The Persistence of Memory

(This post has nothing to do with the awesome Dali painting of the same name!)

All memory is selective. Very few people remember every detail of everything that has ever happened to them (I’m looking at you Marilu Henner!) Tonight I’ve been thinking about how that happens. How do we select what memories to keep vividly in the front of our brains? How do we decide what to bury in the murky depths? Are those memories that we’ve selected real or did we construct them from pieces of the truth to build a more interesting/positive/useful/coherent-with-our-personal-biases memory?

This ruminating began because of something I posted to social media. I recalled that, on my first day as a teacher, my principal told me, “We have a lot of good kids in this school, but remember – good kids make poor decisions every day. They’re still good kids.” I put that in quotation marks even though there is absolutely no possibility that I remember the quote word-for-word. I very clearly remember the meaning of what Sister Helen Marie said to me that day, though, so the specific details of my dubiously constructed memory really aren’t that important, are they?

One of my early mentors replied with a wise quote from his first principal. Obviously he doesn’t remember the quote perfectly, but that doesn’t matter. He remembers the meaning.

This led me to think about my memories and to wonder how authentic they actually are, both the good and the bad ones. As somebody who has felt sometimes-crippling anxiety through most of his life, I can vividly remember many experiences that feed that anxiety. I wonder, though – are those true memories or things my brain has constructed along with the ever-present anxiety? I can still feel very real feelings of guilt when I think about the time I was somewhere around seven years old on a family vacation to Myrtle Beach. We went to play minigolf, as you do at the beach. Some of the holes were constructed in the familiar way where there are multiple intermediate holes that you can aim for and each has a tube that brings the ball to a good or bad spot on a lower green. When we got to the 18^th Hole, I noticed that the cup was not a regular cup, but a tube, so I assumed it led to a lower green that I could not see. I had my mother’s ball in my hand and dropped it in the hole to see where it would come out. Instead it disappeared, because it was the last hole, and the balls go to a container to be retrieved later. I felt so guilty about taking away my mother’s chance to play the last hole that I still feel it to my core when I remember that day now. Was it a big deal? No. Did anybody else in my family remember that incident for more than 5 minutes? Probably not. Did anybody react at the time like it was a big deal? I have no idea – it doesn’t matter. I, in my child brain, felt like it was a big deal, so that memory was forever imprinted on my brain with that emotion.

The details of memory seem to be completely unreliable, but the feelings and lessons last for a lifetime. As I work with students, I need to remind myself of that. When that same student interrupts my planning block for the nth time to ask a question about the homework, I need to remember that, 20 years from now, they will not remember any of the details about what I said or what problems we worked on, but they will remember how I made them feel. When I interact with the people I love, I need to remember that the tone is more important than the syntax. As somebody driven by anxiety, I also need to be more forgiving of myself and understand that the overwhelming memories of how I felt in some situations are just as unreliable. The late, great Wake Forest professor Maya Angelou is often credited with saying, ““I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I take that quote as both an admonition and a caveat. I need to think about how my interactions with people will make them feel, because that is the long-term takeaway. I also need to remember that how people made me feel is a product of my own anxiety and not necessarily the intended result of what they said or did. I frequently tell people to “assume positive intent” when interpreting what other people say or do. Now I just need to figure out how to make the subconscious part of my brain do that when storing away these long-term memories!

Life is Incredible

One day this week, I was walking back to my dormitory apartment after cross country practice and bumped into a student of mine. He is an incredible young man who lives on the island of Manhattan and has an amazing relationship with his younger brother (who lives on my hall of the dorm.) I was rushing a bit to see my fiancée before heading back to watch the varsity girls’ soccer game, so I was not really in the right mind at the time to hear what he said. It has been taking up space in the back of my mind ever since, which means it’s time for another blog post.

This student (we’ll call him Peter to protect his privacy), was throwing a football with friends, but intercepted me and said, “I’ve been thinking since we talked in class the other day. You’ve lived an incredible life.” My mind immediately went to thoughts like – Incredible? Maybe incredible that I can pay my bills each month without going into debt. Incredible? My tiny apartment with faux-wood floors, drop-ceilings, and a tub/shower that is so permanently stained that it is impossible to tell what the original color was, might disagree. Incredible? My big night out (when it’s possible to fit it in) is grocery shopping on Saturday night with my fiancée. My life may be satisfying, happy, and exactly what I want it to be, but incredible? Certainly not.

