Thoughts Between Class

Recently, I wrote about the power of professional learning communities and the positive experience I had with colleagues at a mini leadership retreat.

We have a lot of informal learning communities here at Cary Academy, where teachers thrive on collaboration with colleagues and within departments. Learning communities also exist in some more formal ways. Over the past few years, our Instructional Technology Team has implemented protocols to help them better examine the impact of tools and projects that utilize technology.

They document part of this work on their ITT Blog. There is a lot of interesting collaborative work here, and some very focused reflection on how our technology projects can be improved.

In addition to review and reflection within the ITT team, a recent upper school English project was used as an example of how a project can be “tuned” in an upper school faculty meeting. Such a deliberate reflection is an important part of critical friends groups. Our upper school faculty has embarked on the use of critical friends groups as a part of their year-long review of assessment practices at Cary Academy.

In early December, out of the blue, I received a lovely email from Mitch McGuigan — former CA Upper School Principal and Head of School.

After a few niceties regarding his travels (boat docked in Savannah through December), Mitch got to the point: As winter begins, don’t mess with the snow and ice! He writes: “Given that you are from the north and therefore not to be trusted regarding what are safe conditions, I pass on some advice.”

Mitch’s note was filled with practical guidance and tips, and I took it home to post on my refrigerator. With temps still hitting the 60s, I thought little about it again — until this past week.

Below is what I wrote to our Upper School students on January 6th, a few hours after the public schools delayed their start by two hours on January 7th, when morning temps were expected to hit single digits.

After the email, I’ll walk you through the decision making process — just in case you come away with the impression that us folks from the north don’t get it.

______________________________________

5:30 PM

January 6, 2014

Hello CA Upper School students,

Growing up in Minnesota, I can still recall with vivid detail those winter nights when we were expecting a big storm. Phones would ring off the hook the night before (yes, there was a time before Twitter):

• “Do you think school will be canceled?”
• “I’m sure they have to cancel school, it’s dangerous and they don’t want us to get hurt.”
• “Last year when this type of storm came, they canceled school for two days!”

We’d all go to bed giddy with the excitement over a possible snow day, and the next morning we’d jump out of bed and head to the radio to listen to what we were sure would be a long list of closings.

And we’d listen.

Once the list when through the first time and we didn’t hear our school, we’d assume that something was wrong. We must of have just missed it.

We’d listen again as they went through the list a second time.

Really? Look at all that snow. How can they not cancel school!?! THIS JUST ISN’T FAIR. (Since we didn’t have the internet back when I was a kid, we actually had to yell in all caps. Kind of like walking up hill to school both ways.)

Having experienced it first hand, I can tell that nothing, I mean nothing, is worse than the disappointment of an expected snow day that doesn’t materialize.

Because I care and I want to spare you the same agony that I experienced in my youth, I’m writing you on Monday night to tell you that I expect that we WILL have a full day of school tomorrow.

Yes, I know that Wake County has delayed school two hours.

Yes, I know it will be cold.

While all those winters in the frozen tundra has made me too cold hearted to delay school tomorrow, thankfully you do have folks who care for your well-being. Ms. Gooding, always looking out for your emotional health, wrote me this afternoon and asked if we could arrange for a hot treat to warm our spirits in the morning. I spoke with Chef Sam, and he will have hot chocolate available in the Dining Hall before school. Please enjoy — if you can brave the cold from the Upper School building to the Dining Hall and back (a up hill both ways, I’m sure).

Dr. Ehrhardt

PS: Of course, if for some reason the weather changes and gets much colder than we expect or we get some black ice, school could still be delayed. Keep a look out – but do your homework.

_________________________________

Here is what happened leading up to the email …

After the news broke about the public schools around the noon hour, I consulted internally with our leadership team — in particular, Jess Garcia our director of facilities. His team had already begun winterizing some elements of the campus (outside drinking fountains, for example). His plan was to leave the heat on overnight in the buildings to prevent any problems and make things comfortable in the morning. There was nothing from a facilities perspective, he said, that would be gained by a late start.

The public schools had chosen their delay for a few specific reasons: they were worried about getting their buses started, they were worried about students waiting outside at bus stops in the dark, and they were not sure how some of the aging buildings would hold up overnight. Those concerns were outside the realm of ice, snow, and driving safety that would have been most relevant for Cary Academy.

I then consulted with the other heads of area private schools, including The Raleigh School, St. Timothy’s School, Durham Academy, and Ravenscroft. For the same reasons as Cary Academy, none of these schools were planning a late start due to the cold.

The final step, then, was to decide on a communication plan. Remaining silent on the issue was one alternative. However, since the news broke about the public schools midday, speculation was rampant around the campus. Keeping quiet, especially if it looked like we were going to have school, didn’t seem like the right choice. After informing the Leadership Team and our employees, I decided to drop a note to the Upper School students. I hoped that maybe it would be best to break the bad news in a nice way … hence the email above.

I hope this little glimpse into the decision making process is informative. In particular, I hope that everybody understands that while the message to the students was intended to be humorous, I don’t take bad weather as a laughing matter. Rest assured that I feel no need showcase any northern stoicism regarding winter. When the time comes, I’ll be delighted to call for the first snow day of the year. I’ll be even more delighted when spring arrives!

I will always remember the smells. The wild of the North Woods: pine cones, fish scales, and cookouts.

These are the smells of my grandparents.

Growing up in a suburb of Minneapolis meant that my association with the outdoors were linked to visits to my grandmother’s cabin in the Detroit Lakes region of Northwest Minnesota. This was “Fargo” country, for those familiar with the Coen Brothers’ movie of the same name. It was a brush with the wild side of life, at the dead end of a mile-long dirt driveway: Bowie knifes, bonfires, and brambles. I will always remember the adrenalin rush that came from the potent mix of excitement and fear whenever we would visit — like the time that my grandfather greeted us at the door late at night wrapped in a bearskin, with the head pulled down over his face and a big growl in place of hello. It doesn’t get much better than that for an 8-year-old boy, even if I was up all night trembling from the scare.

