It's Not About the Game

Nine people every day. 

Nine people get the same graphic from me via text message at some point in the morning. 

A handful of people get to see actual letters that I played. 

I'm talking about Wordle. 

Per the New York Times, the game was created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Brooklyn, initially developed for him and his partner in 2021. As a play on his own last name, he called it Wordle and, to start only shared it with his partner, but then expanded to his family's WhatsApp group. He released it to the world on November 1 when ninety people played it. Statista said it went from the ninety the New York Times reported to around 300,000 in January of 2022 and gained over 2 million players a week later. 

I'm not here to tell you about the numbers around Wordle. I'm here to tell you that I love playing it. But I love sharing it with these nine people more. 

It's a way to make and maintain connections with friends and family. I share with My Wife, our oldest son, as well as my mother and step-father-in-law. I share with a dear friend who spoke at our wedding, one of our groomsmen, and a former coaching colleague. Finally, I have a text chain with two former colleagues from a school in Chicago where we met. 

Yes, we share our shaded Wordle results daily. I started sharing my results (taking a screenshot) with my former coaching colleague first. During one of our exchanges, he wrote, "Let's make this like fourth-grade math where we show our work." I need to point out that he's not a teacher because that is something an educator would say, and it made me laugh out loud. 

But this is so much more than a five-letter game where you have six chances to get it right. It's a way to maintain daily connections with people, some of whom don't live close and I don't see as often as I want to. It's led to laugh-out-loud moments (see above), ridiculous GIFs (when someone gets it in one or two tries), and words of consolation when you get the dreaded X/6. This means you did not get the Wordle in six tries, and your streak is broken. 

And yet, it's a place to share pictures of grandchildren, as one of my former colleagues from Chicago did when his daughter had her first baby. It's a way to check in with my mother-in-law in the days after she had to send their dog over the rainbow bridge. It's how I can needle a friend who is an Orioles fan, even though they're making the playoffs this year, and my beloved Yankees are battling the Red Sox for last place in the American League East. 

I can keep a daily connection with Our Son without being intrusive. I can get an update on a U6 soccer league in Los Angeles, California, from our friend whose son is playing for the first time. I can ask about how my stepfather's mom is doing while complaining about the validity of the Wordle word of the day. 

Yes, I can do all this through a text or a phone call. Often, I do follow up with a phone call to hear the voices of the people I play with. We make the time and the effort to see the out-of-state friends I play with whenever possible. Wordle makes our world smaller and closer while trying to keep our streaks and our friendships intact. 

It's a life lesson about relationships. They need to be nurtured, maintained, and cultivated. There's no recipe that guarantees success, but a daily check-in after playing a word game, sprinkled with updates, questions, love, and empathy, ensures that those on the other end of the text chain know they matter to me beyond the games we play. 

This is how I want our students to feel. I want them to know that they matter. They can come to East Greenwich Public Schools exactly the way they are. No conditions have to be met for us to be our best professional selves for our students. Our job is to ensure that every student feels safe, welcomed, and included when they come to school so they can learn and grow to the best of their abilities. It's not about their test scores, homework completion, athletic prowess, or extra-curricular participation. Our students matter when they walk through our doors. Period. 

Not surprisingly, my first word is always TEACH. So, when I share my shaded letters, people can get a glimpse of how I did and try to shape their guesses based on mine. I've had my streak broken twice in the past two months. It's always the words that have plenty of options, and I cannot guess the last letter correctly. 

My relationships with family and friends, though, are safely ensconced, thanks in part to our daily Wordle interactions. 

My Wordle for Monday, September 25

My statistics as of Monday, September 25

Age is But a Number

I am an extrovert. I draw energy and inspiration from being around others. Whether it is My Family, my colleagues, or strangers, I enjoy being around people. On an AAU weekend basketball weekend a couple of years ago, almost the entire team ate together. As you would expect, there was a table of adults and a table of young people. Both tables placed our orders, and we settled in to wait for our food to come to the table. Given the size of our party, I expected the wait to be considerable, and it was. 

What made the time go quickly, though, was that I asked the entire table to share what the first concert they attended was. It was so much fun to hear people's musical tastes, their experiences, and, almost to a person, the smile on their faces. For the record, mine was Billy Joel and Elton John, floor seats at Giants Stadium before it was renamed MetLife. 