Peter then went on to talk about different stories I’ve told in class and how he connected with them. That got me thinking about these last 50 (cough! choke!) years. And you know what? They’ve been pretty incredible.

I grew up as a faculty child at a boarding school where everybody looked out for everybody and we kids had the run of the campus. As a child, I met students from around the world and got a global perspective few kids have, especially in Lynchburg, Virginia. Throughout my school years, I was blessed with teachers I still learn from today. When I skipped second grade, I needed to learn cursive writing in the summer, and did so at the kitchen table of Jackie Meador, who was much more than a teacher to me. A decade later, I learned Latin at that same table from Max Meador, who was recovering from brain cancer but still took the time to discuss Virgil with me a few times each week (and life, and all the amazing things in his home office – I’ll never forget that banjo!)

In high school, I had the opportunity to travel to Italy, England, and Scotland through the generosity of my grandmother Lucy, a teacher herself, who wanted to give me those worldly experiences. From my grandparents, I learned to shoot the rapids in a canoe, fly-fish, appreciate the rich and neglected history of Southern Illinois, and enjoy the perfection of cinnamon-baked apples on biscuits.

In college, I had a wealth of opportunities I one day hope to deserve. My scholarship paid for me to backpack around Germany in the summer of my freshman year. While that trip was intended to be academic, it was much more personal in reality. I learned how to be alone with myself and how to be self-reliant. I learned how to connect with strangers, but to maintain a safe distance at the same time. I learned that lard on bread is salty and gross, but sleeping alone in a thousand-year-old castle overlooking a cute town can be the most awe-inspiring experience. The following summers, my scholarship paid for more traditionally academic experiences. I learned how big advances are the result of thousands of small steps, and you should never discount your contribution, no matter how small it seemed.

Life after college has seemed predictable. I settled on the safe route of following my parents into teaching in boarding schools. I wanted to give my children a similar experience to what I had growing up in that kind of community. While that was absolutely the right decision and I wouldn’t change a thing, I never really thought of my experience as incredible. I simply got through each day as best I could and hoped for the best. When I look back, though, it WAS pretty incredible.

I’ve lucked into the opportunity to meet people like Carl Sagan, Sandra Day O’Connor, Margaret Atwood, Marian Wright Edelman, Desmond Tutu, John Lewis, Ibram X. Kendi, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Ryan, Davis Phinney, and George H. W. Bush. I’ve also lucked into the opportunity to meet equally incredible, but less famous people, like Steve Castle, Vaughn Winchell, Damian Walsh, Cara Transtrom, Perry Epps, Saka, Brigid Kemmerer (okay, she’s pretty darned famous at this point), Madison Hughes (famouser and famouser by the day), Chris Kim, Kim Olsen, Leigh-Anne Krometis, Grace Barnhart, Stafford Graham, Sarah McKinley Austin, Paul Blake, Mason New, Natasha Wanjiru, Olivia Tucker, LizaBanks Campagna, Luiji Vilain, Molly Pugh, etc., etc., etc. I’ve watched my own children grow into amazing young adults with the kind of courage I’ve never had.

While my students get excited about the stories I can tell about an active shooter across the street from my daughter’s day care, my participation is a failed rescue of a drowning victim, and my successful participation of a rescue of two mountaineers in a blizzard, what I get excited about is the people I have met along the way. This has been a pretty incredible life so far, and I hope there are many more years to come. The secret is to keep learning and to keep challenging yourself. Even more importantly, you have to be open to opportunity. When something new and different comes along, say YES and challenge yourself to learn everything you can from that opportunity. If you take those opportunities, while life may seem pretty mundane while it’s happening, when you look back on everything you’ve done, all the people you’ve met, and everything you’ve learned, you’ll discover that life is pretty darned incredible and worth every minute of it!

Happy New Year!

 It is nowhere near January 1, and although Rosh Hashanah is rapidly approaching, I am not referring to that Happy New Year either. My fellow teachers know exactly what I mean - Happy New SCHOOL Year!

