As I complete the “silver anniversary” of my years as
principal, president or headmaster of a Catholic high school this May, I’ve had
occasion to reflect on some of my basic beliefs about running Catholic high
schools. Here they are, in brief:
Schools should be
governed by relationships, not rules.
There’s no question that schools need order, and there’s no
order without rules that govern how things are done. But ultimately, “rules”
should come second and relationships first in the running of a school. Last
Friday, the senior’s last day of classes before exams, there was a rumor that
seniors intended to “walk out” of class at 1:30 p.m. and whoop it up,
disrupting classes up and down the hallways. Whereas in itself this would be
harmless, it’s been a particularly stressful second semester for us, with three
days missed due to snow days and teachers scrambling to “catch up,” two
teachers on maternity leave, and two teachers who broke contract and left early,
and I knew that such a protest would be very poorly received by our
faculty. So I asked to meet with the
seniors that morning in an impromptu session, and with 145 of them there, I
looked at them, asked them not to do the walk out and told them why. I didn’t threaten them, I didn’t warn them of
the consequence, I didn’t quote rules. I
simply asked them, as a favor, telling them that their teachers were really
stressed out right now. “Can I trust you?” I asked. “Yes," they said. And that
was that—the walk out never occurred.
It’s a dreadful mistake, in our interactions with students
and their parents, to “lead” with authority. Yes, the rules are there for
everyone to read, and if people disrespect the authority of the faculty or
principal, they are there to support that authority. But our first interactions
should always be human ones, founded on relationships that should develop in
our daily life together. When a student is doing poorly in a classroom, the
teacher shouldn’t threaten failure or bully, but meet the kid privately and
express concern, and ask how he or she can help. When an emotional parent calls us and is
critical, we should attempt to break through the hostility and humanize the
conversation, recognizing both the school and the parents want what is best for
the child, even if we have different visions of what that means. We should be
willing to forgive, where forgiveness is needed, and apologize, where apologies
are called for.
Teenagers understand that schools have rules, and they also
understand, sometimes grudgingly, that teachers must enforce them. But they
want to be respected as people first, and not handled as objects placed within
a template.
School rules should be
written to give leadership flexibility in handling individual circumstances.
When JPII was first established, it was a school of last
resort for many students, and according to our Dean of Students, some of those
kids were really troubled young men and women. In its first year, the school
expelled over thirty students. For that reason, the school’s disciplinary
policies were written in such a manner that allowed the school to quickly remove
kids. For example: “Students who are in possession of, use, or exhibit the
effects of use of alcohol at school or any school sponsored activity will be expelled (italics, mine).”
When I came to JPII as headmaster in its seventh year of
existence as a school, I decided to simply “run” the school I inherited in my
first year. Policy handbooks had already been published and it made sense that
I take a year to understand things before I started changing them. During
spring break that year, the boys baseball team participated in a week long “away”
tourney, and in the hotel room one night, three junior boys smuggled in a can
of beer and drank it it before being found out by their coach. I did what the
policy forced me to do—I expelled each of them (though I also invited each one
to re-enroll two months later to begin their senior year). As I started my second year, however, I
changed the policy from “will be expelled” to “will be liable for expulsion” so
as to give me discretion in handling individual circumstances.
“Should the punishment fit the crime or the person?” I am
guessing that most people would say, “the crime” out of a sense of justice and
fairness. But just as parents know, instinctively, that treating each of their
kids exactly the same doesn’t work , so too should Catholic schools in their
handling of students. Our primary purpose is to minister to kids, helping them
become the kind of person God wants them to be, and often, like parenting, this
takes creativity and wisdom. What works for that person? For that reason, a school should not be too prescriptive
in outlining its disciplinary consequences for each infraction of a school
rule. After discussing possible disciplinary penalties (detentions, Saturday
school, suspension and expulsions) our handbook says simply “The school will
impose disciplinary consequences for the infraction of school rules, dependent
on severity and context.” I have written
more about this here: http://ideasincatholiceducation.blogspot.com/2013/09/discipline-mercy-and-being-creative.html
Faculty are
professionals, and should be treated as such.
I’ve never cared for the term “supervision” because it
literally means I have a “higher” vision than the faculty. Perhaps I have a
broader vision, because of my responsibility for all the disparate parts that
create the school community, but I certainly don’t have a “higher” vision when
it comes to Physics, or Calculus, or A.P. English! Rather, I’ve hired professional Physics, Calculus and A.P. English teachers.
I think that distinction is an important one. Yes, there are
traits that all professionals exhibit: timeliness of grading, punctuality for
meetings and classes, reliability in meeting one’s duties in the parking lot or
lunch lines, timely communication with families and students about progress,
professional dress and demeanor, appropriate care and concern for students.
These expectations should be articulated by the principal, and when there are
patterns of poor performance, he should hold teachers accountable.
Regarding matters that touch closer to curriculum, it’s appropriate
for schools to require faculty to produce syllabi that reflect cognizance of
the national curricular discussions and thoughtfulness of design, that details
how students will be held accountable in grading, that gives approximate time
frames as to the sequencing. But the
choice of curriculum and its sequencing, the grade that a teacher assigns an
essay, the ultimate grade a teacher assigns a student in class—those are
professional decisions of the teacher and department and not the principal or
other school administrators. I believe
tight scripting of classroom content and sequencing by state Boards of
Education, or local boards, principals or other administrators sends a clear
message to faculty that they are NOT trusted professionals (who scripts
doctor’s interactions with patients? Lawyers with clients?), and the
unfortunate result of that messaging is faculty who begin to behave
accordingly, passively receiving instructions about what to teach from someone
else.
