A Tale of Two World Number Twos, Two Tragedies, and a Little Bit of Hope

Andy Murray captures his first Wimbledon
title, July 7 2013

The recent successes of Scottish tennis sensation Andy Murray, the reigning Wimbledon and US Open Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist, have highlighted the tragedy he survived as a child.

I join my fellow countrymen in celebrating the first British men’s Wimbledon crown since 1937, the year my father was born.  I also share in the memories and heartache of the school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland where Murray was an eight year-old schoolboy.  With each new Murray victory, the press re-tells the tale of that fateful morning on March 13^th 1996 when a gunman, a former scout leader known to the Murray family, entered the Dunblane Primary School armed with four handguns. He shot and killed sixteen children, all aged five or six, and their teacher, before turning a gun on himself and committing suicide.

Andy Murray survived the attack by hiding under a desk in the head teacher’s study. The tennis star has understandably been reluctant to talk about this traumatic event during his professional tennis career. As he has risen up the ATP world rankings to #2, he has opened up more about his experiences, though he says he does not have a clear picture of the events of that day.

Immediately following the Dunblane massacre, American professional tennis player Andrea Jaeger, herself a former world # 2, traveled to Dunblane to lend a hand to the grieving community.  In her words, she “didn’t know how I could help”. She just wanted to help.

Andrea Jaeger in Dunblane, Scotland, May 1996.
Andy Murray is second from the right.

Jaeger’s startlingly successful tennis career as a teenager was cut short by injury when she was 22.  She has since devoted her life to helping children, in particular cancer patients, through her personal work and her Little Star Foundation.  She arrived in Dunblane in 1996 with tennis rackets, nets, balls,

educational and therapeutic toys and games, and an open heart, and tried to help the children of Andy Murray’s school begin to heal. 

Jaeger’s visit was not the beginning of Murray’s tennis career – he was already showing promise at age eight – but the budding young star was certainly inspired by the visit and coaching from the international tennis superstar Jaeger.  In a recent post on her blog, Jaeger shared for the first time a letter that she received in 2004 from Murray’s mother when young Andy, at that point 16, and his older brother Jamie, were still making their way up the World Junior rankings.

Judy Murray wrote:

“Hi Andrea, 

I hope you remember your visit to Dunblane in May 1996. I found your faxes when I was clearing out my garage yesterday and thought you may be interested to know that 2 of the boys you played tennis

Andrea Jaeger, teenage
tennis phenomenon, at age 15 

with at Dunblane Sports Club are now ranked 6 and 70 in the ITF World Junior rankings.”

Mrs. Murray describes her sons’ tournament victories, singles and doubles titles, and world rankings in both men’s and juniors’ categories. You can read the full letter here.  She continues:

“I’m sure your visit inspired both of them to greater things! They realise there is still a long long way to go but both are determined to get as far as they possibly can in tennis.

I hope you are well and that your charity continues to inspire children. Dunblane has made a remarkable recovery after the tragedy but we will never forget.

Yours, Judy Murray,”

Fast forward several years to 2012 and the equally tragic school massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  On December 14, a lone gunman entered the school building and shot to death 26 people, including 20 children – all first graders aged six or seven – before killing himself.

At the time, Andrea Jaeger was in Staten Island, NY, helping the recovery relief from Hurricane Sandy when she heard of the shooting.  The next day, she traveled to Newtown to lay flowers outside Sandy Hook Elementary and to offer any support that she could.

Standing outside the makeshift memorial in Newtown, Jaeger said, “I want the children I meet, no matter what has happened to them, to know that they don’t have to fear the world, or every new person they meet.”

She knows that the tennis rackets she brought to Dunblane for Andy Murray and his schoolmates did

Jaeger in Newtown, Connecticut on December 15, 2012

nothing to make them forget the horror of the day at their school and the damage done to their childhoods. She knows that laying flowers outside a Connecticut elementary school will not bring back those who lost their lives.

“They can’t believe that things will ever get better,” Jaeger said in Newtown. “You have to make children, even children who have gone through something as horrible as this, believe that things will get better. It starts with giving them love.”

Despite the eerie similarities between the two school shootings on each side of the Atlantic, there is one glaring difference.