It's been a tumultuous couple of years. First, I chose to leave a school where I had lived and worked for 20 years. (I could write many posts about why.) I moved on to the school where I had dreamed of teaching for my entire career. That year was a true turning point in my career/life. It is a great school and exactly the right place for many students to discover their passions and prepare for elite colleges. It just wasn't the right fit for me. I need a smaller school with a very small, tight community. I need a school that adapts to meet the needs of the current students rather than one that puts the standards first and pushes students to meet them. I worry that I haven't phrased that well. Both schools have very valid ways of approaching education, but I fit my new school better. My new school meets each student where they are and pushes them to be more than they thought they could be. It's not just the school motto, it's also something they do every day. I LOVE that focus on the individual student.

I've now been living on the campus of my new school for just over a week and have really enjoyed meeting new people and starting to find my place in the community. I can't wait for the students to arrive and really get started on our mission. To all my fellow teachers out there, I hope you have as amazing a fall as I am confident that I will have! Enjoy the last few days of your summer!

Coming soon - Vanquished is the Foe!

Every once in a while you have an experience that leaves you thinking, “The world is changing for the better.” Today was one of those days. I wrote recently about “Steve,” who tragically took his own life 19 days ago at the age of 21. Today I attended his memorial service with hundreds of other people whose lives he touched in that short span. As one would expect, the service was emotionally devastating, but I came out of it very optimistic.

 

My optimism actually started when I first read the official statement by Charlie’s family about his death. (Steve was one of the many nicknames Charlie went by.) It was phrased very similarly to what you tend to read when somebody dies of cancer. It stated that, after a long and valiant battle, Charlie died of the disease of Depression. Yes, Charlie took his own life, but I found that phrasing incredibly important. He didn’t die of suicide; he died of Depression – an extremely common disease which is only just beginning to be treated as such.

 

The service focused on Charlie’s kindness, his humor, his humble passion. His friends and family talked about his love for music and sports and helping others. His willingness for playing the guitar for his friends when he was still in the early stages of learning inspired those around him to do the things they loved unapologetically and without worrying about making mistakes or being embarrassed. His was a life of joy, surrounded by incredible friends and a loving, supportive family. He also suffered from a chronic disease whose treatment is different for every patient and even different day-to-day for any given patient.

 

While the speakers today focused mainly on their love for Charlie and the times they shared with him, they also gave glimpses into the different ways that they are dealing with their grief. Geordie – a good friend from high school – has spent time gathering with his and Charlie’s mutual friends to support each other and talk through this tragedy together. Charlie’s sister, Grace, has found comfort in her faith and how her relationship with Charlie brought her closer to her God. His other sister Abby expresses herself through art and processed her grief by creating a video compilation of music, images, and film which showed the many sides of her brother throughout his life. His college fraternity brother, Mack, mentioned the bracelets that his fraternity has made, featuring Charlie and the phrase, “Check on your friends” to bring the discussion of Depression into the open on their campus. Katherine, who was a high school classmate of Charlie’s, talked about not actually being that close with him in school, but getting to know him only a month before his death as they worked together to support the school’s post-pandemic “mega-reunion.” She reminded us to take time to appreciate the connections and communities we share even when we don’t recognize them at the time. Her words introduced the hymn “On Our Way Rejoicing,” which every student at the school has sung before every vacation for many years. My one big disappointment of the day was that we all sang the hymn very respectfully, rather than the way students traditionally sing it, boisterously shouting certain verses. The shouting would have put a smile on Charlie’s face.

 

The most painful, beautiful, and hopeful part of the service today, though, was the reflection by Charlie’s father. As a parent myself, I don’t know how he found the strength to get through his words. First he thanked his family for the love they have given to Charlie and for the strength they have given him through the years and especially through this tragedy. He talked about his love for Charlie and his memories of the “best son you could ever ask for.” The second half of his reflection, though, is what really got me thinking about how the world is becoming a better place. He spoke confidently and with pride about Charlie’s valiant battle with the illness of Depression. He urged everybody present to look deep into themselves and to admit without any shame if they needed help. He talked about the importance of getting treatment and proudly announced that he would be starting to work with a therapist this week to get the “long overdue” help he needed for his own struggle with Depression.