Angry parents some times want the principal to adjudicate
disputes about a grade on an essay or to change a quarter grade. I don’t do
that. I may advise a teacher privately on how to handle a situation, but I make
it clear I will support them if the issue is a discretionary decision on their
part. On the flip side, faculty must stand tall, and not pass on their
decision-making authority up the ladder, as we’re all tempted to do when a
decision we must make is unpopular.
Subsidiarity is the
correct organizational principle.
In Catholic social teachings, the “principle of
subsidiarity” means that things should be handled at the most local level
possible. There is wisdom to this. From 10,000 feet, it’s impossible to
distinguish a rich man’s crops from a poor man’s, but at ground level, one can
detect irrigation systems, the quality of machinery, and which crops are
plusher and greener. So too with school administration: the more decision
making authority a school can invest in those closest to the “action,” the
better--thus my belief that grades are teachers to give, not the school
administration.
Subsidiarity doesn’t
mean, however, that some decisions are not appropriately made at higher
level-rather, they should be made at the lowest level possible. As much as faculty may see things clearly in their
classroom, they do not necessarily have a panoramic vision of the entirety of
the school or the competing interests within a school. They are usually not
able to weigh, as an example, why a school might add P.E. teachers and not
English faculty for the purpose of obtaining strong coaches, but assign them
P.E. classes because they might be poor teachers in the core classroom. They
may not be able to understand why a colleague’s contract was non-renewed, because
they weren’t privy to the months and sometimes years of private discussions
between the principal and that colleague, or the improvement plan that was
defined for him or her, or the myriad complaints the principal has received from
parents about his or her job performance. They may not understand the desires of the
Board of Trustees, or fully understand the limitations of budgeting, or donors
who designate their giving for a specific end—a batting cage, perhaps, instead
of more computers or new smart board technology. Just as principals must trust faculties to
make decisions within their classroom relative to students, so too should
faculties trust principals to make decisions that require a broad assessment of
overall school needs. We each have important roles to play.
Boards are important
strategic partners.
When Boards focus on long term strategic vision, the
allocation of monies to make that strategic vision come to life, and the
creation of policies to support the leadership of the school and to preserve
and extend the school’s mission, they are hugely valuable co-partners in the
leadership of the school with the principal. They bring the school wise counsel
in areas reflecting their expertise, and their influence can often move diocesan
officials, reluctant by nature to think in terms of new paradigms, to action.
I have been blessed to work with Boards who think and act in
this way, and the result is they become dynamic forces for positive change in
the life of a school. But that’s not always the case. By the very fact that
most Board members are parents in the school, it is very easy for Boards to get
sucked into the day to day drama that all schools experience: the unhappy
daughter, upset by not making the cheerleading team, or the spouse of a Board member who is
unhappy with a teacher, or the cranky faculty member, upset by a perceived slight. When Boards intervene in
these affairs--when they choose to entertain the complaints of constituent
parties or presume to have authority in these matters-- the principal’s
authority is chopped off at the knees.
Long-term thinking is hard, because we are creatures of the
present, and it’s unnatural to think outside of our paradigms and beyond the
set of assumptions we all carry within us, unreflectively. It also requires
discipline and patience because the “rewards” of the work are deferred into the
future. Resisting the urge to stay out of the day to day, by tasking committees meaningful work that move the school thoughtfully toward
these longer-term goals, is the lynchpin for successful boards.
Principals must be
persons of great optimism and faith.
There’s a very human tendency in all of us, when things go
wrong, to blame leadership. Many Americans blame Obama for Russia invading
Ukraine. When rioting and looting started in Los Angeles after the Rodney King
decision, some city leaders blamed Bush for policies that they said contributed
to the rioting.
If parents are unhappy with a school, rather than people
wondering if there is dysfunction within the family that causes the
unhappiness, or if the child isn’t working hard enough, or if there are
financial pressures that are embarrassing for the families to admit publicly,
it’s much easier to blame the school principal. After twenty-five years, I can
tell you that unwarranted blame still hurts, and that a faculty's or family’s “happiness” is
such a subjective thing that it’s almost impossible to respond to or
substantively address. Even so, principals must remain positive and resist
becoming defensive or allow the school to devolve into “factions.” They must
look for ways to create healthy interactions between parents, students and
teachers, and they must foster traditions that unite.
One of the simplest and most beautiful traditions of our
school is “Senior Walk.” On the last day of school for seniors, two days before
their graduation, our seniors line up on one end of the school, students and
teachers come out of their classrooms and line the hallways, and while music is
being played, seniors “walk the hallway” for the last time, hugging their
teachers and friends. The relationships formed over four years—between teachers
and seniors, between seniors and underclassmen, between seniors themselves—are
evident for all to see, and very often, our seniors (the guys, too) are in
tears.
We live in a culture that veers quickly to the negative and
assumes the worst. The quality of family
life has deteriorated, and parents often feel so insecure in their
relationships with their children, they feel compelled to “take their child’s
side” against the school or teacher when their child has done something wrong.
Thirty years ago students begged for us “not to tell our parents,” more worried
about their parents’ punishment than whatever the school might dole out. No more. Now more than ever, principals must
be people of deep faith, who can see through the insecurities of others,
forgive those who say or do inappropriate things, and move on, positively,
without holding grudges. Now more than ever, principals really need to pray
regularly and stay connected to the liturgical and sacramental life of our Church.
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