Later in life, it was my other grandfather who opened the door for my first taste of adulthood – paid employment. He was in the hospitality business, and visits to his house meant a peek into the adult world of cocktail parties and grown-up conversations. He managed a private supper club and helped me land a job as a busboy. Most of my tip money went towards my first car, a symbol of freedom and maturity among my high school friends.

Sharing with my grandparents, however, usually went one way. Sure, they came to our house, but they never visited the place where much of my identity was formed: school. I wasn’t a star athlete, so they never came to my large public high school to watch me sit on the bench. They never had an opportunity to visit campus, to see my classrooms, to meet my teachers.

November 8th is the annual Grandparents and Grandfriends Day at Cary Academy. This is a time to open our doors and welcome the individuals who have untold influence on the lives of our students. Our kids are proud of their school, and it is wonderful when the people they love and admire take an interest in their lives. Some of the grandparents who come to Cary Academy will travel hundreds of miles to take part in this special day, others will pop over from just across town. The important thing is that they have an opportunity share time in the place that shapes the day-to-day lives of their grandkids.

As an adult, I have lost two of my grandparents, and for those who remain, the sweet smell of the North Woods has been replaced with the pungent odor of Vick’s vapor rub. When I take my kids to visit their great-grandmother, she is as likely to call me by my father’s name as my own.

But I will remember her.

I’ll tell my kids of her days serving as a nurse and an officer in World War II. I’ll tell them about her career managing a group of nurses at the local hospital. I’ll show them the scar on my knee and remember the countless times my parents raced me to her house to set a broken arm or ask advice about a cut, cough, or cramp. When I tell those stories, it will seem like yesterday.

I am glad that my children can have similar experiences with their grandparents today.

So, to my grandparents, here and gone: Thank you. In the spirit of this upcoming season, let me express my gratitude for the indiscernible ways you helped me become the person I am today. To my parents: Thank you for being there for my children and for the important and active role you have in their lives.

Happy Thanksgiving season to all.

The Cary Academy Leadership Team went off campus this week for our annual fall retreat — a chance to connect, learn, and plan for our important work together.

In this spirit of positive camaraderie, growth and renewal, I asked the team to read a 2005 Fast Company article by Alan Deutschman called: “Change or Die.”

Of course I did.

Deutscham’s piece was part of a larger book of the same name, targeted at organizations and the way we approach change. As a lead in, Deutscham frames the challenge of change from an individual perspective. As one example, he cites a report from Johns Hopkins University that upwards of 90% of patients who have heart bypass surgery are unable to change their base lifestyle behaviors to protect themselves from future recurrences of the disease.

In other words, if the choice is between change or die — we pick death.

Needless to say, the conversation about change and schools at our retreat was not quite so morose, but the point did hit home: Change is hard, even when we know it is good for us.

Change is even harder when we don’t understand exactly what or why we need to change in the first place.

The world of education is in middle of an epic transformation.Technology is giving rise to new ways of accessing knowledge, creating meaning, and sharing ideas. Brain science is giving us a deeper understanding of how learning works, but not a clear enough picture to be able to move confidently forward in any one direction. And our global marketplace is asking us not only to consider learning in a singular local context but within a wider, more complex and interdependent world.

And that’s just for the teachers. What about students?

Never before have we asked so much of our kids. School used to be about the accumulation of accepted knowledge. Much of our school structures, courses, and assessments are still built on this framework — even though things fundamentally have changed. In 1982 Buckminster Fuller outlined the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”– predicting that knowledge will double every 18 months. Turns out, he was too conservative; as often cited IBM research predicts the doubling soon will accelerate to every 12 hours.

What’s a student to do against that backdrop? Study more, of course! And, while they are at it, add a healthy dose of competitive athletics, community service, leadership, and debate tournaments — along with a bevy of social networks to feed, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Kik.

The overall picture can become overwhelming. And it is. A Phi Delta Kappan article says that only 50% of American children today are hopeful, meaning they believe their future will be better than their parents.

Here at Cary Academy, we’ve recently been talking about the concept of grit and the development of a growth mindset as important skills to prepare students for success in our ever-changing world. Such a mindset is inherently hopeful.

In his 2013 book Making Hope Happen, researcher Shane Lopez cites studies that link our level of hopefulness to tangible signs of success like college graduation rates. Lopez goes on to provide some practical advice on how to nurture hopefulness in ourselves and our children:

• Create goals that really matter and are inspiring. In “Change or Die” Deutschman says that the goal “not to die” is simply too vague to create a change in behavior. Lopez argues that goals need to be manageable and personally inspiring. Fear is not a positive motivator for change.

• Find ways to convert hope into action. Deutschman argues that we need to frame change in a way that creates movement, celebrating small wins along the way. Lopez  says we need to be open to feeling the positive emotion of those wins, which can then generate more positive feelings when considering other change.

• Create and own your plan. Deutschman argues that our brains get hardwired into routine. By creating and owning action plans, rather than following somebody else’s recipe, we can overcome some of those natural tendencies towards inertia and internalize the new patterns. Eventually, a positive cycle is created when we see the benefits of new action thus feeling more hopeful in the future when we are confronted with a new challenge or obstacle.

Even though some of the challenges that confront us seem overwhelming, our Leadership Team left our fall retreat feeling excited about the future for our students and for Cary Academy. We are proud of what our school has become, and we expect that with continued hard work we have even brighter days ahead.

 We left feeling that the message isn’t: Change or Die.

It is: Hope for Change.