"Johnny Steak-head"

A month ago today I landed back in Jordan and then immediately set to work: two weeks of meetings and orientations, and as of yesterday, 13 real school days. September is a glorious and exhausting month—back to school, but also soooo important to diagnose all the needs of students and colleagues.
 

September is a month to think of all the changes: departed colleagues out, new people in, changes in status and job—oh, so many adjustments every September! I remember at Hackley, one colleague would say every single September: “Oh, this is the hardest September ever!” I would always remind her that she had said the same thing the year before, we just forget how hard of a month it is. Don’t forget I said ‘glorious’ as well.

 

As I said, one of the things September requires is an adjustment to a change in jobs. In some ways, this year is so similar to last year for me. I am the Dean of Faculty again, reside in the same apartment, have the same courses to teach—but there are some changes for me. There are three things I am giving up, and while each was a voluntary and sensible thing to hand over, there is always that transition of not doing some of the things one has done and adjustments. I am no longer head of the History Department. No, there was not a coup, although a colleague last spring hoped I would be all right after the take-over! For seven years I was the head of the History Department at Hackley, and now for the last six years here. But our head last year suggested that it would be wise to let someone else lead since I needed to spend more of my time on the whole faculty and not just my favorite, pet department. I didn’t want to run the risk of department members feelings I didn’t give them enough time, nor did I want the rest of the faculty to feel I spent all my time with one department. So that made enormous sense. Lyman, a terrific colleague, is doing a great job running the department. I get to go to meetings, and for a change, I don’t have to run those meetings!

 

I am no longer doing the choir at KA. For two years I did my best with an enthusiastic bunch of students who hadn’t benefitted from the wonderful background I had with the music program of the Cincinnati Public Schools. We met only once a week (try building a program with 45 minutes a week! Ha!) but had a fun time. I tried some Handel, some gospel, some 80s pop love songs, some Broadway, and some choir and flute music. Their favorite piece was the 1940s hit “Sentimental Journey.” We hired a great young man from Yale to teach Philosophy and run the choir. He is very talented and will do a grand job, I am sure. But it is an adjustment from what I have done to pulling back from that.

 

And perhaps most notably, I have retired for the time being from directing plays. When I visited Chuck last month in Charlotte, he could hardly believe that statement since it has been such a major feature of my educational identity for 25 years. Yes, but I travel a good deal attending job fairs, hiring faculty, and the pressure of time and money, appropriate scripts, inadequate set and costume possibilities, it all seemed like a good time to let someone new and younger take over. In the spring I directed a play called, The Exam, but since the students knew of another, far-inferior play with the same name, I re-named our work, The Final Curtain. It made sense on several levels: a ghastly character called “The Exam” (the embodiment of every fearful exam you have ever taken) sang part of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” and taunted how this exam might be those students’ final curtain. It was also the last play of some lovely seniors involved in drama last year, and secretly, I knew it was my ode to my semi-retirement. I told Chuck for the first time ever I wasn’t burning to direct a play. He didn’t believe me. I confirmed that it was true. He still didn’t believe me, and I conceded, well, maybe I just thought I would take a break, and he made me name a play I might just burn to do. Okay. Okay!  I would like to direct (again) Defying Gravity, this great play I remember seeing in 1996 in a small theater in New York and I knew I had to direct it. Actually, that was my swan song directorial effort at Hackley, 7 years ago this autumn.

So there are some changes. Three things that have been a part of my identity and brain space have been let go to three new people. The new drama director is a recent college grad with whom I had an exciting conversation and interview last spring. He is beginning with one of my favorite plays ever, the Steve Martin comedy about Picasso and Einstein, Picasso at the Lapin Agile. All three of these “successors” will do fine work, but it is always a little strange to think about how much input they might want, but I want to give them the space to their work, make their own mark, and improve the school still further.

 

Just in case you are worried that I don’t have anything new, well, my dear colleague Julianne made sure that I had something new to sink my teeth into. It’s different. Yes, it is a stretch. As Julianne worked on her assignments for the after school co-curricular program, she wrote me a note that she had a doozy of an assignment for me. In her email to me, she wrote, “You are slated to assist during the weight training minor for three terms. I am sure you will poke fun at me for this for a long time, but I appreciate you being a great colleague and agreeing to do this. After 25 years in the school biz, I finally get to be a jock!! I am in charge of weight training!

I don’t think of this as a punishment, and Julianne didn’t intend it as such. She gives me a whole new persona! She concluded her email, christening me with a new nickname as well! Your new nickname is “Johnny steak-head” (a steak head is bad name for a dumb jock)!"  So there you have it, out goes the History, Music, and Drama, and in comes the Weight Training Johnny Steak-head. I want to make Julianne proud!

This is a year in which I decided I need to decide if I truly love managing faculty. The appraisal system will get into place, my work with the Teacher Fellows is entrenched, and my challenge is to inspire the faculty adopt a growth mindset. And I get to be Johnny Steak-head! In spite of my new jock name, I am reminded of a Emily Dickinson quotation that I think is appropriate at the start of this important year: “The sailor cannot see north—but knows the needle can.”

Sometimes the project of school, and well, life, feels like one is lost in a sea of complex challenges, conflicting expectations, and vexing problems—compounded by the expectation that I am always supposed to know what to do. But just as I felt that first year when I came to Jordan in 2007 and clarified so many things for me about education, it is about finding your own compass. I may not always remember every policy in school, but I do know that treating people with respect is an excellent start. My job is very much about listening (whoa!!! What other changes for me the Big Talker!?!), being a good listener with new teachers, with veteran teachers, angry and unhappy teachers, and noticing and appreciating the good deeds being done around me. The tide of stories I hear in a given week, sitting on my couch in my air-conditioned office, is an astonishing array of human stories of pain, bewilderment, exhilaration, pride, loneliness, fear, and hope. Somebody angry may at the root be simply afraid of changes or diminishing status. Someone whose move has rendered them overwhelmed in spite of years of teaching under their belt might create someone both arrogant and helpless. There will be a student whose troublesome behavior is a mask for sadness or the anxiety that school is a nightmare for them. Everyone has a story to tell, and one of my jobs is to listen and respond meaningfully to these stories.

This might be why the blog posts are fewer than in days of old. There is hardly a shortage of things to share or reflect upon—I am in the middle of a region fighting for whatever “The Arab Spring” might have positive left in it, working at a school whose mission is so noble and captivating that it provides daily inspiration, teaching students so enthusiastic and willing to work that it is never boring, mentoring young teachers who have graduated from the best colleges in the US and now are working to figure out how to engage adolescents. Never dull. And, by the way, never scary…well, not in the “scary that many of you might worry about.”

The lack of “scary” is due to several peerless colleagues, the headmaster and Julianne, and hey, there is always a new duty, a new nickname. This year I get to be Johnny Steak-head! I wonder where that will take me??! And while Dickinson’s words ring true, “The sailor cannot see north—but knows the needle can,” I also have the assurance, as Julianne mentioned in her email, unveiling my new name that “We joke about being here all the time, but we both know that this is where we are supposed to be.”  We joke about it only because we wonder how in the world we ever got here!! Oh, yes, that’s right—our friend Anne Siviglia! When our car is stuck behind a herd of goats or sheep, or goats and sheep, Julianne raises her fist in the air and exclaims, “Thanks, Anne!!”

But Julianne is right—this is where we are supposed to be. Here’s to that crucial, diagnostic month of September!