The Possibility Project

How do you want to be celebrated?

This week, we hosted candidates for our Director of Equity and Justice (previously titled Director of Community Life) position. One of our candidates shared this question, How do you want to be celebrated?, often posed to students. Upon reflection, I was energized by all the ways Pike teachers celebrate our students. I see this celebration in small, every day ways. When students are encouraged to build epic snow thrones or engage in sledding competitions during recess. When they decorate their windows in advisory or participate in Spirit Week - organized and sponsored by Student Council. When they move seamlessly between playing two truths and a lie with their class visitor (me!) and understanding character change across a story for a literacy lesson.

We also celebrate students in larger, more poignant moments. When students self-organize to create affinity groups - planning meetings and presentations and recording videos to advertise and engage more of their peers. When we send students to conferences to learn, advocate, and grow into their young adult selves. Just yesterday, several of our students joined the AISNE Middle School Students of Color Conference. They gathered virtually with over 300 students, faculty, and administrators from 37 schools across New England and represented what is best about Pike - our thoughtful and passionate students eager to make the world a better place. Above all, we celebrate students by giving them the space to be fully seen, discover their own voices, and explore new curiosities. We celebrate them as they become themselves. We celebrate them by believing in them and their endless capacity for possibility.

Why Pike?

In the midst of admission and hiring seasons, I frequently encounter some variation of: Why Pike? It is a necessary and worthy question. Every weekday, children, faculty, and staff spend more time at school than at home. Day in and out, we are living the experiences and writing the stories of our future. After all, school is where we become our future selves. So why become your future self at Pike? Looking back at my past week, there was a moment each day where I lived my answer to Why Pike? On Monday, I spent three hours with a group of teachers to ideate the criteria of an equitable hiring process. On Tuesday, I visited a second grade classroom and watched children stretch themselves as readers in differentiated ways. On Wednesday, I facilitated Family SEED with parents across divisions as we explored our identities and individual and collective privileges.

On Thursday, I was interviewed by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) on the future of governance and the learning culture of Pike’s Board of Trustees. On Friday, I met with Stacey Aufiero, Director of our Daily Risk Mitigation Team, as I do most days, to analyze data and brainstorm new ways to keep campus healthy and open. I choose Pike because of our shared and continuous love of learning. Whether an adult or a child, every one learns, re-learns, and un-learns all the time. I choose Pike because of our future-mindedness. We study trends and research to adapt our practices and best serve our students. I choose Pike because of Non Sibi Solum and our commitment to equity and justice. We strive to create a world not only worthy of our own children but every child. These are a few of my answers; what are yours? 

How might we measure a year?  

On Wednesday, I found myself comparing the length of strips of paper with four first graders during their math lesson. With my eyes narrowed and my fingers pressed to the screen, my informal measuring attempts were quickly interrupted by their questions and suggestions. What if one of the strips is going faster? (I had not considered the sudden movement of inanimate strips of paper.) This one is wider, so it’s longer. (How did these children imagine so many possibilities to such a narrowly defined task?) Where is the other strip? (I had not considered the sudden appearance of additional inanimate strips of paper.) We need to create a start line. (Is this how we might measure all things?) 

It has been an incredible school year. Indeed, it has also been an incredible start to the new calendar year. How might we measure a year? A week? How do we take stock of all we have accomplished and all that is still left to do? Following the wisdom of our inquisitive and imaginative first graders, I encourage us to pick a start line. Pick a beginning and advance from there. Whether your start line is September 8th, January 1st, or the moment you woke up this morning, you have the opportunity to begin anew, journey forward, and measure your achievements and shortcomings from there. So let’s go. We can move onward together.

What are you most grateful for? 

My father was a creature of habit and routine. On Saturdays, he solved crossword puzzles and played untimed chess for hours. Away from work, he wore the same green wool cardigan (captured in nearly every family picture) and ordered the same chicken dish when we went out to eat - without exception. And, each evening, whether my sister and I were restless young children or angsty teenagers, my father began family dinner with a shared prayer of gratitude. Amidst this season of gratitude, I think of my father and his daily offering of thanks - for the mundane and the spectacular.

I challenge myself and all of us to consider what and whom in our lives are worthy of “Thank You.” Thank you to my mom and all parents who Facetimed or Zoomed in for Thanksgiving this year and thus helped to keep Pike healthy. Thank you to Chad and all partners who help carry families with work both beyond and within our homes. Thank you to our teachers who redefined, once again, what is possible from the corners of their living rooms to yours this past week. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

How might we wait?

This week has felt long, hasn't it? Even as someone who is innately future-oriented, I found myself a bit listless at times. Still? was the one-word question circling through every time I refreshed a news site. Yet, even as we wait for the future, it is important to remember that we are already living it. Historian Howard Zinn once said, "we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." Every day, we have the chance to live the possibilities we seek during elections. Every day, we have the chance to extend laughter, witness kindness, and offer gratitude.

