On Campus Like a Butterfly (or 30 minutes in a life)

I love schools.

Not the physical space so much, but the people. I love the energy harnessed by the conversations that happen on a campus. And while I wrote about conversations (riding the windhorse) recently, this week I have been particularly attuned to the way I navigate campus.

As often as I have a schedule that dictates how long I've got to get from one place to the next, the moments I love most are when I get to navigate campus like a butterfly...floating from conversation to conversation, from observation to observation, from thought to thought, and inspiration to inspiration. Yep, that's me, like a butterfly who lets the wind carry it from flower to flower, collecting pollen wherever the wind lands it...no blueprint, just a trust in the breeze, carrying it where it will.

Sometimes I'll transit campus on foot without seeing anyone. Other times, I have a dozen conversations over the course of my walk. Yesterday was such a day.

Here's what happened.

7:25 sunlight over the ridge...glorious sunlight as I walk from the parking lot

7:27 I run into a colleague, the school counselor, and we talk about the sun and about an incredible conversation I had yesterday with the CEO of Factor Philanthropy. In the conversation yesterday we spoke about harnessing the potential of students and schools, and the communities we inhabit...we talked about the principles on which institutions stand and I was energized and I shared all of this  with my colleague. And we departed.

7:32 I walk across campus with the Head of Upper School. We discuss the following day's Community Time and he asks wonderful questions about what the students need, what we need, and how to provide space for the important over the urgent. We stand in the doorway of the Dining Hall and finish our conversation with hope and a promise to finish later. And we departed.



7:40 I am now at a community breakfast (we do this every fall/winter) where many colleagues are seated and eating, talking and connecting. We all have busy days ahead, but now a time to pause. I land at a table with another Division Head, a third grade teacher (who happens to teach my buddy class), two administrative assistants (and a first grader).

7:42 I talk to the division head to follow-up to our conversation from Monday. We pick up where we left off, discussing how Middle School is more about THE THINGS WE EXPERIENCE than it is about THE THINGS WE LEARN. She tells me that the four assurances she gives parents are that the teachers in her building will
let them fly,
let them fall,
pull them out,
& find the good.

Experiences.

7:46 Conversation turns to my third grade teacher colleague. We discuss Buddies and Service Learning and the opportunity for my 8th graders and her 3rd graders to work together to make blankets in February that can be donated around Valentines' Day. We talk about how the activity could draw the group closer together and provide a sense of purpose for everyone involved. She ends the conversation by saying, "I guess it's time to meander back to my room," and I think of that meander as a butterfly (thereby inspiring the topic for this post)

7:50 Seated next to me, the Assistant to the Assistant Head of School asks, "How's your week?"
"I don't give many tests, but I'm giving one today..." is my reply.
"Huh, you don't give many tests? How come?"

I explain the way I've transformed my vocabulary assessments to be more student-centered and to deemphasize the rote memorization of vocabulary. It's nearly time for me to get to advisory, so I politely excuse myself.

7:54 I walk by the Director of Maintenance : "still looking for students to sit on the Faculty/Staff Sustainability committee?"

"Yes! I am. I have one student, but would love two more."

"Alright, I've got some ideas!"

And we departed.

7:57 As I walk across campus, cars are filling the parking lot. I give a handful of waves and even more warm smiles to parents saying goodbye to their kids. My coffee steam swirls in the cold air and I see a parent of a former student. We say hello and I share that I'd recently been thinking of her son because I watched a video of a play I was in during my own adolescence and observed echoes of a performance by her son in last winter's drama production...this led us to discuss his year as a 9th grader at a local independent school...his struggles in honors history...his big test today (one that allowed him to share notes with his classmates)...I mention a family friend who is a sophomore at Williams College and recently admitted, "in my first year and a half of college, I've only had three tests by myself because they're all crowdsourced group tests."...together, the two of us wonder about how the caliber of performance and preparation (and stress?) would increase if a team of three students were given 30 questions that would take 3 hours to answer, requiring them to divide the questions and do their best. "Would this better prepare the students for life after college?" we wonder...we don't answer, but glad for the conversation and the ideas echoing in my head, I make a bee line (B-line? Butterfly line?) for my classroom.

It's 8:05, my students will be in class in 10 minutes, so I walk, a butterfly on a mission, fulfilled, yet driven, my legs heavy with nectar, my heart light with hope.

Ideas fragrant in the breeze, innumerable and sustaining as the air, itself.