The Benefit of the Doubt

We return from the Thanksgiving holiday to three and a half weeks of Relationships and Learning in the St. Johnsbury School. In a typical school year, this would be challenging at best. The time between Thanksgiving and the Winter Holiday Break is hard, without a pandemic. Add the unpredictability of our current public health circumstances, and it feels staggering. 

Make no mistake about it, we are up to the task. We have teachers ready for emergency remote days, prepared to teach an entire class or less, depending on the number of close contacts. We have paraeducators who are prepared to substitute and forgo their typical responsibilities to keep our building open. Foodservice employees are covering for vacant positions, and facilities personnel scrambling to ensure we have a clean building without an entire staff. We have administrative support staff covering desks they have never covered before. Our principals are struggling to visit classrooms regularly. Instead, they are making line lists for contact tracing. Our nurses are not nursing; they spend their days on the phones, calling parents, listening to frustrations and anger at our daily circumstances. 

I do not share this for people to feel sorry for us. I share this for perspective. The next three and a half weeks will undoubtedly have difficult moments. There will be misunderstandings, missteps, and miscommunications. We will make mistakes. Please know we are doing the absolute best we can given the less-than-ideal circumstances. 

Our district has already started the test to stay program. We have hosted one vaccine clinic before Thanksgiving and will have a follow-up on Thursday, December 9. Voluntary surveillance testing continues to occur weekly. We are doing absolutely everything that we can to keep our school open while our state struggles to contain the Delta variant. 

At the same time, we understand that our families and the St. Johnsbury community are doing everything possible to keep up with this ever-changing school year. We know these first few months have not been easy on our families. It's also reasonable to think that there is a higher than average level of stress, anxiety, and emotional anticipation going into these next three and a half weeks for families. 

Our focus this year is on Relationships and Learning. The only way our students will learn and grow is if they love coming to school. For some, this is their first time coming to school regularly in more than two years. To love coming to school, our students need to feel safe, welcome, and included. 

We are all doing our best. Our students, their families, and all our employees. All of us. 

We all deserve the benefit of the doubt. 

On Being Thankful

One of the ways I have tried to remain positive during this school year is to be intentional about my gratitude. I have written more handwritten thank you notes already this year than I can remember. I've tried to find specific ways to share meaningful words of thanks with people and honor the circumstances that our faculty, staff, and employees find themselves in this year. 

I'm focusing on gratitude because this year, perhaps more than any other in which I have served in leadership, there is very, very little that I can do to solve the problems brought to my attention. The people who report directly to me are describing circumstances in which there are no solutions. I don't mean that we can't come up with solutions. I mean, there are no solutions. 

We cannot make people magically appear and fill the open positions in our district. We cannot change the fact that the common cold symptoms are also the symptoms of COVID. We cannot make the circumstances of 2021 different. We can only alter our perspective and look through a different lens. 

It's an unenvious position to be in. Leading a school district and learning of problem after problem that no matter how much collective brainpower is put towards it, the best thinking is: "Let's just make the best of it." This is leadership in 2021. 

So I do my best to shift my focus, share this reality, and make myself present. I still can listen, be empathetic, and compassionate. My team can be mindful of this, see what we can do to reduce the non-essential demands on our employees, and move forward together. It's not ideal, but then again, neither are our circumstances. 

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that our employees keep showing up. Every day. Teachers who are teaching half-full classes. Nurses who bear the brunt of families' frustrations. Paraeducators who have assignments that shift, often daily. Foodservice staff members that do the work of two, sometimes three staff members. Facilities personnel who do not have a consistent assignment or enough colleagues to get the job done. Administrative support staff that find themselves at unfamiliar desks or in unfamiliar positions. Principals that have no time for instructional leadership but instead play a constant game of whack-a-mole. 

My gratitude extends also to our families who are rolling with all of these changes. They have to contend with symptomatic children and the uncertainty of our test to stay program. They wonder if the next e-mail message from me will upend their world, with the notification of a positive case, with close contacts. 

And last but certainly not least, I am abundantly thankful for our students. They smile behind their masks. They put in a hard day's work every weekday. They bounce through our doors because we are focusing on Relationships and Learning this year and making sure every single one of them feels safe, welcome, and included. To paraphrase Hugh Grant's line from the movie Love Actually, when I get gloomy with the state of the world, I go into a classroom. And I remember why I went into education in the first place. 

Presence matters, even if you can't solve people's problems. I was reminded of that earlier this year when I won a raffle for contributing to the St. Johnsbury Sunshine Fund. This fund is a way the adults in our district take care of each other when personal circumstances take a crummy turn. One of the prizes I won was a homemade shirt designed by one of our teachers. The shirt is done in the lettering of the TV Show Friends; the theme song is from The Rembrandts entitled, "I'll Be There For You." 

Presence matters, even if you can't solve people's problems. This year I'm thankful for that. 

Thank you to Tammy MacQueen, 5th Grade Teacher, St. Johnsbury School

On Test Scores

As I started the college process in the early 1990s, I heard a lot about the SATs. So much emphasis was placed on them that I took the PSAT (a practice version) and the SAT exam three times. It took me three tries on the actual exam to break 1,000, and that was back when there were only two sections! When I first showed my college counselor the list of schools I was interested in, I was told I should perhaps expand my list because my SAT scores were not "that good." I didn't expand my list, and I am proud to share that I got into all six schools. Most importantly, I ended up where I belonged and that had very little to do with what I got on my SAT exam. 

