my 5 Ls.

(Excerpt from INSTALLATION OF 24th NEW HEAD OF SCHOOL: ADDRESS)

…This is a special community and, on behalf of my family including my wife and my three daughters out there, we are grateful for experiencing the legendary Lebanese hospitality and genuine interest in making sure we begin creating a home here at ACS and in Beirut.

My lesson for today, and indeed as we are in school, I want a lesson to take place, centers on five connected phrases. They are as follows:

Listen.

Leap.

Laugh.

Learn.

Let others do the same.

Can you repeat after me?

Listen. Leap. Laugh. Learn. Let others do the same.

Can you now read along?

Listen. Leap. Laugh. Learn. Let others do the same.

And, you know, say them without looking

These are life lessons that independent schools, such as ACS and the ones I have worked in for over 23 years, and in fact the one I graduated from, that are at the core of my approach to school, and perhaps life.

I will return to them in a minute.

When I was a boy, before attending a school like ACS, I suppose I was a townie- an urban ‘public school’ child struggling to stay focused in a school with little in the way of enrichment and plenty of alluring neighborhood shenanigans that many of my friends followed to a wrong path. I credit my working parents with being prescient enough to sit me down in sixth grade to ask me where my priorities lay.

Having been accepted at an independent school similar to ACS, I was given the choice of attending the over-enrolled junior high, with 800 kids in two grades including my neighborhood friends, or work small jobs towards the cost of books and dress code clothing to be the first one at my public school to attend a particular private school. Surprisingly (at the time), the choice was easy for me. And so, armed with a sizable scholarship and a belief that I could learn at school, my dad dropped me off early every morning to a world hitherto only imagined. It was a world of privilege, to be sure, but also a world where being curious and interested in taking risks were rewarded and where extraordinary teachers believed in me while I caught up learning how to study, how to fail, and how to enjoy being a learner. My education, and the schools in my career that followed, have solidified my calling, my profession. In opening up to a life of the mind and heart, encouraging my interests, the adults in my independent school life gave me a lasting appreciation for the power of such schools to shape lives and inspire young people towards excellence in whatever direction they may take.

Through their powerful example, they also taught me that a real measure of an individual is not wealth, or nor status, but in a willingness to share talents with others in a life of useful service. Now an educational leader myself, I have dedicated my work to those mentors, and my parents, who played such a profound role in making me the person I am today. And through lessons from coaches, teachers, secretaries, assistants, principals, maintenance staff, security guards and parents of those I teach, I have found that I am most effective by being able to lead- providing both vision and support-in a place where students can take leaps and learn. I believe ACS is such a place and will need to continue to work a being such a place.

So to my lesson…

Listen.

It starts with listening. As school leaders, we must build and support dynamic programs by listening and partnering with each other- with teachers, community leaders and families- to support the best interests of our students. Whether they are forty year veterans or straight out of four year colleges, I will ask the adults in our community to know how to listen. Before we make a decision, before we judge, before we make our next move, we must always begin with listening- to facts, to trends, to each other.

I have chosen a few pictures from my recent life. Images with words can also form as mnemonic devices as well.

This bee on a small flower in a field just east of Laqlouk during this past weekend with my family reminds me to listen. To take time to hear and soak in as much as possible, from as many view points as possible, even the smallest, potentially annoying or harmful ones, in order to gain perspective. When we listen, we are calm, we are open.

And we must listen so we can reach a point when can make clear choices. And these can be great leaps.

Leap.

And leap we all must. We need to leap forward, we must take chances, take risks, jump out of what we feel comfortable with. You’ve seen inspirational quotes that encourage you to get out and do something beyond your comfort zone—something you wouldn’t normally do. There is a lot of science that explains why it’s so hard to break out of your comfort zone, and why it’s good for you when you do it. All ventures and success derive from making the leap, taking a chance. We have an easier time dealing with new and unexpected changes when we are in the practice of leaping, of making mistakes.

And we will make mistakes. My vision for ACS is that we are a place that allows those mistakes to happen because that is where the learning begins. If every student in this room was able to speak of the mistake she or he made each day, we would become a powerful learning community.

The feet you see here are mine. On one of the world’s most beautiful rapids in pristine primary forest, I wanted to challenge myself and my desire to be this athletic adventure seeker.  And while I survived the day, I think I only perfected the view from under the boat. I am not someone who does well with speed, but I went for it. And my friends and I laughed.

Laugh.

