Last week, I wrote about the first of three guiding principles in the opening of Willard: empowering student learning. This week, I’ll spend some time talking about the second principle, experiencing community, but while I am writing about it second, there is little of more importance than building a supportive and welcoming community in opening a new school.
As I hire new staff members over the coming months, I’m going to be asking them to spend some time reading Wait, What? by James E. Ryan. Currently, James Ryan serves as the dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, however, he is most well-known for his viral 2016 commencement speech and the ensuing book. In both the speech and the book, Ryan offers five questions (and a bonus) that he deems as life’s essential questions. Each question has its own place in our purpose of starting a new school, but one that clearly stands out as we seek to build community is “What Truly Matters?” Ryan suggests asking this question and answering it “honestly and fearlessly” to get at “the bottom of an issue or problem,” but also “get to the heart of your life.” When I think about all of the work that has to be done at Willard over the coming months, there is nothing that occupies as much of my thought as how we create a school community that values kindness, positivity, and inclusion. One that makes students and teachers feel valued and a part of something bigger than themselves.
While all of our technological resources should make connecting to a larger whole easier, studies show just the opposite to be true. In The Road to Character, David Brooks shares some statistics gathered by Google over the course of the 20th century. Using Google’s capabilities, “you can type in a word and see, over the years, which words have been used more frequently and which less frequently.” Brooks writes, “Over the past few decades, there has been a sharp rise in the the use of individualist words and phrases like ‘self’, ‘personalized,’ …and a sharp decline in community words like ‘community’, ‘share,’ and ‘common good.’ ” In fact, Brooks states that use of the word “kindness” is down 56% and “gratitude” is down 49%. We have a 24/7 connection to each other that allows us to talk, text, tweet, insta, and snap across the oceans, but access to the tools alone does not allow us to experience community.
As I’ve been sharing with the future Willard students I’ve met, I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to lead Willard, and I hope they feel privileged to attend. There’s no doubt that a light tower is unique, that a student study area is cool, and that a glass corridor is impressive. But, a beautiful building can still be a lonely, isolating place to attend school. To combat this, we need visible, engaged adults who know students and make them feel their value and worth each day. We need extracurricular activities that engage students beyond the school day and establish common bonds and interests. We need to use dedicated advisory time to let students talk about their differences, find common ground, and feel their impact on each other. We need a cafeteria that is welcoming and inviting where no student eats alone.
Jim Ryan closes his speech by talking about a friend of his who died from cancer at a young age. While attending the funeral, Ryan was struck by the poem on the back of the program. The poem asks:
“And did you get what you wanted out of life, even so,” and then continues:
“I did./And what did you want?/To call myself beloved. To feel beloved on the earth.”
Ryan adds, “The word “beloved” is important here as it not only means dearly loved, but also cherished and respected. And while I promise I’m very near the end of my speech, let me just say that when I read these lines, it’s hard for me not to think about students. We spend a lot of time, here and elsewhere, thinking about how we might improve student performance, which is how it should be. Yet I can’t help but think that schools, and indeed, the world, would be better places if students didn’t simply perform well but also felt beloved — beloved by their teachers and by their fellow classmates.” In short, to build a community where students and teachers feel known, respected, and valued, we need to do the hard work of interacting, engaging, including, and understanding. We need to turn away from a selfie culture that isolates us and turn the camera around to see the wide angle world standing before us.
#welcome2willard