This was on my mind because the Smarter Balanced Assessment scores were released on a state-wide basis in Vermont this week. Not surprisingly, the scores fell from 2019, pre-pandemic. But there is a more significant issue when it comes to the emphasis on testing. It is a national law that we test our students every spring to ensure that we receive federal dollars to do our work in public schools. It is conditional. Unless we take these tests, we don't get desperately needed monies to support our work in education. 

In October, I turned forty-seven, and I cannot think of one time - in my entire life - that the results of a standardized test score were meaningful to me. Not one time. I can tell you what I got on the SAT, the third time I took it: 1040. I was enrolled in a course between the second time and my final try. The course taught me only how to take a test - nothing about the content. And even with that 1040, I was told I should consider other colleges. We place too much emphasis on testing. 

I don't remember when, but I do remember how I learned to ride a bike. There was a one-way street behind the home I grew up in. My dad held the back of my bike seat and ran with me to help me get started, and would let go when I had enough balance and momentum. We went back and forth many, many times. I fell, I swerved, I crashed. There were skinned knees, scraped knuckles, and a lot of bruises. And to this day, I still know how to ride a bike. I kept getting up, and we kept practicing. 

How many people failed their driving test the first time they took it? And if you did, were you banned from driving? Of course not. The instructor shared feedback on what you needed to practice, what you did well in, and when you could test again. The goal between the first and the second test is to keep up the driving skills you demonstrated capabilities in and work on those that needed improvement. That sounds an awful lot like life. 

I have had these conversations in Vermont since the move was made toward proficiency-based learning standards in our state. Often, I will hear, "Well, we need to prepare our students for the real world." OK, there's nothing more real-world than paying your taxes. What happens when you don't? You don't get a zero for not turning in your homework. There is a fine and a six-month extension. 

And when was the last time as an adult, we were asked to take a test, that was a condition of the work we do receiving resources. Resources, by the way that are desperately needed. That fund key positions in our schools, so communities are not required to provide additional support with their tax dollars. 

While thinking this through, as I write, I still can't remember a time when a test score was significant in my life. Even my dissertation defense, the culmination of years of work, was not scored. It was pass/fail. And yet, we've accepted the reality that state-wide test scores, from one moment in time, should be newsworthy. Along with it come the snickers and comments questioning the efforts of our educators, paraeducators, and those support staff who are making it possible for teaching and learning to take place. 

We've accepted the reality that standardized testing is something of a necessity. However, ensuring that it is discussed in the appropriate context is the work of education. As a dad and superintendent, I'm much more interested in the progress my own children and my school district's children make, not just the score they earn. There's too much emphasis on the scores and not enough about how we got there. 

If you saw me trying to learn how to ride a bicycle the first time, I would not have inspired confidence. I would not have earned a "passing score." Today I do know how to ride a bike. 

No matter how many times I fell in the beginning. 

Photo courtesy of www.blogs.baylor.edu

You Are Who You Are

When I was growing up, my parents had a set of yellow napkins that they saved, only for when we were eating at the dining room table. They were cloth napkins, not disposable, and we used them only when others came over to eat with us. We used disposable napkins when we ate at our breakfast table (where we had nearly every meal without guests). 

The reason I have such a specific memory of those napkins is because once, when our cousins were over for dinner, one of them helped me make a penalty flag with a yellow cloth napkin. Yes - a penalty flag, the ones used by football officials. A quick google search in 2021 yields the following eight options at the top of the page: 

However, no such internet existed in the early eighties when I was in elementary school, and more interested in the officials when I watched professional sports. Don't worry, I still knew all the names of my favorite Yankee, Giant, Ranger, and Knick players (and I still do). And I also knew the names of my favorite officials in each of the sports. For baseball, it was umpire Joe Brinkman, football it was referee Jerry Markbreit, hockey it was referee Kerry Fraser, and in basketball, it was referee Jake O'Donnell. 

I was not the best athlete growing up. I was good, and I played basketball and baseball. I was on my high school's junior varsity teams for both, but I didn't advance. I never made an all-star team, nor a traveling team. I didn't feel snubbed in any way. I knew the limits of my athletic ability, and I was not gifted in that way. But I did have an interest in officiating. So I pursued that. 

I started with the homemade penalty flag with pickup football games with my friends. I would play in the games, but sometimes I officiated. How could you argue with someone who comes to a neighborhood football game with a whistle around his neck and a legitimate-looking penalty flag? 

I took more of a serious approach after both my baseball and my basketball playing days were over. I started to umpire Little League baseball while in high school and eventually intra-mural basketball when I was in college. I continued to hone my skills on both the court and the baseball diamond, studying the rules of each level I was officiating. I bought my own equipment and made the time to honor my passion. 

Ironically, I've never stepped onto a football field as an official, despite the hard work I put in on the random fields of Mt. Vernon, NY as a ten-year-old amateur official with my friends. There is still time, but currently, I officiate high school basketball through Vermont's International Association of Approved Basketball Officials, Board 105. Our season is just around the corner. 

From time to time, I do think about what would have happened if I had more athletic ability. But I also know that we are in desperate need of officials at all levels of sports, and I take a lot of pride in the work I do as a referee and an umpire, as do my fellow officials. Our hope is always that we are rarely noticed and that the game never comes down to an official's call. 

I do think about the what-ifs. But I also know that I love being an official, and I would not trade it, even if offered the opportunity to be an athlete. It's how I contribute to the games that I love. 

And it's who I am. 

Photo courtesy of www.everypixel.com