Reflections on Headship: Bring on the Muffins!

In Manhattan last weekend, my husband and I went to see Our Town on Broadway, a play I have loved since I was fourteen when, though I yearned to be Emily, I played The Woman in the Balcony in a production at the boy’s school. Since then, I’ve directed the play twice and taught it many times. I know the script almost by heart.  In Act III, when Emily chooses to return to Grover’s Corners for her 12th birthday, she finds the act of revisiting her life excruciating. She asks the Stage Manager: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?” and he answers,  “No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”  

What prevents us from attending, from noticing our lives as we live them? Everything. As the head of an exceptional independent school, I consider my own life and the lives of my colleagues. A million excuses float up as to why I do not stop to notice, to reflect on life as I am living it. We heads of school are busy, over-scheduled, over-obligated humans. We manage our families and ourselves–as well as the lives that make up a complex organization–children, parents, faculty, staff, alums, neighbors, trustees. We juggle meetings and travel and long to-do lists and hard conversations; we think strategically and plan agendas and consider our market position and our value proposition and schedule our own children’s orthodontia appointments. We care for elderly parents or face empty nesting or organize who will pick up which child from soccer or play practice. We support those in our community who suffer. We referee complicatied dynamics, figure out who will do the laundry, feed the pets, go to the grocery store, encourage teachers, observe classes, go to games and plays and concerts, make dinner. We affirm the kindergarten child who has learned to read and reassure a worried middle school parent that it’s okay if her daughter is not yet in algebra or does not have a best friend. We celebrate Seniors for their many accomplishments and demystify comma rules for ninth grade English students. We pay bills and send birthday cards; we write countless thank you notes to generous donors. We smooth ruffled feathers, welcome children cheerfully each morning, apologize–often–for things we may not have done. We read mountains of email and try to determine which messages are essential. We worry about particular children or colleagues who are overwhelmed. We wonder if we have another week before we need to bring the geranium inside and how many pairs of shoes we might really need to cram into our suitcases for our next trip.  Our minds overflow.  Staying present is a challenge.

As I watched Our Town–a tricky production in my opinion, but that is another conversation–I found myself resolving to pay closer attention in this, my final year of leading Laurel. a school I love with all my heart. I do not want to hurtle through my days. I vow to allow myself to note and reflect–-even when that’s hard.  There is both joy and sorrow in transition, of course, loss and gain. I already feel anticipatory grief at not having the voices of children as the backdrop of my daily life.  It’s a funny seesaw–I look forward to the unknown and look back over all we have achieved as a school. Standing as I am on the threshold between now and my own next chapter and my school’s next chapter, I think about opportunities and challenges. What can we celebrate?  Though I am full of pride at our accomplishments, I also consider the “might have beens”–all I thought we would have tackled by now that must wait for my successor. 

On the heels of last weekend’s  NYC whirlwind–our younger daughter’s wedding, two shows, and the Alvin Ailey exhibit–I sat, for the last time, in a lovely meeting room of the University Club at Index, a benchmarking group to which Laurel belongs. Morning light streamed through leaded stained glass windows. Each autumn, school leaders and CFOs gather to discuss data. At the best of times, numbers and percentages and trend lines and correlations require my disciplined focus. Data, a Laurel colleague explained to me long ago, is the evidence anecdotes and stories require, but data often makes me feel a little bit “less than,” as if I am back in 7th grade puzzling over algebra, wanting unknown variables to be expressed in real words, not in x and y. Numbers have never called to me the way stories do. 

Lisa, the extraordinary executive director of Index, offered clear explanations that, when I am managed to avoid going down the rabbit hole of fretting about where we stack up as a school, I could follow.  I silently cheered myself on when I answered a question correctly in my head.  But I was not so brave about volunteering my answers aloud.

One session about head evaluation was led by my friend Alona, and towards the end,  we spoke about how often heads—friends—have lost their jobs of late and how important it is for boards to support heads. In response to something I said, my friend, Crissy, who leads a Quaker School in Brooklyn, said, “I always think of Ann as bold.”  