As I retold this story this summer to some friends, My Wife and I realized that neither of our children had yet to go to a concert. When we were their ages (17 & 15), we had already been to our first concerts, so we kept our eyes open for possible options. As it turned out, given our AAU schedule this summer, dates and times were hard to line up. We even went as far as to see if we could see a concert while we were away at an AAU tournament. No dice. It seemed like we would go another summer without Our Boys attending their first concert. 

Until we saw that a friend of ours could not use their tickets to the Bruce Springsteen concert at Gillette Stadium. With a couple of clicks and a direct message later between My Wife and her friend, the tickets were ours! No one in our Family had seen "The Boss" in concert, and he did not disappoint. Three hours straight. No intermission. A curtain call or two. We did not sit down once. Oh, and Mr. Springsteen spent most of the evening with the biggest smile on his face: 

And did I mention that he's 73? 

It was an epic evening for Our Family. Not to be outdone, My Wife surprised me with tickets to Jackson Browne, just the two of us, at Tanglewood a week later. She bought the tickets for us as a summer send-off. He, too, did not disappoint, and one of my favorite lines from The Pretender is: "I'm gonna find myself a girl, who can show me what laughter means. And we'll fill in the missing colors in each other's paint-by-number dreams." It makes me think of My Wife every time. Every. Single. Time. 

In case you're wondering, Mr. Browne is 74, almost 75 (in October). 

When you're young, ages are things to be attained. At 16, you can drive a car. At 18, you can vote. At 21, you can drink. At 25 you can rent a car on your own. Then, at some point in your twenties (or thirties), depending on your mindset, the desire to age takes on a different perspective. As a culture, we tend to celebrate the decades. I had an epic 40th birthday surprise party and have been a part of several others for friends when they hit the "big fill-in-the-blank-0."

And I was in awe of these two men, in their mid-seventies, playing, singing, and dancing late into the night. Skeptics will point out that they are well-paid, don't need the money, and don't work full days. What I do know is that both of these men are passionate about their music. And regardless of how well they're paid, they would not do it if they both didn't love it. 

Their voices did not sound exactly like the music I first heard on the radio growing up and now dial up instantly on my phone. Clearly, they've aged, but based on the reactions of both crowds, it didn't matter. Their music caused us to buy the tickets in the first place and stand on our feet for a combined five and a half hours to listen, dance, and, in some cases, sing along. 

I don't plan on working when I'm their age, which is less than twenty-five years ahead in my future. I do plan on still doing things that I'm passionate about. Fortunately, I had people around me in my life who fueled and helped me create the time to do those things that mean a great deal to me. My Family still does this. 

It's essential that we give our students the chance to explore what they're passionate about. What blows their hair back. What makes them feel authentically themselves. Things they would do that don't feel like "work." I am very fortunate that serving as Superintendent of Schools rarely feels like "work" to me. But there will come a day when I want to do something other than this kind of work. And I'm hopeful that when that day comes, I can remember the lesson that Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen taught me this summer: 

That age is but a number. 

The Ricca Family singing Thunder Road.

Mrs. Fair

Growing up in the 80s, I went to elementary school right around the corner from my home in Mt. Vernon, NY. Pennington Grimes Elementary School was Kindergarten through sixth. There were three sections for each grade. There were also plenty of what we called "Specials" then, which are now called "Related Arts." Physical Education (we called it gym), Art, Music, and Computers (it was a lab with state-of-the-art TRS-80s) would rotate through our schedules. In some classes, there was one teacher for each special. In the case of art, there were two teachers, and with all due respect to the other teacher of art at PG while I was a student there, Mrs. Carole Fair was my favorite. 

It had nothing to do with the subject itself - to this day, I struggle with the concepts of art. I can do basic shapes, I can color in the lines, and paint-by-number was a childhood favorite. What I had a hard time doing back when I was a student was to make what I was doing look like the exemplar. Honestly, I have a hard time doing that today when it comes to art. But Mrs. Fair saw my brilliance every time. Every. Single. Time. 

It didn't matter if it was painting or colored pencils. Clay or caricature. Pottery or perspective. Mrs. Fair made me feel like an artist. Even if I didn't see it, and more often than not, I did not see it. Mrs. Fair found something that made me feel like my work, my efforts, my renderings were worthy of stellar, authentic praise. 

