Before we forge ahead with talk about our campus, and book discussion, and administrivia, I want to take a moment to thank you for committing to being part of the ISW faculty for the 2022-23 school year. ISW may be a secular school, but our work is truly sacred. We are entrusted with keeping our students safe while also challenging their minds. We are entrusted with, quite literally, shaping the future.
In a year when educators are abandoning the profession in droves—many for very good reasons—you chose to continue your commitment to the children of our school and to the future of humanity. After two and half years of mind-bending, heartbreaking cultural and political challenges, our children and young adults desperately need first class educators. They need YOU: people who believe in and live out our school values of respect, responsibility, integrity, empathy, and commitment to education every single day. Thank you for choosing to stay in this incredibly important profession.
One of my favorite humans retired from being an administrator after more than 30 years in independent schools this past June. I was crushed because she is brilliant and incredibly knowledgeable about kids, and I didn’t think she was done. I know, none of my business, but you know me—dean of the world. Happily, she decided to return to teaching and as part of a Facebook exchange about this decision, she wrote the following advice to a new teacher of first graders. “[The students] are physically exhausting…hydrate all day long. Give brain breaks, switch gears every 15 minutes or so, give them opportunities to stand, sit, walk, move. Make ‘respect’ central to everything. Let them see you enjoying them, liking them. Focus on the good stuff each day, let the other stuff go at the end of the day, reminding yourself that you have done the best you could.” It seems to me that it applies to all of us.
Welcome to the new school year. And thank you.