Am I bold?  I want the  girls at Laurel to be bold–I read them a story at our opening assembly about a bold little girl. Bold is better than bossy.  I like the idea of being perceived as bold, but I wonder if—twenty years ago when I began-–I was bolder.  When we start a headship, we are full of promise and hope; we’ve been chosen; we are the one!  It is a lovely time—a long runway of anticipation, a much-heralded arrival, and the fun of meeting the community, forming a team, rolling up our sleeves to get to work. Is boldness easier before we fully understand the complexities, the nuances of compromise.? I know I can be bold on behalf of those in the school I serve, but have I lost some of my verve in two decades–and is that entirely a bad thing?  Have I retained my integrity over twenty years? Absolutely. Do I understand  now that not every idea I offer is a good one. Yes. Am I less spontaneous than I once was?  Perhaps.

Lucky heads of school join organizations in which other heads offer wisdom and humor and counsel; head colleagues buoy each other when things are hard in our schools, in our lives.  And that’s the crux of it.  For most heads, our schools and our lives are inextricably braided.  When we are with “our peeps,” we can be our authentic selves.  With one another,  we drop our guards, share the complications of our schools and our lives. Heads get it in a way no one else does. Heads understand the ways in which our family lives inform our school lives, and vice versa..

Crissy facilitated the final discussion I attended–a meet up just for heads. I didn’t know all the people around the table well–there were a lot of men, which made me realize most of the spaces I inhabit are largely female. She began by asking us to join her in a moment of silence—she leads a Quaker school, after all. It was lovely to be together in contemplative quiet, an invitation to be fully present.  After that moment,  we went around the table to introduce ourselves and to offer something about our selves. Our selves, not our work. Even as we volunteered glimpses of our personal lives, school spilled into what we shared. Lots of people talked about their love of the outdoors as a way to recharge. We learned about hut-to-hut hiking, and a head who places stickers wherever he hikes to celebrate the life of a student who died hiking. Another head made a ritual of collecting sea glass. We heard about, the endless juggle between our families’ needs and our school's’ needs, and the constant “push-me, pull-you” of when to prioritize school and when to put family first. We listened to folks sharing struggles about fundraising for big campaigns, the wear and tear of travel. One head had missed his son’s first travel soccer goal; another was headed to see his son in Our Town. Another head explained that she channels her anger into baking. “Bring on the muffins,” she declared recently, grappling with a few tricky situations at school. A supervisor told her long ago, “Now I get it; when you’re baking, I should be worried about you.” At least this strategy has a delicious impact on others! We all  laughed in recognition; hers is a positive approach to channeling the helplessness we can feel in the daily mess of school–issues that cannot be easily resolved. I shared my daily watercolor practice–a ritual that has helped to ground me in this final year. As I listened, I noted how often work and family criss-crossed and how present we were with one another, riveted by each person’s willingness to share and be vulnerable.  We felt a shared sense of calm and gratitude for the space Crissy had created for us.

Later, waiting for my plane at O’Hare, I thought about camaraderie and trust and vulnerability and about Emily’s revelation that we do not take the time to notice the little moments of our lives. I treasure the friendships I have formed with other heads, the notes of good cheer I’ve received this fall, the exquisite bouquet sent to me by a  group of women heads whose friendship I cherish. In this long goodbye–and it feels like a long, long goodbye–I remember Emily’s plea to her mother:   

“Let’s look at one another…It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life, and we never noticed…”

In these next months, I’m determined to pay attention–to breathe in the present and not to skate over it. I am not a saint or a poet, but I am a headmistress and a writer and a mom and a wife and a friend.  I’m carrying a miniature version of Emily Webb in my heart, reminding myself that letting everything go by unremarked to save myself the pain of what I might miss is folly. The mess of it all. To love the everyday, to hug the whole experience, to notice life as I am living it is the intention I’m setting for myself.