 

After the service, there was all the usual talk during the reception. “So great to see you, but I wish it could’ve been under different circumstances.” Just as common, though, was talk of the reality of Depression, the necessity of getting help, the recognition that, if someone as filled with joy and as surrounded by love and support as Charlie fell victim to that disease, we all could. Hundreds of people today talked openly about Depression, mental illness, getting help. The one topic that was nowhere to be found was shame. These young adults are going out into the world, facing all the challenges our generation has left for them, and they are talking about Depression as the disease that it is – something that could affect anybody, and something that carries no more shame than any other disease. As somebody who has struggled with Anxiety and Depression throughout his life and only had the courage to get help in his 40s, this gives me so much hope. I doubt we’ll ever find a true cure for Depression, but I believe the generation currently turning from teenagers into adults is the generation that will make it a treatable disease – something that is identified much more quickly than it is now, and that is controllable so that you can live a long and happy life with it. A life without shame, knowing that even in the darkest times, there is a way out. We aren’t there yet, as Charlie’s loss has made painfully clear, but we’re getting closer. One thing I’ve learned as a teacher is that, when young people get their minds set on changing the world, it’s best to get out of their way and try to support them as best you can. I hope my generation will listen to these young people and get out of their way. They ARE making the world a better place and one of the greatest privileges of my life is that I get to cheer them on from the sidelines as they go. If we had sung “On Our Way Rejoicing” properly today, we would have shouted the line, “Vanquished is the foe!” I left today’s service optimistic that we will soon be shouting that line about the foe of Depression. It may never go away, but I believe this generation will remove the shame, open up the conversation, and truly vanquish the foe.

The Stages of Why?

 

 

My vaguely annual post to this blog will have a different tone this year. I’ve been processing things for a couple of days and it’s time to try to work through my swirling thoughts in writing. The picture above is my group from the freshman backpacking trip in the fall of 2015 (I think – too many complicated thoughts to do math right now.) This was one of my favorite “Burch” groups of all time. (Burch is the name of the alum who gave the money to start the program.) For a few years after, people would ask me who was in my Burch group and then, when I started naming names, they would almost invariably say, “Oh, THAT Burch group!” This group got along a little TOO well, if you know what I mean. It was all normal teenager stuff, and pretty mild at that, but the group was notorious because of it. What I remember is a group that gelled really well, where everybody got along and supported each other when times got tough along the trail. I’m sure selective memory is blurring the usual trail struggles, but overall this group was a blast. The kid in the red shirt on the far right, with the toothbrush in his mouth, is “Steve.” Over five days on the Appalachian Trail, that toothbrush only left his mouth when he was eating.

I taught Steve and hiked many miles on the trail with him that year. In future years, I was his faculty advisor and his lacrosse coach. I saw Steve in so many different parts of his boarding school life. Even after graduation, I often ran into him when he came to hang out with my next door neighbor, one of his best friends and the kid in the camouflage shirt and blue hat in the center of the picture. The Steve I knew was one of those people who are always positive. He was quick to smile and was always ready for a little fun. On the lacrosse field, he was a coach’s dream. He loved the game and just wanted to play. Whatever you asked him to do, he said, “Sure, Coach,” and ran out on the field to give it everything he had. Everybody knew and liked Steve. He was a good student, although not a straight-A student. The college application process didn’t go perfectly for him, but he ended up at a school he loved (and where I think his sister also attended.) Steve was just one of those all-around great kids who didn’t necessarily have a niche where he stood out, but was good at everything and his presence in any situation made it happier and more fun.

This past Sunday night, Steve took his own life.

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People talk a lot about the stages of grief. I think a more appropriate framing of my thoughts might be the stages of questions. (Please don’t interpret that as a lack of grief. A good amount of time passed between my typing the last paragraph and typing this one as I wrestled with emotions.) The first stage of questions all revolve around “Why?” Why would he do this? Why did somebody who always seemed so happy feel so helpless? Steve had a loving family, close friends, a bright future. Why would he do this?

The second stage corresponds to the anger stage in other frames. Why didn’t anybody stop this? He had so many people who were close to him. How did they miss the signs?

The third stage is where I’ve been living today. Why didn’t I stop this? How did I miss the signs? Why didn’t I work harder to stay in touch with Steve after graduation? Why was I so quick to assume that he was doing great? Should I have seen the signs? Of course I should have seen the signs! I knew him in the classroom, on the field, in the dorm, in chapel, at seated dinner, on the trail. I had more opportunities than anybody else to really connect with him and I blew it. I assumed he was okay. I assumed he had a good support network. I assumed he had people closer to him who were eager to help him if needed and with whom he would be more comfortable sharing any struggles he had. The third stage of questions is very self-centered and unproductive, but working through it is an important step in the process.