In late 1997, just a year and a half after the Dunblane massacre, the British government acted swiftly to ban private ownership of handguns in mainland Britain, outside of licensed shooting clubs.  The parliamentary vote was taken following a highly successful public campaign against gun ownership that culminated in a petition being handed to the government with almost 750,000 signatures. The new laws gave Britain some of the toughest anti-gun legislation in the world.

All small-bore pistols were included in the ban, along with rifles used by target shooters. Penalties for anyone found in possession of illegal firearms range from heavy fines to prison terms of up to 10 years. There were also firearm amnesties across Britain, resulting in the surrender of thousands of firearms and rounds of ammunition.

The massacre at Dunblane “was one of the most shocking things that has ever happened in this country and it united the country in a feeling that we had to do something," Gill Andrews of the British Gun Control Network said, following the instigation of the new laws. "And I don't think that it would have been possible to make the kind of progress that we have made without that tragedy."

According to official British crime figures, the number of crimes involving handguns committed in the country is in free fall. Between the years 2003 and 2011, handgun crimes fell 44%, from 5,549 annually across the country to 3,105.

In the seventeen years since Dunblane, there have been precisely zero school shootings on British soil.

By contrast, in the United States, where the pro-gun lobby has significant influence over national and local lawmakers – despite overwhelming public opinion in favor of tighter gun control – school shootings continue to make tragic yet regular headlines.

According to statistics from the organization StopTheShootings.org, there have been 387 school shootings in 42 different states since 1992, claiming 510 lives. While Virginia Tech (33 lives lost in 2007), Sandy Hook Elementary (28 lives lost in 2012), and Columbine High School (15 lives lost in 1999) grab a majority of the headlines, there continue to be several school shootings each year all across the nation.

One child’s death is one too many.

Children ages 5-14 in America are thirteen times more likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries according to David Hemenway, professor of Health Policy at Harvard University.

The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world - there are 89 guns for every 100 Americans, compared to 6 in the United Kingdom.

Murder figures in the US are unfathomable for a British public who are accustomed to approximately 550 murders per year. In 2011, the latest year for which statistics are available from the federal Bureau of Justice, there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those 11,101 were caused by firearms.

The good news for Americans is that firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 (a reduction of 39%) and non-fatal firearm crimes dropped from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011. We are moving in the right direction.

Yet the right direction is only relative:

• no school shootings in Britain since 1997; more than three hundred in the US. 

• 550 murders in Britain in 2011; over 12,500 in the US.

• 3,105 handgun crimes in Britain in 2011; more than 150 times that amount in the US. (side note: the population of Britain is just under a fifth of that of the United States, 63 million vs. 311 million)

American politicians are beginning to make small in-roads towards controlling which types of guns are available to citizens. In Colorado, the state where I live, new laws went into effect just this month requiring universal background checks for all private gun sales and a ban on ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

Small potatoes, but a step in the right direction.

I am under no illusion that anyone who may be so determined can get their hands on weapons that were designed for the battlefield.  I am under no illusion that anyone who may be so determined can force their way into any school, movie theater, or other public place where the innocent gather, and do untold damage.

As an educational leader, I have taken steps at my school to mitigate the risk without giving the place the feel of a fortress. A step in the right direction, I suppose.

As I continue to think about the families of Newtown who lost precious children, I am comforted by

Judy Murray is embraced by her son Andy immediately
following his Wimbledon victory, July 7 2013

Judy Murray’s words: “Dunblane has made a remarkable recovery after the tragedy but we will never forget.” I hope and pray that the Newtown families, and families across the country who have lost children to gun violence, will make a similar recovery.

The chances of a surviving student from Sandy Hook Elementary becoming an Olympic or Wimbledon champion are slim – though not outside the world of possibility. I pray that the chances of us learning from this tragedy and taking steps to ensure another one does not happen are not outside the world of possibility.

In the words of Andrea Jaeger, “You have to…believe that things will get better. It starts with giving them love.”

Thank you, Andrea, for inspiring thousands of children and their families through your Little Star Foundation and all the work you do for kids.  Thank you, Andy, for inspiring a nation and for battling back from such tragedy.

We’re making small steps in the right direction. As Andrea said, “Things will get better.” As Judy Murray added, “There is still a long long way to go.”

