Courage

Courage is something we have recently tried to discuss and note to our students. We have built a school community that is respectful and supportive of courage, and we hope our community encourages and prods students into courageous actions. Courage is not always publicly dramatic. There are not always burning buildings from which to save a family or a cat. But, every day people do things that require courage. Currently each of our days begins with a Chapel Speech. Some people are very happy to stand before the school and talk, but not everyone. I would say the majority of our days begin by watching a courageous act. Courageous acts are possible when students are put into comfortable surroundings, where dignity and respect can be guaranteed and when students are not thinking about social consequences or reprisals, but are trying to stretch themselves for the sake of growth and the innate challenge of doing better.

We are blessed to have so many demonstrations of courage in our world. Nelson Mandela, one of my heroes, is largely unknown by the students of today. At 93 years old, he is seldom in the public eye anymore, but I spent many years of my adult life inspired by the courage of that man. There are great things happening around the world and our access to information has made examples of these available to us moment to moment. I would like to believe that this helps us see courage as something possible in all of us, but perhaps it breeds the idea that courage is just momentary.

Personally, I’ve been impacted by a rather dramatic incident of courage. Victoria Jewett’s (2000) and Tom Jewett’s (2007) father was diagnosed with a brain tumor last month. I never knew what, “fighting a courageous battle with cancer,” really meant before this. Even though both of my parents died of cancer close to thirty years ago, I am only now seeing the struggles involved with this. They both parented me through their illnesses and cared desperately that I would be OK in the world without their guidance and support. As it turns out I still look to their guidance regularly because I understood them so well. (On a bit of a humorous note, late in my mother’s life one day after school I visited her in the hospital, I came in complaining about the Headmaster of the school I was working at. My mother, who cut straight to the point, and said clearly, if not a little sharply, “Stop complaining and do as he wants. Someday you too will be a school head and when that happens you will want the teachers to follow your lead.” I remember thinking to myself poor mom has no clue. There is no chance I will ever be a school head. I have laughed at myself often thinking of her foresight and my lack of it.)

Victoria’s and Tom’s dad is doing well today, but he has talked realistically and calmly to his kids. He has shown his siblings courage and dignity in very difficult circumstances. He is the example of living with courage that we hope we all can be if we face tough circumstances. He has given me renewed respect for my parents and shown all those around him what real courage is.

Outdoor skating at RNS

This last weekend we were able to open our new outdoor skating rink. The idea for this came from our understanding that we have to continue to improve the recreational facilities our students have available to them. I am hoping that by hook or by crook tennis courts are going to be our next addition. The pond, however, was ready for skating this weekend, finally. Finally because: the digging of the pond was slower than we expected; the filling took longer than we realized it would, and the weather did not cooperate quite as well as we thought it would in the middle of January – is there such a thing as a normal January anymore?

After checking with the Rothesay Fire Department to confirm the thickness of ice needed on a pond to safely skate – just part of taking part in an old fashioned activity in 2012- we were ready to skate.

It is, though, the Saturday of the February long weekend, and there are no students on campus looking for adventure. Despite this, I could not resist the idea of using the almost smooth ice to test the new addition to the campus.

I was able to round up two grandsons, one daughter, four RNS staff members and five faculty kids to join me for this inaugural skate. It was great, as you can see from the picture, and there was plenty of fun and lots of rosy cheeks.

It was funny to hear the comments of some of the youngest skaters. They were pretty sure that real skating takes place in an indoor arena with Zamboni polished ice. It was great example to me of another 21st century moment – similar to me asking a kid about emailing – of course we don’t use email; we text.

I know there are lots of kids who have never skated outside before and have no idea what frozen toes are, what a puck in the shin at -5C feels like, or what it is like to have a frost bitten ear. But now there are going to be generations of students again who will be able to reminisce about skating outside while at RNS.

It will take a while, but soon the boys of Mackay will be “flooding the rink” as they did for years before the 1997 renovation of the Memorial Arena. It is nice to be able to see some special and unique traditions return to the campus while still having the indoor ice so that our 6 RNS hockey teams can enjoy the competition and development that Zamboni ice offers.

I look forward to lots more days of skating under the open sky on the school campus.

An Alumni Evening in Calgary

On Wednesday night RNS had an alumni reception in Calgary. The turn-out was great and it was a lovely time for both Elizabeth and me. What was particularly special at this event was the presence of four students who, in their time at Rothesay, had a particularly tough time of it. But there they were coming to an alumni function ready to share and to keep their association with the school strong.

Everyone has potential, both as a leader and and as a contributor in our society. We all, though, have to hang in and keep growing until that moment when we can blossom. If we all keep growing and expanding our horizons, eventually we will find our strengths and our place to contribute. It is hard to be young. It is hard to not find one’s path early, and it is frustrating to see others of the same age move on to what we perceive as the next level while we have not yet got there.