I started writing tonight because I am ready to move on to the fourth stage, and writing is the best way for me to get there. This fourth stage involves accepting the permanence of the questions. Why did I assume Steve had a good support network and people who were closer to him? Because he did. He had an incredible network of friends, many of whom have come together to support each other this week as they struggle more directly than I with many of these same questions. Steve had an amaing, supportive family who understood his strengths and weaknesses and wanted him to be the best he could be as long as he was happy. We may never know the answer to why, but self-blame is not helpful.

Finally stage five. The big question here is, “What can I do, moving forward, to honor Steve’s life?” For me, the answer to that question is to do everything I can to connect with future students on a deeper level and to work to maintain that connection beyond graduation – something I’ve always struggled with. I think about some of the incredible people I connected with this past year and the many struggles they face every day. Transgender students. Victims of sexual violence. Empaths who take on the struggles of everybody they care about. Students who feel the pressure to be perfect when incredibly awesome ought to be enough. Young people who ache to share their stories, but find censorship when they try. People who absolutely excel at things that the high-pressure world they live in doesn’t value as much as it should. People who, like me, have trouble asking for help for any number of reasons.

What can I do, moving forward, to honor Steve’s life? I can listen. I can ask questions. I can check in. I can keep up. I can celebrate. I can commiserate. I can let people know that I care. Even typing this out, I’m struggling with writing that I can let people know that I love them. For some reason, that is incredibly difficult for me. Perhaps as a teacher I am afraid that it will be misinterpreted. Okay, I am definitely afraid that it will be misinterpreted. One thing I love about teenagers is the fact that they are so much more comfortable telling their friends that they love them than my generation was (is!) I still don’t think I’m comfortable with saying that to an individual, but as a group, I hope my students know that I do love them. I think a few of you will read this post all the way through, and that goes double for you! Please know that I am here if you are struggling, if you need to talk through something, or if you just need to say FML and have it heard by somebody who cares. Steve was awesome, and always will be. So are you. If you ever reach a point where you feel like there is no escape, please reach out. Actually, please reach out before you get to that point. My goal to honor Steve’s memory is to keep in touch and to help make sure you never reach that point. It’s somewhat cliché, but we never know what others are dealing with, so let the people around you know that they are loved and that you are there to help. It may not prevent every tragedy, but it will make this world a better, more caring and connected place no matter what the outcome.

A New Beginning

Looks like it’s time for my annual post. I seem to get reflective in the late winter/early spring and typing out my thoughts helps me put them in order. 

Three years ago I reached a major turning point in my life. My first marriage had ended and I began a new relationship that promises many years of happiness and adventure to come. My youngest child graduated from high school and went off to college. I also began to realize that I needed a fresh start in my teaching. After 20 years at one school, it was time for a fresh start. That is especially difficult for a boarding school teacher, because it means uprooting everything. When your employer owns your home, you can’t quit your job without becoming homeless. I started a job search and got to the point of being a “finalist” for a job at a school I had always dreamed about. Something didn’t feel right, though, and I withdrew from the process. The next year, I looked around for other opportunities once again. That same dream school was hiring again, and this time, I felt like I was ready. The interview process went well, and I was offered a position. 

As so often happens when you make decisions based on reputation (a somewhat necessary effect of Covid’s not allowing any on-campus interviews), my dream school turned out not to be a great fit. It is an incredible school full of incredible people doing incredible things, but I just don’t fit with the ethos of the school. Should I have figured that out before taking the job? Probably. Would that have mattered? Probably not. Sometimes, when a place has been your dream destination for years, you have to at least give it a shot. I will be leaving this place with no regrets and several hopefully lifelong friends. I will also be leaving with a better idea of what I am looking for in a school.