The Snow Day: An Insider’s Viewpoint

If you have ever lived in the same place as winter and you have attended school, you know all about the great gift of the Snow Day.  School children in northern climes eagerly follow impending snow forecasts and go to bed praying for enough snow that the buses won’t run, the carpool won’t make it out of the garage, and school will be closed.  Enough snow and the magical word “CANCELED” scrolls next to the school’s name under TV images of the morning news. Hallelujah!  The gods of winter shine down on students everywhere.

In Colorado, a snow day is most likely to occur between the months of November and March, but is possible as early as September and as late as May.  Some winters our school may close for snow two or three times, and sometimes not at all.  School kids view any large amount of snow falling over a weekend or during school vacations as a colossal waste.  Because I live in a state that is accustomed to copious amounts of snow, it generally takes a sizeable storm to persuade school officials to cancel.  Probably 8”-10” or more. And even with that much snow, it’s all a matter of timing.  Snowfall that starts in the late afternoon and wraps up before the morning commute will likely not result in a snow day, only in student anguish.  The more the snow falls during the night and throughout the morning, the higher the chances of a day away from the books.

In the south of England, where I grew up, it’s a different story for two reasons.  Firstly, they’re not used to much snow and they don’t have the plows to cope with a whole lot more than a dusting.  They get a few inches on the ground, and the whole place screeches to a grinding halt.  Schools close, businesses too, and the airports start canceling flights. Your holiday to Spain gets delayed by a week or your mother-in-law takes up residence in your guest room until the daffodils appear.  The second difference is the unfortunate fact that, when I was at boarding school in England, most of the teachers lived on campus.  We were all stuck together and no one needed to drive. A decent amount of snow resulted in the added pain of learning Latin conjugations while watching the world turn to white outside the window, too much discipline enforced to enjoy it.

For kids, the best kind of snow day is the one that falls on the day of the big math test, or the dreaded sex ed talk.  Miss something you never wanted to do in the first place, and it’s a double bonus.  Reason to celebrate, to sleep in, and spend a cozy day at home in your pajamas watching movies and drinking hot chocolate. Maybe, if you’re feeling lively, hitting the sledding hill. Life never felt so good.  And even if your dad insists that you shovel the driveway or pick the little balls of ice out of the feet of the dog, it’s all a whole lot better than 7^th period English or canned peaches in the school cafeteria.

But, kids, here’s a little secret that you may not have considered.  As much as you love a snow day, rest assured that your teachers love it more.  Sons and daughters of teachers know this already.  They’ve witnessed the happy dance performed in bathrobes by their mom or dad the teacher, otherwise known by hundreds of miserable former students as Mr or Mrs Harvey.  When I became a teacher, any visions I may have had of my teachers grumpily plowing through the snowdrifts, sitting dejectedly at their desks in front of an empty classroom swiftly disappeared.  There was nothing more pleasurable than receiving that early morning phone call and heading back to bed safe in the knowledge that I didn’t have to face the little reprobates that day and there was one less day of lesson planning I had to do.

Now I’m the head of school in an independent school.  It’s my job to call the snow day.  My decision entirely.  Could there be a better job on earth?  In my hands rests the fate (for at least one day) of all the students at my school, all the teachers and their families, and all the parents.  This is big stuff.  This might quite possibly have been the sole reason why I wanted to be a headmaster in the first place.  How many times, as a student or as a teacher, was my glorious day-off completely dependent on someone else? I remember one time, during a big snow storm, when schools were announcing closures left and right. My school stayed open because the head of school had taken a sleep-aid pill and no amount of phone calls by her desperate staff could raise her from her slumber.

Now I keep a close eye on the weather forecast.  I’m sensitive to barometric pressure drops and darkening skies to the west.  Any sniff of the white stuff, and I’m up at 5 a.m. tuned in to the weather reports like a hawk.

It’s a giant responsibility.  Make the wrong decision and I’m guaranteed to enrage huge numbers of people.  Miscalculate and no one’s my friend.  Too much snow and I choose to keep school open: the teachers who drive fair distances are irate, parents are mad because they had to take their darling cargo out in dangerous conditions, and the kids hate me because we all know what they’d rather be doing.  Not as much snow as forecast and I elect to close: the parents are seething because they still have to go to work and now what are they going to do with their kids home all day, the more fastidious teachers are upset because this would have been the perfect day to start that new curriculum unit they’ve been planning for months, and even the occasional child is upset because they would rather hang out at school with their friends than be bored at home. (Who am I kidding, that last one was just a lie!)