Society is trained to think of eight years of elementary school, four years of high school and a four year undergraduate degree as the norm. That pattern fits so few and more and more we are seeing through those time lines as an anarchism of another age. Changing the 8-4-4 pattern is being more and more regarded as sensible, rather than a judgement of inadequacy or failure.

In Calgary we met a wide variety of alumni. One is doing a masters in international business with the help of a big scholarship, and is planning on combining this with a law degree. Another was invited back to be the guest speaker at his Community College’s commencement last spring, and one owns her own small business in Calgary and is doing well at it.

Meeting with these alumni is the very purpose of these trips I make. They are validation of our belief that we have great students in our school, great families in our community, and that immersing a student in a caring community like RNS can have a long lasting, positive impact on a person. We are here to help all of our students find themselves, regardless of how easy or difficult that journey may be. We are here to push, sometimes when kids want to lie down and give up. We are also here to support by talking, forgiving, caring and helping students when times appear too difficult.

Every student has the responsibility to grow as much as they can, but the school has the responsibility to make the atmosphere as right as possible for every student.

Thank you to all who came to our events last week for your example, your determination, and your growth. I could not be more proud of you. I look forward to continuing our alumni visits and to listening to your stories. They help us to keep moving forward, and they inspire us to keep getting better as a school.

Paul Lewis

Paul Lewis was the librarian and a history teacher at Ridley College, which is where I began my teaching career in the mid 70′s. Paul passed away late last week after living with pancreatic cancer for a year.

He was a wonderful teacher, a very good swimming coach, a special and thoughtful cadet leader, an archivist, the yearbook editor, a superb librarian and a very considerate friend.

The thing I remember best of Paul was his consistent adherence to principle in every circumstance. When the yearbook was supported by advertisers, he asked the faculty to use those retailers when purchasing merchandise over the summer. When students needed more information in the library for their latest project, he insisted that the topic be properly covered and that all the latest news be clipped from newspapers and filed ready for his students. He created a sort of Paul Lewis wikipedia. I remember him standing and talking as he clipped and clipped, getting ready for the next invasion of his researchers.

He always supported the student in distress, reached out to the struggling faculty member, and argued it was better for the faculty to not get a raise so that the school’s books could balance at the end of the year. It was not a popular topic in the common room, but for Paul it was right. He never worried about himself; he was always thinking of those around him. I was lucky because Paul had a huge effect on some of the young faculty around him, especially me. He lived compassion, he understood dogged hard work, he loved what he did and was totally unselfish about his time for the betterment of his students. When the accolades were given out, Paul would shrink back to his library and prepare some more.

Paul was not much older than me, but he helped me be a better teacher and a better person.

Paul accomplished a great deal in life; he stayed at Ridley for his teaching career, he co-authored the history of Ridley, kept their archives, wrote other books and volunteered in St. Catharines. He never changed. I would only occasionally see Paul during the last few years, but I never went near a library without thinking about whether he would like the way it was serving its constituents.

He made a great difference in my life and the way I learnt about how a school should function and look after its students. I know that some of the good things that have happened to RNS took place because this thoughtful, modest, kind and good man took time to lead me many years ago.

A Day Well Ended

Wednesday had some significant ups and downs. When I get up in the morning I hope for good things. But early in the day, something usually happens that leads me to believe that the day will be this or that. So, on Wednesday when I got to the office and was presented with the news that our ice resurfacer (our Olympia) was broken, I was pretty sure it was going to be one of those bad days. However, almost everything else that happened on that day turned out to be great. Few things could have proven better than what I watched in the theatre later that night.

In the evening, our Middle School students put on an Arts Night for their parents. It was a great show. School House lobby was filled with sculpture and brilliant self-portraits. Inside the theatre our youngest kids took to the stage and performed with poise and grace. I know some of those kids have been playing their instruments for less than three months. And yet, there they were, in front of the world, trying their best – their best being quite remarkable. There were solos and group pieces, and the kids presented themselves as remarkable young people. They were happy, engaged, and rightfully proud of what they had achieved.

I hope this was a great night for everyone who was there; for me it was a good end to a day that began poorly.

St.Andrew’s Day

November 30th is Saint Andrew’s Day. There are lots of reasons why it has always been a special day in the year to me.  It is closely tied to a very important women in my life. For one, my grandmother was a Scottish lass from Ayrshire, and I was always very close to her. Yesterday was a particularly good St. Andrew’s Day.

In morning Chapel, we presented our Scholars’ Ties to all of the students achieving at least an 80% average on the cumulative school reports that were posted Monday evening. 

