On Friday morning, the Stoneleigh-Burnham School Board of Trustees came over from the main building and visited the middle school classroom. The girls had prepared a series of talks on the various parts of their school day, including all classes, sports, and community service. All of them had augmented their talks in one way or another, whether with a PowerPoint presentation, a video, a DVD clip, or examples of student artwork and writing, using the Smart Board to aid in their presentations. They spoke for a total of just over half an hour, and when they were done one of the first questions out of the trustees' mouths was "The year is only a month old. Where did you find time to do all this?!" One of the 7th graders responded, "Oh, we did all this in a week and a half." Another trustee asked if they had always been this comfortable with technology, and after some of the students said that yes, that was true for them, another girl said she had never really used technology before. Asked why she had used and learned more about technology here, she said"basically because it's mandatory." She seemed initially a bit taken aback by the laughter that ensued, but one of the trustees quickly put her at ease by saying "No, that's honesty. That's good."
While the girls obviously get the vast bulk of the credit for performing this well under that kind of pressure, some of the credit must legitimately be shared by all the teachers and coaches who bring their classes and sports to life each day, and additional credit should go to Martha Shepardson-Killam, our Head of School, who did a great job of helping the kids feel comfortable in front of this unfamiliar group. She began by talking briefly about how inspired she was by what these girls were accomplishing, and then asked the trustees to introduce themselves and talk a bit about what they do for the school and why. She also let trustees and students know they were invited to mutually seek each other out at lunch and ask each other questions (one of the trustees said, perhaps only half-jokingly, "Please don't make them too hard!"). A number of SBS administrators who also attended the session were nearly moved to tears at how well the kids presented themselves and their ideas, and all in all we couldn't have been prouder of them.
That afternoon, three scant hours later, we had a team meeting wherein we struggled with several difficult issues, discussing how most appropriately and respectfully to handle a social problem involving three of the girls, and trying to figure out how to help all ten of them get ready for the fast-approaching student-led conferences when so much time had been given over recently to preparing for the presentation to the trustees. At one point, during a long and suspense-laden break in the conversation, I looked across at my colleague Katherine, who looked absolutely exhausted, and commented "You know, after all we went through to get ready for this morning, you'd think we'd get more of chance to sit back and relax and just enjoy the feeling of accomplishment." Her eyebrows rose expressively, her eyes widened, and she nodded slowly and said "Uh-huh." We mulled over that thought for a second, took a deep breath, and resumed the conversation where we'd left off, eventually developing two action plans to handle the two situations. We'll track their progress through the course of this week, and revise as needed. No rest for the weary! The kids' needs are just too important.
P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that much of New England is more than a little weary these days... and, as of this past Friday, the World Series hadn't even started!!! Go Sox!