Several non-human species demonstrate vocalizations that, to us, sound similar to human laughter. A significant proportion of these are mammals, including apes, which suggests that the neurological functions occurred early in the process of mammalian evolution. Laughs like a hyena comes to mind. There must be a reason, though I am not knowledgeable yet to explain why here. I believe laughter is critical. In schools such as ACS, we must use laughter and camaraderie, to instill a sense of belonging to something larger, and often different, than students’ own family. I have already witnessed daily here in the hallways outside the middle school office, or in the way high school students make each other laugh while walking between classes, or high-fiving fifth graders headed to lunch or on our elementary playgrounds or with our KG 2 students finding themselves silly when the tower falls. Laughter marks the one of the distinguishing features of a balanced community and marks a place where risks and challenges can be met with safety.

The smiling log is in the Monteverde Rain forest and a reminder to me that nature, indeed that the world, is order incarnate already and we have to come to terms with it. We must smile, must laugh, at what we have, at the interconnectedness we have with nature and with each other. Perhaps beyond just laughter, after we leap, we must learn to express ourselves in our attempt to engage the world; it marks our engagement with whatever is happening and makes us human.

Learn.

From those mistakes, from that laughter, we must learn. As I spoke to faculty prior to the start of school, I believe that true learning only comes when the person or persons are first safe, then engaged. Simply put, this is the heart of a school. Interestingly, the word ‘learn’ is not in our mission, but as a community we have uncommonly defined learning as “empowering”. We empower students to solve problems. This does not come from passive learning, but an active approach to engaging our students in creative endeavors and taking leaps.

Schools, as institutions, ACS included, have so much to work on, to attend to, to learn from, when it comes to what learning means for our future. It is incredibly exciting to be a part of a school and to actually be in a place where learning is happening at all levels, and it is our hope as a school that the learning done here will lead to our students to serve Lebanon and the world.

Releasing a turtle is a humbling experience. You are holding the most fragile creature and placing it in an ocean -one of the largest areas we as humans can visually comprehend. You are letting it go, and yet it instinctively knows to head towards the ocean. But they do learn to swim and to survive a larger world and, after years away, many will return to the same place where they were born. Our goal is to make sure our students have the compassion and understanding to do the same.

Let others do the same.

The most difficult directive of my lesson is to “let others do the same”. By this I am not intending to leave people alone or just let them be. By every interaction we have, I believe we can help shape a place that respects the individuality and experience of each member, understanding that there are many paths to discovery and achievement, to learning, leaping and laughing. I lead with the singular focus of allowing others to get to that place with same opportunity.

I show this picture of a bat colony at a rainforest farm. Scientists agree that living in complex social systems with individualized relationships doesn’t work without a high degree of social cognitive skills. A school like ACS in a community like Beirut is complex with incredibly individualized relationships. With over 50 nations represented, with multiple religions, beliefs and backgrounds, we have to find a way to let others be able to listen, to take leaps, to learn and to laugh. Scientists found that found that it’s not just family members who stay together in bat colonies; a network analysis showed that bat clubs were made up of bats from many different lineages and ages. They propose that bat society most likely benefits from cooperative behaviors and collaborative behaviors. I know that in order to let others do the same, we must work hard at the social emotional learning that ends in compassion and understanding for all.

All of this means tending and responding to the hard work of school culture that is central to setting tone and climate of a community. It means recognizing that young people are works in progress (indeed, so are we all as professionals); that it is students’ nature to test boundaries, and that their potential for growth lies as much in their mistakes and shortcomings as in their accomplishments. At its heart, directing a school community is about teaching and learning skills, values and the willingness to act, and I am proud to help support and lead a community that challenges students’ character as well as their intellect.

In many ways, my memories as a student all those years ago have merged with my experience as a school leader to inform my pedagogical approach today and why I have chosen this path and these phrases.

I believe that the best schools are those whose adults listen….then inspire students with their knowledge, passion within and well beyond the classroom.

As a head of school, I promise to create a place where students are encouraged to take risks, to leap far and often. To create place where we as adults and caretakers of the school can build, we can consistently rethink what works and what does not.

As a leader, I promise to support the adults in my community to use laughter and camaraderie to instill a sense of belonging to something larger, and often different, than the students’ own family.

And finally, by every interaction I have, I promise to help shape a place that respects the individuality and experience of each member, understanding that there are many paths to discovery and achievement, but doing so with the singular focus of allowing others to get to that same place with the same opportunities.

And so I ask you to remind me one more time as a community.

Listen. Leap. Laugh. Learn.

Let others do the same.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning and a willingness to accept me as a part of the ACS community. Here’s to an incredible 2016-2017 year and to the years ahead.

I close with part of our alma mater:

“Purest gold and truest blue, call to us noble deeds victorious, and make our dreams come true.”

Thank you!