That leads me to the main question of this post. What does my ideal school look like? It is important to remember when reading this that I am talking about MY ideal school, not necessarily THE ideal school. There is no ideal school; it’s all about the fit, both for teachers and for students. Many top schools are institutions that are bigger than the current student body. Students attend those schools and fit into the structure of that school. My ideal school is one that believes that the students ARE the school. The student body changes every year and the school needs to change every year to reflect that. There are certain pillars that transcend the current makeup of the school and give it aspirational structure, but how you express and strive for those pillars may be different every year. 

During interviews this year, I tried to find ways to express intangible facets of my ideal school, and one of those was the statement, “I love mediocre performances.” I love a school that encourages students to have the courage to try something new and to proudly put that on display for the community. That is something that my previous school did extremely well, encouraging kids to perform in chapel to thunderous applause even when the performance was pretty mediocre. (Thank you, Rev. C!) It is awesome to hear a student performance that is world-class, and I have been so proud of some of the performances I have seen by students who are destined to be professional musicians, but I have also been deeply moved by performances by students who wanted to share their much less polished work with the community, and I have been so proud of the community’s support of them. 

In the classroom, I have taught students of all levels, and I enjoy teaching all of them. I think my niche as a teacher, though, is working with students who don’t realize how talented they are yet. So many students fall by the wayside in math because they can’t connect to the way math is taught in their classrooms. I think my strength as a teacher is in finding a way to connect with those students. I am not as strong when it comes to working with the “top” students who have always excelled in math. So often, those students are all about achievement – top scores on the AMC and AP exams. They know all the tricks and techniques, but do they enjoy solving an unfamiliar problem? Are they ready to fail over and over and to keep trying new ideas to find the best solution? 

This concept has been especially apparent this year. I will return an assessment to a student with a good, but not great score and get lots of complaints that revolve around the idea of, “But I got the correct answer.” Too often, driven students in these top schools are all about getting the correct answer. I am much more interested in the process with which they got there and whether or not they could apply that process to solve other problems. At my previous school, I created new classes in Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra for those top students. These were based on challenging problem sets they could work on collaboratively. When the students got too focused on the “correct answer,” I would simply tell them the answer, and ask them to fill in all the details in between. 

As I learned about different schools over the last three years, this focus on process rather than product has led me to the International Baccalaureate program (IB). The IB math curriculum seems to fit really well with my ideas of how math should be learned. Last year I was offered a position in an IB school and almost accepted, but the school did not feel quite right. From what I have learned since then, I made the right decision. All my suspicions about the school were well founded. This year, as I explored the opportunities out there, I connected with another IB school. This school seems to tick all my boxes when I think about what I want in a school. It is a little bit smaller, has the community feel I am looking for, adapts every year to the needs of the student body, and features mediocre performances every week at its all-school meetings. It does not have the name-recognition or the financial resources of my current school, but prestige and money are much less valuable to me than happiness. I have accepted a job at this new school and am very excited to get started learning how to teach IB math. This involves yet another interstate move and a pretty big pay cut, but I am blessed with a fiancée who is ready to adjust so that I can be happy. The future has never looked so bright for this newly gruntled math teacher, and I look forward to enthusiastically updating this blog next spring after living in such an exciting community more most of a year!

Wow! This blog still exists! I wonder how long it has to sit dormant before it is closed automatically. I only post when something causes my thoughts to spiral out of control and I need to sort through them. 

Tonight’s post is brought to you courtesy of the chapel talk tonight at the school where I teach. I’ll describe the chapel talk a little bit more in a minute, but my musings here are not really about that talk; they were just inspired by it.

One of the best and worst things about teaching, especially in boarding school, is that the student body completely turns over every four years. When we make a policy change that will be unpopular with the students, we know that it will be completely forgotten in four years, and mostly forgotten in two. This also sets up a strange contrast in perspective between faculty and students. I have been at my current school for 20 years, so I have seen many changes and the ebbs and flows over the years. For the students, the school begins when they arrive as ninth graders. Whatever they encounter in that first year is assumed to have been the same since the founding of the school. That is an incredible opportunity for them. Anything they do differently is brand new and an amazing contribution to the school, even if it has been done many times in the past. One of the absolutely wonderful things about that is that it is completely true for them in their experience. They DO instigate and develop the changes they make. Their accomplishments are completely real and novel, even if they’ve been accomplished by other students many times in the past. I love that about teaching, and especially love seeing how students put their own signature on the things they do. Even if they’ve been done before, they’ve never been done in quite this way before.

