StC News

Faculty and Staff Opening Service

August 24, 2020
Good morning. It is wonderful to be with our Upper School faculty here on the Terraces and with our Lower School, Middle School, and Extended Day faculty and staff and administrators remotely all over our beautiful campus. 

I want to thank our three chaplains, including our new Lower School Chaplain, the Reverend Darren Steadman, for their planning and service today, as well as our wonderful faculty musicians and our technology team for making this unconventional Opening service possible. Thank you all. 

In the winter of 2008 I accepted an offer to become Head of a small Episcopal school in New Orleans. I was 33 years old and probably not fit to be the Head of anything, much less a school, one that was well established and respected, but still licking its wounds three years after Hurricane Katrina brought significant physical and emotional damage to the school community. 

Still, the School was willing to take a chance on me, and so Megan and I, after 11 years of happy but harried living in Washington, DC, then with a two-year-old Patrick and a two-month-old Carter, were ready for a change of scenery and an adventure. We moved from the Type-A capital of the world, Washington, to the Big Easy, New Orleans, where Type As either leave or become reformed, adapting to the quasi-Caribbean lifestyle in what may be the most playful city in America.

I showed up for my first day of work on June 15, a day the temperature reached 109 degrees with humidity more oppressive than anything we have ever experienced here in Central Va. It was three-showers-a-day kind of heat.

On that first day I learned that I had 11 teaching positions that needed to be filled before the start of school in less than two months—I had known that I had several to fill, but not 11. On my second day, the School’s long-time Business Manager, the only person on campus besides me authorized to sign checks or enter into contracts, told me she would be retiring in two weeks. 

Megan and the boys had decided to hang back in Washington for the summer, to give me time to get settled and to focus on my new role. It was a good move, because I basically lived at the School those first two months, doing anything and everything possible to prepare for the start of school and to help re-establish a community with a solid foundation, but one that was still reeling from the Hurricane and several disruptive events that followed. 

Over the next few years, some beautiful things happened. I did fill those 11 vacancies, with some amazing faculty and staff, many of whom are still serving the School today. We re-established a healthy enrollment for the School, growing it by over 35% in three years. We helped launch a new Middle School and a new early childhood program. We grew arts and athletics programming significantly, we increased the School’s racial and socioeconomic diversity, we funded and built a new classroom building, and much more. The best part was, it was a true team effort. It took me a few years, but we developed a core administrative team, a talented faculty and staff, and a supportive Board of Governors that all worked together to create something special in New Orleans, at a time when people were looking for something positive to cling to. 

Heck, the Saints won the Super Bowl my first year at the School, and we sang “When the Saints Go Marching In” every Friday morning in Chapel. 

It’s hard to describe it or fully capture it now, some 12 years later and a 1,000 miles away, but there was a spirit, a positive energy that you could feel, momentum growing in our school community that we were doing something special, together. I felt a camaraderie with my community, the teachers and administrators but also the students and families, too. It was special, and it remains an important part of Megan’s and my life. 

After four or five years, we had a hit a groove and the School had stabilized a bit. I still felt fulfillment and a sense of purpose with our work, but it was not the same as those early, overwhelming, but energizing days.

It was in my seventh year in New Orleans that the Headmaster position at St. Christopher’s emerged. While we were still very happy in New Orleans and our children were established and doing well, the opportunity to return to the boys-school world in my hometown and closer to Megan’s family was too good for us to ignore. 

I have loved my first four years here at St. Christopher’s, deeply impressed by our mission commitment and the incredible caliber of people and programming we offer. We do so many things for our boys and our broader community, and we do them well. 

Still, I will confess that I had not felt that same sense of energizing inspiration, of vibrant cohesion and camaraderie, that I knew in my early days in New Orleans. I have felt fulfillment, challenge, gratitude, and satisfaction, but it has been distinct from that curious rush I felt when we were facing overwhelming odds as a scrappy and determined team trying to restore an important New Orleans institution.

I had not felt it at St. Christopher’s, that is, until this past spring and summer. 