How do I know this? Because more than thirty-seven years later, I can still "feel" her impact on my life. In the past several years, that is due to the human and kind side of social media. She commented on every blog post I wrote, she would "love" and praise the posts about my own children when I bragged about them, and she found a way to tell me how proud she was of me. Yes, at almost forty-nine years old, it still lands when one of your favorite teachers tells you how proud she is of you. 

Mrs. Fair taught more than just art. She taught about relationships. She ensured that we were kind to others in her room, to the people, and to the work they were doing. She found ways to help us see our mistakes as masterpieces with a quiet suggestion whispered in our ears. To be clear, there were no mistakes in art in Mrs. Fair's room. There was never anything that we could do in her classroom that was "wrong" unless we treated someone else (or their work) poorly. Mrs. Fair taught us life lessons, in a room that was tucked in the back corner of the first floor, just to the left of the stage, in the auditorium. 

Sadly, Mrs. Fair passed away in August, leaving a legacy of mistake-free art students writing beautiful memories of her and no doubt attending her services in person. Her creativity and passion for art were only exceeded by her desire for us to be good people to each other and in the world. There is no doubt in my mind that one of the reasons I put relationships first is because I learned that lesson very early and very clearly from educators like Mrs. Fair at 20 Fairway Street, Mt. Vernon, NY. 

It was never about the art. It was about the people. A lesson Carole Carrozza Fair spent a lifetime teaching us, even after she left the classroom. 

Thank you, Mrs. Fair. 

Photo courtesy of Cristina Emilio Donnelly, PG Class of 1987 

All Means All

One of the aspects of East Greenwich Public Schools that I am proudest of is the power and simplicity of the title of our Strategic Plan, "All Means All." It attracted me to EG during the interview process and is something I've been able to refer to regularly in my first year. It's not just lip service, either. Our district has absolute clarity around these words regarding teaching and learning. Are we perfect? No - not even close. But these words mean something to all of our employees, who are responsible for creating an environment for all students to learn to their fullest potential. That means three things to me: All students must feel safe, welcomed, and included when they come to our buildings. 

If we do those things, our students will achieve what they are capable of, and they will be able to grow and improve from last year. One of the things that almost all students wonder about on the first day of school is, "Will my teacher like me?" To find out quickly that this is a non-issue opens up endless possibilities for our students, embracing them exactly the way they are as they come through our doors. It doesn't matter who they love, what their skin color is, what gender they identify as, how much money their parents' house cost, or what their grades were last year - all that matters is that they are here in front of us now, with a brand-new school year ahead of us. 

When students feel safe, welcomed, and included, they can be thoughtful about answering the questions that will come at them this year, most importantly, "Who are you?" If I think about that question, my first two answers have nothing to do with my job: I'm a husband to Michal and a father to Patrick and Brendan. Those come first. So, instead of asking our students the age-old question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" We need to ask our students instead, "Who are you?" and let that inform what paths to consider pursuing for possible future employment. 

Given the realities of our world, it is probable that this year's class of 2024 from East Greenwich High School will have multiple jobs across different fields in their lifetimes. Some of the jobs they may be applying for don't even exist today. Given that alone, the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" does not age well. 

In addition, we want our children to grow up to be people others can also feel safe around. We want our students to be the kind others turn to in need. We want them to take care of themselves, each other, and this place. The future of our planet depends on stewardship from this generation because we, as adults, have not done our part. Perhaps there is a budding environmentalist in one of our elementary schools, Cole, or the high school. We want to create the conditions for that passion to flourish, for those conversations to happen, and for that spark to be lit. 

Those conditions are cultivated, nurtured, and maintained by all of the employees of East Greenwich Public Schools. Not just the Teachers. Not just the Paraeducators. They do the bulk of the work. They're supported by our Administrative Support Staff, Facilities staff, those in Technology, the Leadership Team, and everyone in our District Office (Finance, Human Resources, and Student Support Services). We are all supported by the School Committee and Town Council. 

Collectively, it's our job to ensure that All Means All is not just the title of our Strategic Plan but the lived experiences of all our students PK - 12. To do that, all students must feel safe, welcomed, and included when they come to school. When we do that, we can ask our students who they really are and be inspired by their answers. 

Photo courtesy of @DrBradJohnson