This tradition of Scholars’ Ties is a public standard we have set, hoping it is a goal to which students can aspire. We feel it is an achievable goal for everyone who is able to work hard. They might not achieve it now – it may take a long time to achieve, but we have repeatedly seen students work and reach this standard. It is important for all of us to have standards and comparisons. There are all sorts of these sign posts in life that tell you how you compare to others in the world. Standardized test scores are taking on increasingly significant roles (for better or worse) in academia; we compare salaries in our jobs, neighborhoods in which we live, and even the clothes we wear. Some standards happen to be helpful, and we know that our students are motivated and want some indication of how they are doing. For teenagers, school marks are one of these important sign posts. It is certainly not the most important one in life, but it is a comparison that is very powerful and, occasionally, too powerful. But, on Wednesday, it was very satisfying to see the pride the students had when receiving their ties and congratulations because they had achieved the standard.

To add to my St. Andrew’s Day pleasure, just before we dismissed Chapel, Ben McMullin, a Chapel Prefect, announced it was Canon Snelgrove’s birthday. We sang a rousing and sincere Happy Birthday for our chaplain. Of course, he could not resist the opportunity to speak. He told one of his awful, yet beloved, “stories”. This one was about the three legged dog who came into the bar to find the man who shot his pa.  He took an entire minute to create a pun this bad and still the students loved it. Canon Snelgrove helped to highlight another vital standard in our community. Every day he embodies the vital belief that if you offer dignity and respect to others, it will be offered to you in return. When he tells his stories, he knows he will be embraced, and demonstrates to everyone how much courage you can have when people are willing to support you. 

My Grandmother and mom were very much like this for me. They would support me in any endeavor I tried, and they always knew that if I worked hard, and I had to work hard, that I could meet the standards of society. The fact that all of this happened on St. Andrew’s Day seemed right to me. It was a good day.

Dinner with the Grade 6 class

 
Sometime in the next 2-3 weeks, Mrs. MacDonald and I will take the Grade 6 class out for dinner and they are very excited because they have earned this. Early in the school year I go to the Grade 6 class and challenge them to answer a riddle. I make sure they understand that they are looking to answer something that is real. The challenge is – In 1972, Mr. Kitchen’s maternal grandmother had her 21st birthday 5 days after Mr.Kitchen had his 21st birthday. What is Mr. Kitchen’s grandmother’s  birthday: day, month and year ?  
 
After I give them the challenge, we always agree not to discuss this with the next Grade 6 class, allowing us to repeat the riddle the next fall.
 
This little challenge is, I hope, representative of what our school tries to do. We want the community to be supportive and a little old fashioned. We can have a community that cherishes every individual, challenges them them to work together and tries to have them understand and solve real problems. These are things we have tried to ensure students do for a long time. But, we now want to do this in a way that truly reflects the truth of life in the 21st century. A visitor to our campus last week suggested that at RNS he had viewed a 19th century atmosphere of care and village support while at the same time, the school had a 21st century curriculum and good  base of technology to support student learning. That is the path this school has to travel. RNS is a small enough school and we  have the ability to nurture every student and still create a 21st century learning community. For us to do this, we need to keep the traditions of the school that support a caring community and create new ones that reflect the leading edge of teaching and pedagogical practice.
 
Finding the balance will be the magic required to have a great school in the years to come. My challenge to the Gr.6 class was really more about tradition than it was about the 21st century, however. Over the years, Gr. 6 classes have been very honest in their approach to the challenge that I have given them, and they have toiled away trying to figure out how it could be possible for my grandmother and I to have been the same age. I always promise a meal together if the group is able to work together to solve the challenge. And this year’s group did this. I returned to them on Friday, and they showed me the answer and how they solved it. So, I’m now taking the group out to dinner. In the meanwhile, Mrs. MacDonald might have the toughest job of all – to find an evening and a place that will suit us all so we can celebrate the start of the class’s success as they begin to journey through their new school together. Maybe I can add a 21st century spin on the problem by making reservations using my iPad.
   
 

Remebrance Day

Remembrance Day always means a great deal to me. My father was a Canadian officer  who was part of the Canadian landing on D Day and was with forces for the liberation of Holland. He ended up in Germany at the end of the war.
 
Our family is fortunate and felt blessed that he returned to Canada at the end of 1945. He was able to come home to my mother, he continued his medical practice, raised a family and lived in the country he loved, was proud of and had served.  
 
My dad would never talk of the war. Even when we asked as kids, and that was not often, there was little talk about anything specific.  The only message we got was that he hoped we would never have to go off to war. It was a theme we heard and had imbedded into us as kids. “Lest we Forget” to us meant that we should never forget how awful going off to war was supposed to be. The very fact he would tell us virtually nothing of his experiences, was revealing. He readily conveyed to us that he was one of the lucky ones because he got to come home. I didn’t really understand this as a kid, but as I got older, and read more about the experience he would not share, his words took on more meaning.
 
At RNS, it is our job at Remembrance Day to honour all those boys from the school who were not as fortunate as my dad and who did not get to come home. We do this thoughtfully and with great respect. There were 60 young men from RCS who never came back from WWI and WWII and later the Korean conflict. We honour each of them for making the ultimate sacrifice for us.
 