So where’s the tension that is causing me to write tonight? That tension is in the realization that institutional memory is short. That is absolutely necessary for the success of the current students, but also sad when you realize that the accomplishments of students who meant so much to you in the past have already faded into the past. As a teacher, all the students from the past are still a part of my experience and it hurts to see them and their accomplishments forgotten. That doesn’t cheapen those accomplishments in any way, and if they weren’t forgotten, it WOULD cheapen the accomplishments of the current students. The tough part sometimes is celebrating those current students while hurting for those from the past.

It’s probably time to offer a little more context. Today’s chapel talk was by an incredible young woman who will be graduating this spring. She is awesome - an incredibly talented thinker, a tireless worker, and an empathetic leader in the community. She often underestimates her abilities, but in a way that makes her work harder and really appreciate her accomplishments. She also is an avid and talented dancer. Her talk today was about how, when she arrived as a ninth grader, the dance program at the school was very small and not considered a “cool” thing to do. She danced, but was embarrassed about it and tried to hide it. She talked about how difficult it was hiding a part of herself that was so central to her being. She then segued into how important the dance instructors have been to her development as a confident young woman and how much pride she feels in seeing the dance program grow over the years. She talked about how much it meant to her when the dance team received their first ever standing ovation. In her experience spanning four years at the school, every word she said was heartfelt and true. From the perspective of somebody who has been here for 20 years, every word was also completely false.

Almost 10 years ago, my daughter started as a ninth grader at this school. After running a season of cross country in the fall of that first year, she decided to try the afterschool dance program as her winter sport. The program was very small and many on campus didn’t even know it existed. That winter, she fell in love with dance, and over her 12 seasons at the school, she danced for 11 of them. She and a couple of classmates decided they wanted to grow the program and make it an institution. They did just that. Dance became a “cool” thing to do. Their crew grew year after year as they learned different styles of dance and choreography. My daughter and her classmates led extra “captains’ practices” on Saturdays so that those new to dance (like my daughter) could catch up to those with years of prior experience. The instructors were from an outside, world-renowned dance company, which was an incredible learning experience, but meant that the student dance captains had to take care of most of the internal executive tasks that coaches would normally do. By their senior year, these dancers were performing to packed auditoriums with screaming fans. The faculty children all wanted to be dancers and would dance like crazy during intermission and after the show. My daughter is getting ready to start working on her PhD in Computer Science, has beaten cancer, and is a tireless activist for those in need, but watching her development as a dancer and as a leader will always be one of the things I am most proud of her for.

After my daughter’s class graduated, the dance program shrank again. There were some very talented dancers, but there wasn’t that core pushing to grow the program. That set up the perfect situation for tonight’s speaker to arrive on campus as a ninth grader and partner with the new full-time, on-campus director of dance to build a brand new program. Their accomplishments have been amazing, and they are definitely worthy of the praise they are receiving. There is just a part of me that can’t help thinking, “What about my daughter’s experience?” Teaching is a constant cycle of connecting and letting go, celebrating the here and now without forgetting the past. This time it was personal, so I’m having more trouble reconciling it all in my head.

The final thought bouncing around my skull tonight is my own legacy. I’ve devoted 20 years to this school but will be leaving for a new opportunity at the end of the school year. How soon will I be a distant memory? Once this year’s ninth graders have graduated, will anybody even know I was here? Naturally everybody wants to be remembered, but in a lot of ways I hope not. The school will be in the hands of the faculty and students who inhabit its halls, and they need to make it their own. I have a couple of classes that are my “babies” because I am the only one who has taught them for years and I have structured them very differently from other classes. I hope whoever teaches them next year does something completely new and different with them. This thought also gives me the confidence to try to do the same and make a mark on my new school next year. Schools are living, breathing institutions that need to resist the urge to get stuck in the past. That’s easy for the students, but much harder for us teachers.

Back to tonight’s chapel talk. It was insightful and inspiring and I fully celebrate the speaker’s accomplishments. At the same time, I have to say…

To Layne, Maya, Morin, Natasha, Natalia, Liz, Claudia, Joy, Brian, Connie, Felipe, and all the other student dancers and instructors from the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company – I remember. Your accomplishments are permanently etched in my brain and my experience, and you will never be forgotten. Thank you.