Between each timely check of the news, I steadied myself in the possibility of the present. I watched Pre-K recess - a spirited game of tag mixed in with show and tell (rocks and acorns). I listened to the Kindergarten team describe how yards of yarn spun across chairs and desks represented a creative science assessment (spiders!) I zoomed with parents curious about the science of learning and how to support their children at home. I sat in absolute delight and appreciation as new parents described why they chose Pike for their family. As one act of waiting ends, another will surely begin. No matter the future we seek, the future we wait for, let's be sure to live it now. Let's live in the everyday and ordinary moments of laughter, kindness, and gratitude.

What does it mean to be a leader?

On Friday, Trisha Gordon and I were guests in Mary Machado’s Sixth Grade OCL History class. They were studying the dynasties and pharaohs of Egypt and curious about what it takes to become a leader. Their questions were direct and specific, yielding complex answers and stories from our past. What’s the best part of and the downside of being a leader? Were you popular when you were our age? Who was the leader of your friend group? It was a needed reminder about the size and scope of leadership; how being a leader is shaped by time, space, and perspective. Perhaps building pyramids, striving to keep school open in the midst of a pandemic, and having a fight with a close friend are equal in weight and challenge.

Whether in ancient Egypt or in 2020 Andover, whether a new member of the Upper School on the cusp of adolescence or the adult leading the Upper School remembering her adolescence, our hopes are the same. We want to be seen and heard and loved. We want to be connected and have friends and laughter. We want to help and heal those around us. So what do these timeless hopes require of leaders - then and now? We asked the students and these were their responses: Understanding. Listener. Courage. Modest. Honest and trustworthy. Confident. Hope. Patient. Indifference (meaning you should accept - perhaps with a shrug and nod - that you can’t fix everything).

Where will your imagination take you?

On Tuesday, I was invited to chase a dinosaur in the woods. I was outside at Kindergarten recess enjoying the sunshine and nearly effervescent laughter of five and six year olds. A group of kindergarteners suddenly approached me to share Ms. Marshall, there’s a dinosaur in the woods!! They spoke in a half-whisper, half-yell voice young children so often use to mark this occasion as both surreal and mundane. They were more excited than surprised, as if they were setting off to see a familiar friend; as if there is nothing more ordinary than dinosaurs living in the woods behind Pike. What else could I say besides Can you show me? Slowly and a bit nervously, I crept through the woods in heels made more for sitting than hiking.

The kindergartners, much more agile, arrived before I did and pointed to an outline of large boulders. I saw the shape immediately - four legs, a body, extended neck and tail. Yet what amazed me most was not our Pike dinosaur but our Pike children. How did they turn a collection of rocks into a dinosaur? Do they think anything and everything is possible? This weekend, I hope you and your children - no matter their ages - find time to imagine. Read a book. Take a walk. Daydream. Slow down, simplify, and let your imaginations run wild.

Why do we need schools?

All that I am may simply be the culmination of hundreds of interactions with teachers. My first grade teacher showed me the power of stories, and my fifth grade teacher empowered me to write my own story. My second grade teacher taught me the beauty of dreams, and my favorite graduate professor explained how to turn a dream into a vision. My fourth grade Orchestra teacher inspired ten years of cello and a lifelong appreciation of Bach and Yo Yo Ma. My third and seventh grade teachers taught me to love poetry, and my college philosophy professors challenged me to love questions.

It is not a coincidence that I almost always start our faculty/staff meetings with a question and a poem. School is where we become our future selves. This week and beyond, I hope you take a few moments to wonder in amazement in your child(ren)’s doing and creating. Look how they are wonderfully themselves and imagine how they might further become their true selves in the coming weeks or years. Live in the beautiful tension between today and tomorrow. And then, send their teachers a thank you note.

What did we learn this week?

On Tuesday, I watched a second grade class have their morning meeting. It was a familiar routine (greeting, share, activity) done anew (six feet apart, masks on, all facing forward). In perhaps the greatest miming display ever, a student hunched near the ground, arms spread wide, face in a grimace, holding a very large, heavy, and invisible boulder. With significant effort, he heaved it to the teacher who caught it with outreached arms and an exaggerated stumble; remember, this is a very large, heavy, albeit invisible boulder. I left with a smile in awe of all we are learning. In this familiar routine (school) done anew (distanced by space or screen), we are learning to reach far enough to make connections, be joyful and silly in the face of grave circumstances, and find creative ways to share and shoulder the burdens this year will offer us. This year, perhaps more than any other, will be shaped by our communal learning. We must continue to stay curious, offer help with humility, and receive it with gratitude. Let’s see what’s possible when we learn together.

Here’s to our beginning.