When we honour these young men, as we must, it is also important that we make sure we hear what they would say to us if they could speak. My dad came back to Canada and although he died 30 years ago, I had 31 years of being fathered by him. He is my hero and I can hear him clearly still. “I want you never to have to go to war; it is awful.”
 
I truly believe from all I have read and all I learned from the lap of a Canadian veteran that we must honour our heroes but reflect on how important it is to not to have young people put in harm’s way. He would be upset to see us again having our young people in a war zone.

I wonder if the young soldiers coming home to Canada today are going to send us the same message.

Lest we forget.

 
 
   

Boyu

Yesterday morning in chapel, we were practicing hymns led by Mr. Kidd.  Mrs. Blanchet, the school organist, was away so Mr. Kidd led us in singing a cappella.  It was all fine until the last hymn where half the chapel was singing the descant.  So Mr. Kidd asked Boyu Meng, a grade 12 student who has been at the school for three years and been taking organ lessons since his arrival at RNS, to accompany us.  Boyu did a great job although he couldn’t hear all of Mr. Kidd’s instructions from the organ loft.  The neatest part of the exercise was the enthusiastic applause the school gave Boyu at the end.  
Boyu is our interhouse prefect this year, helping to keep track of the standings of the four houses.  Boyu’s English was not very extensive when he arrived from China in Grade 10, but he has certainly gained the respect and affection of the school.  Since his arrival, Boyu has demonstrated great courage, linguistically, culturally and yesterday morning, musically.  Every student in the school knows him, and I think more than a few must have thought to themselves how impressive it was that Boyu had learned to play the organ and had the courage to play it for the entire school in Chapel.  That is the essence of RNS.  We all have things we can learn.  With confidence and comfort in our community, we can develop the courage that Boyu demonstrated yesterday morning.

On Rookies

 
 
In the past  week, I heard a report on the radio about a school experiencing “rookie-ing” of new students by returning students. Later in the week, I saw Brett Lawrie, the Toronto Blue Jays’ first year third baseman, dressed in a tutu and tassels fulfilling a rookie ritual.
 
I am sure that Lawrie can handle the “teasing and ritual” of being introduced into the major leagues. I am not worried about him or other major league baseball players. What bothers me is the example that professional athletes, teams and leagues set by not only condoning bullying, but encouraging it. One of the things our society does not need is have examples of bullying being emulated by the idols of our society. While it continues as an activity, universities are actively trying to eliminate hazing amongst its teams. In 2005, McGill cancelled an entire season of football as they investigated a hazing incident.  High school hazing or initiation is being actively eradicated for lots of good reasons. Even in Hollywood, we hear that stars are not immune from being bullied. Last year a story spread wildly about Emma Watson, who decided to leave Brown University because she was being bullied. She has repeatedly denied this, but the story seemed to have a life of its own. In the world of pro sports, we have only recently fully questioned a mouth full of tobacco, and we see sense in a baseball player making more than $40,000 for each of his at bats. How long will we continue to accept the bullying that is so obviously part of that life? The practice of embarrassing rookies is just another form of bullying. Do kids playing minor hockey, baseball or football have much choice but to follow the example they see from the pros, if they themselves want to act or be “big league”?
 
Initiation should be a form of celebration – a welcome – but it is a backwards approach to helping someone fit in. While hazing continues, it does so, mostly, in the darker corners of our institutions and society. It’s not a mainstream celebration, except, it seems, in professional sport.
 
The separation of a team into veterans and rookies is an invitation for often well intended team building exercises to go awry. Noting someone new to an endeavour is an opportunity to acknowledge quick learning, mature adaptations, or as a reminder that this is a person who has not yet had the time necessary to be fully skilled. But, today, red heads can be hassled for the colour of their hair, well meaning first year university students have ended up in the hospital and sadly, occasionally dead, from participating in initiations. Both Western Illinois University and the University of Minnesota have had students die amidst initiation rituals.
 
We should all believe in building teams and school communities and faculty togetherness and administrative groups, but we can do this by being encouraging and supportive. We do not need to run each other down. Creating comfort for all members of a team, making people understand that they matter, being aware that even when you are new, you are welcome – these are the first steps in good team building. When those new to our school are comfortable, learn to take risks, show growth and eventually develop the courage needed to make an extraordinary contribution to our school, is when we have started to succeed as a school community.
 
This year at RNS, we should continue to reinforce that rookies are new team members and need all the support we can muster for them, much like the experience we all had when we first entered the school.  

Down the road, I look forward to a breakthrough by some professional team in North America adopting a position where being a rookie on their team will be a positive and supported experience, and that the example of bullying we see today will be acknowledged an inappropriate example for the supporters of their organization.