friend, oh my, my mind raced back to 1981. This situation felt so much like the triangle in which Doris and Kevin and I found ourselves in much, much younger days. I talked him through it—he didn’t know which one he wanted to lose…and again, the French reminder that “the more things changed, the more they stayed the same,” raced through my mind. We talked for about 40 minutes, and in the end, he sighed and said, “See, you are the only one in the world who could help me.” Such painful steps those adolescent steps with friends and love and patience.

Next on board was a necessary conversation with a teacher who, while he is a smart and enthusiastic educator, he can also overstep his bounds and speak in a way that diminishes his position as a solid educator. Obviously, these are tricky conversations because they involve ego and hope and reputations and personality. But I believe that speaking with someone straightforwardly may help more in the long run. It was a good conversation and he did understand that I am on his side.

Okay, let’s see…oh yes, I need to spend some time with one of the administrative assistants as she compiles all the requests for the professional development monies into a spread sheet. So far we haven’t overreached on the budget. I do continue to get late requests, even though the deadline was over a week earlier. Ah, the student apples do not fall so far from the teacher trees…

Okay, I need to check on a candidates that are in the hopper. I have learned a great sports phrase in doing the recruiting: we talk about a “depth chart” fairly often. Hmmm…I got the idea, but Julianne needed to explain how a baseball manager creates a depth chart and all that stuff. Okay, we still have 6 openings and we need to make sure that we have back-ups in case offers are declined. I send out emails asking for times to skype. I spend some time with Julianne checking on the performance schedule for The Exam in April, working on the calendar, chatting about her upcoming presentation at a conference about KA, and then discussing the best ways to make a frittata. A little strange, but I guess necessary!

Lunch on Mondays is usually my Professional Development Seminar lunch. About 20-25 people gather for sandwiches and chips in a classroom and we explore more of the Doug Lemov book, Teach Like a Champion. This has been a great book this year, and each week we discuss 3 more of the techniques this man has discovered are the strategies used by the champion teachers. It is a rollicking group, full of discussion and insights and a mix of teachers both new and veteran, young and seasoned.

Okay, I need to check on my printing for class…everything is ready. I have some guests coming next so I better have enough chairs for class. In Art History today we are looking at the examples of art found in the colonies of the fledgling United States. I introduce that the themes of “The Promised Land,” and “The Republic of Virtue” certainly guide the colonies and the founding of the US in almost everything they do. I take a little tangent and spend some time discussing the design of the dollar bill in the new USA and the new Seal of the United States, the images and Latin phrases on the bill itself. Hmmm…I enjoy pondering about the choices made in those early years, and the hopes and blessings of God on the new project that is the United States…I think about this the rest of the day and decide that this might have to be its own blog entry.

After Art History class we move to the auditorium for school meeting with announcements about service projects, various upcoming programs and finally we move as a school to the gym to the pool for the Second Annual Boat Race. This exciting event came out of a physics class and the discussion of how to take cardboard and foil and create a usable boat in water. The physics classes create their own boats and they we have a race. There must be about 40 entries and the boats range in looks from sleek and slim to one that looks like a Chinese Dragon race. At least two people must be in the race and the goal is to see whose homemade design actually works. It is one of those school events that is incredibly fun.

By this time it is dinner time—I spend some time on emails, visit Julianne downstairs with her kicky OSL gang, and then have one more phone call with a candidate. In our discussion the candidate gushes and says, “It sounds like you really care about each other at this school. It’s more than just a job.”

I asked her if she liked sit-coms at all…she didn’t know where I was going with this, but I explained that certain sit-coms work better than others because you grew to care about the characters. I then launched into a brief history of The Honeymooners, and Ralph and Norton, those two buddies who were more than just funny characters. I recounted a scene in which they transcended the ha-ha funny of most sit-coms. Do you remember the episode where Norton gets hurt in the sewer? Ralph and Norton have had a terrible fight and they’ve ended their friendship. Ralph has thrown Norton out of his house with a, “Get out! Bah!” And what’s initially funny is that Ralph has replaced Norton with someone exactly like Norton. That new pair are about to go out bowling together—when there’s a knock at the door. A man runs in and says, “Did you hear about Norton? There was an explosion. He was hurt, hurt in the sewer.” As a casual historian of TV sit-coms I am pretty sure there hadn’t been something serious like this before in such a lightweight show.

Ralph says, “That’s my fault that he was there tonight. If anything ever happened to Norton—if anything ever happened to him, I’d never forgive myself. I got to get down there.” And the new friend says, “You just got done telling me how much you hate him.” And Ralph suddenly gets so mad he grabs the guy by the shirt and he tells him, “What I say about Norton is one thing. How I feel about him is another.” And Ralph runs down to the hospital. Ralph offers a blood transfusion for his buddy…and Norton tears up when he realizes Ralph was there for him. “You would do that for me? You’re the greatest buddy in the world.”

That grounds everything. That feeling, that bond, that personal connection between Ralph and Norton. That’s a great moment. That’s a key to why that show is considered great. In spite of it all, they cherished each other. While we are laughing or crying about something, the message is coming through.

Whenever candidates ask me what sets apart our school, I look to our Mission Statement, that paragraph that should guide us, and at the end it offers the crucial and often unsaid dictum that should guide a school, perhaps any organization: we should “cherish one another.”

This was just one more day, one more long day, but some cherishing going on. I hope that great math candidate comes and joins us.