FROM THE DESK OF...

As the new school year begins, we are all full of greetings. We greet new members of the faculty and staff, new and returning families; we stand at the front door or at car circle and greet children. The beginning of the school year is full of optimism and possibility.  

 

So, I greet all of you as your new Chair, with a heart full of joy. To serve as Chair for an organization I love feels like both a gift and privilege. I have been thinking a great deal about the ways in which THN has enriched my headship. The relationships I’ve formed over the past twenty years have inspired, buoyed, comforted, and sometimes challenged me. To be with colleagues who know what it is like to lead a school enriches my leadership.

 

I have so valued colleagues who reach out; who say yes to teaching in the Leadership Seminar time after time; who ask me to think more deeply about a topic, gently inquiring, “Is there another way to think about that question, Ann?” The network I’ve formed through my membership in our organization feels like a net–a safe landing to break a fall–we are all of us on the high wires, aren’t we? I am glad of the security of the net.

 

In the old days, whenever they were, women tended to disparage what was termed “the old boys’ network.” A quick search confirmed that the meaning of the expression derives from the advantages young men from 19th c. British aristocracy gained in acquiring opportunities in politics or business because of who they’d gone to school with–connections led to advancement. Perhaps, it has been ever thus–we are often inclined to lend a hand to someone we know or trust, someone we’ve worked with and respect, someone who shares an aspect of our own identity.

 

The Heads Network, by mission, seeks to advance women as leaders in independent schools; for a long time, it was, if you will, “an old girls’ network.” In its first incarnation as NAPSG, women heads (of mostly historically all-girls’ schools) met each year with College Deans–in those days, the Head was often the college advisor, too, so those meetings were important opportunities to secure college placement at the 7 Sisters and coed institutions.  

 

Now, our college colleagues have largely faded away, though I think fondly of Shep Shanley, who I had come to know when I was a college advisor and he was the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Northwestern. When I joined NAPSG twenty years ago, he greeted me enthusiastically and kindly–my new role less lonely because he was part of that new world.

 

In my twenty years of belonging to THN, I am conscious of how fortunate we are to have such a robust membership, a network of leaders who are committed to raising up others. We are glad, now, to count men among our ranks and recognize them as invaluable mentors and sponsors for our aspiring leaders. We are a great mix of leaders of large schools and small, geography, experience, and perspective.

 

I have on speed dial a number of women and men that I have met at the Annual Conference. I am grateful for their wisdom, humor and perspective when I am navigating a hard moment. We help each other. We take each other’s calls and respond to each other’s texts. We stand by one another when things are hard; we celebrate one another. We are not an exclusive “old girls’ or old boys’ club,” rather, I imagine us as the filaments of a beautiful spider web–minus the spider–strong enough to endure a storm, suspended between the branches of evergreens. The first educational philosophy I ever penned that led me to Laurel School talked about school communities as webs emanating from a center; what happens in one area of a school has an effect–even if not immediate or easy to discern–on all the other parts of the institution.

 

Now, in my final year of leading a school I love, I think about the web that connects me to leaders and aspiring leaders across the country–and beyond since Kolia O’Connor, one of my closest friends, now leads a school in Mexico. I am a better leader for the empathy and thoughtfulness the members of THN provide.  

 

When we send women to the leadership seminar or bring a second member to the Annual Conference, we are expanding the web–a beautiful design that is far more resilient than it appears at first glance. Those of us who invest in relationships are not unlike Charlotte of E.B. White fame. We spin filaments that connect us to others; we offer friendship and support and love and experience and empathy. 

 

The fresh beginning of late August and September will subside for all of us–we will have worries, unexpected stresses and moments of delight. As Charlotte reminds Wilbur, 

 

“Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days…”

 

And we will meet each other in January, ready for the inspiration and comfort THN offers, ready to deepen existing friendships and begin to build new relationships. We are, none of us, alone. We choose community; we choose connection. 

 

May the beginning of a new school year offer moments of wonder. And may we keep one another in our thoughts.  Here is one more quotation from Charlotte, “By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”