Let me be clear that I would never wish for a catastrophic hurricane or in this case, a pandemic. However, it seems clear to me that crises do have the effect of bringing people together, particularly school communities, providing a common rallying point and shared sense of purpose.
 
For us these past six months, first it was figuring out how to suddenly pivot from in-person to remote learning in a matter of days and then how to conclude a school year with all of its ending rituals and tributes in some dignified manner. We did both of those things in March, April, May, and June, and we did it as we do everything here, with excellence and primary commitment to the wellbeing of our boys.

In mid June we hosted a farewell lunch for Benita Griffin, and in her remarks to members of the Administrative Team, she challenged that group and our entire faculty and staff to continue to work together, as a team, across departments, divisions, or artificial dividing lines that can sometimes exist on this campus. She commented that we had never been more close, paradoxically, than during the three months we spent in distance learning this spring. I think she was right. 

I could not be more proud of how every one of you comported yourself this spring and over the summer, stepping up and doing things both new and difficult. We all proved that we possessed the 21st century skills we have been preaching to our boys for years—resilience, collaboration, and technological savvy. Moreover, you did it with grace and professionalism. Throughout this entire spring and summer, I did not hear a single negative comment from any of you—no bemoaning our unfortunate fate, just a resolved determination to do whatever needed to be done for the good of our boys. Thank you.

Now, as to our in-person gathering and posture for this fall.  

I have never a faced a decision more difficult or complex than the one we made this summer to hold fast to our plans to open our campus in person in just a matter of days. I take ultimate responsibility for that decision, as headmaster, but you should know it was not a decision I made alone. 

Throughout this summer, I have leaned—and will continue to lean—on the wisdom and perspective of members of our School Readiness Task Force, our broader Administrative Team, our Board of Governors, and you, our faculty and staff. We have consulted with physicians, pediatricians, and infectious disease specialists, individuals both within and beyond our Saints community. 

Many of you have reached out to me to express how you are feeling right now—excited, scared, conflicted, anxious, and all of the above.

I feel those same emotions, and I strongly suspect most of you feel conflicted, in some way, torn over whether this is the hard right and not the easy wrong, in this crucial moment in history.

I have been thinking about the term, courage, a lot this summer, which I now understand to be subtly distinct from bravery, a word I might have chosen as a synonym before I conducted a bit of research.

The etymology of the two words, how they came to be in their English forms, is revealing. 

Brave is Italian in origin, with Latin roots. Its Italian form is “bravo;” its Latin origin “barbarus”—meaning “untamed” or “savage.”

Courage, meanwhile, comes to us most recently from the French, but also with Latin roots. Both its French and Latin antecedents relate to the heart.

In our psalm reading this morning, the passage concludes, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage.” [Let your heart take courage.]

In comparing the two terms, bravery can be thought of more as a state of being, perhaps an emotion, possessing and demonstrating a fearlessness, even when up against immediate danger.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider myself a brave person. I feel fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. I feel it more this school year than I have ever felt it in my life. 

I am doing all that I can, just as you are, to summon the courage to face that fear, to look it in the eye, and to pass through it. This comes from my heart, and I see it in your heart, too. 

You are showing courage by being here, in person. You are demonstrating your love, your heart, for our boys and this community. I do believe, in my heart, that we are choosing the Hard Right over the Easy Wrong, but I question that choice 100 times each day. 

Please know that we will enter this most extraordinary year with an open and listening heart. We will listen to each other, and I will listen to you. We will be nimble and adaptive to what is best for our boys, as well as what is best for our entire community.

When I told Whitney Edwards that I wanted to speak about courage with you all today, she shared with me the Hebrew word, “chazak,” which can be translated as either physical strength or spiritual strength. 

But here is the important piece--In order to access that strength, the ancient rabbis taught that you must call upon God and members of your community for access. In many Jewish synagogues, when they finish reading one of the five books of the Torah, it is customary to shout: “Chazak, chazak v’nitchazek! Chazak, chazak v’nitchazek!"  

Translation:  “Be strong, be strong and we shall be strengthened! Be strong, be strong, and we shall be strengthened!”

Thank you all, and may God bless us in our opening days. Amen. 
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