August 1, 2021

A New Year

I write to you days before I depart St. Louis for New England for a family doubleheader, the wedding of my daughter, and a week later, the delayed college commencement activities for my son, a member of the ill-fated Class of 2020. Yesterday, I canceled my flights and car rentals after getting a half dozen flight changes since I made them four months ago, and hearing stories of travel industry chaos. I'll drive, a familiar trek from St. Louis to Vermont and Maine, rather than risk flight delays and cancellations, or incarceration for saving the air marshal the effort in rusticating anti-mask passengers. I will draw my first deep breath in months only when I put it in park at the wedding site, Fayston, VT, Mad River Glen, Ski It If You Can!

The anxiety vibrating through the above stems also from my professional experiences in the past month. Mask mandates returned in late July, that time of the year when teachers are beginning to pop into school to putter for an hour or two, and heads are back in the office finalizing opening of school communications and activities. The last few weeks have also brought news of turmoil at independent schools arising from the misinformation campaigns that have politicized anti-racism work at schools. Teachers are wary, heads say, and desperately want to see their students in their classrooms and around campus, all of them, every day. In this edition I explore the boundary setting that will be at the heart of school leaders' work this year and the wisdom in treating last year's new families as new again this year. I look forward to good news ahead, a return to the sunny world of comedy in which transitions like weddings and graduations and a new school year are suffused with the joy of new beginnings and the amusement to be found in the molehilling of mountains.