Today I am making a pledge to abandon that metaphor (“Abandon Ship!”) as it seems to give us a ready-made excuse for slowing down, or giving up on, priorities we have named as being mission-driven and strategic. The metaphor slows us down because it traps our thinking—it becomes an accurate metaphor because we have chosen to believe it. From now on schools are not big ships. Schools are challenging enough without having them have to be ships as well.
The Annual Fund–A Vital Expression of School Affiliation
In the photographs I have included here, I have written the words our faculty wrote when asked to pick a single word they associate most closely with St. George’s Independent School. They picked their words at the same time they made their pledges to the Annual Fund. They are a powerful collection of words, and […]
Three Refrains for the Class of 2017: A Commencement Address
Good afternoon! Welcome to all gathered here in support of the St. George’s Independent School’s Class of 2017. This class has on a regular basis made me proud to be a part of this community. These seniors have earned this day in this place surrounded by this group—surrounded by families, by faculty, by staff, and […]
Soft Skills: The Wrong Name for Things So Vital
The SGIS community, prioritizes “soft skills”, names them, celebrates them. They are a vital part of each student’s learning, and our sacred hope is that its value lasts for their lifetime and even beyond it in the lives they will touch.
Student-Athlete Signing Day Talk
[Below the photographs I am reposting a Signing Day talk from a couple of years ago and from my tenure at a different school because I find on the Friday after National Signing Day that it is relevant to St. George’s Independent School and its student-athletes as well. We have a large and impressive group of college […]
An SGIS Faculty Meeting: Engaging, Listening, and Choosing the School
Without ENGAGEMENT, classroom experiences are empty calories, a virtual skimming across the surface of learning. Most dangerously, such experiences can become cynical exercises in jumping through hoops for academic rewards.