It’s a huge test of my authority, wisdom, and judgment.  Closing school for snow is one of the more public decisions I make.  In addition, there’s an unwritten rule, as head of a small independent school in a decent-sized city, that I follow the lead of the local public school district.  That’s what the leaders of other private schools in the area have advised me.  Is this wise, I ask myself?  One of the joys of running an independent school is our ability and willingness to be nimble, to base our decisions quickly and efficiently on the needs of our students.  Do I really want to be making decisions on the collective wisdom of a giant bureaucracy, an animal whose kind has proven indefatigably that decisions are hard to come by and are as often as not based on matters of politics and finance rather than what’s best for children?  And do I want to be following their lead at five o’clock in the morning when my own ability to make sound decisions has been called into question by anyone who’s ever seen me in a sleepy state, despite the bed head.

The public schools have more complex issues than I do.  They have fleets of buses to consider and children waiting on street corners in frozen conditions.  They have high school students who drive themselves to school, which I do not, and test-taking schedules so complex and frequent that they frighten the corduroys off any half-respectable college professor.  They have thousands of employees and almost as many students (or is it the other way around?) whereas I am catering to a couple of hundred families.

My friend Meg photoshopped this picture of me (in my terrible
Halloween costume) dancing in front of my school, celebrating
calling my first snow day.

And so the day I had been anticipating arrived soon enough in my first year as a head of school. Early in the winter we had had a couple of close calls, a few inches of powder here and there, but not enough to cancel.  Now in early February, just as we were getting ready to celebrate the hundredth day of school, the forecast looked promising.  On Monday the weather men talked about snow coming at the end of the week.  On Tuesday, they were making noises that it could be a significant storm.  On Wednesday, they were getting more specific about timing of the snow – arriving Thursday evening, likely to snow all through Thursday night, all day Friday, and ending some time on Saturday morning.  On Thursday morning, they were still hedging their bets.  If the cold front stayed more to the south, we would see 8-10” of snow.  If it came a little bit further, we might see 12-14”.  By the time I drove home on Thursday at the end of a long afternoon, the temperature dropped significantly.

Thursday evening, I took the light-rail downtown to meet my partner Steph for dinner.  By the time I got to the restaurant, the first flakes were falling.  By the time we ordered dessert, the snow was coming down hard in the downtown street lights and settling on the roads.  As we drove home, it was clear that this storm had arrived, kicked off its boots, and settled in for the long haul.

I flipped on the weather forecast.  The predicted totals were on the increase.  Anywhere from 12-24”.  That’s a school-closing kind of forecast.  As I continued to watch, a number of major school districts and independent schools to the south of where I live were beginning to announce closures.  My school is a 45 minute drive to the northwest.  The public school district there was silent.  I called a couple of my administrative staff who live near the school.  Snow was falling heavily and the roads were getting slick.  It was 9:30 p.m. The forecast continued to call for copious snowfall.  Guessing (it turns out correctly) that the school district would remain undecided until the early morning, I had a decision to make.  I knew our families and staff would appreciate going to bed knowing they wouldn’t have to set their alarms.  I knew school would be closed and I didn’t want to wait until dawn.

Sensing the magnitude of the moment, I made the call.  In a great ‘first’ of my career, I pulled out the heavily guarded secret codes which gave me access to the television stations’ websites and entered the information.  SCHOOL CLOSED.  We ran it on our own website and posted on the school’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.  No one was going to be uninformed. 

Staying up just long enough to witness the first announcements on our school scrolling across the TV screens, I headed upstairs, flipped off the switch on my alarm clock, and went to bed.  I slept like a baby.

4:25 a.m.  I was still deep in slumber.  Unbeknownst to me, the public school district in which my school resides made their decision.  The schools were closing.  Their preferred choice of communication? Reverse robo-call.  Phones rang off the hook in the homes of every family in the district.  Thousands of people awoke to a recorded message.  Most didn’t go back to sleep. All day long social media buzzed with the grumblings of a decision mismanaged.

I slept on.  I eventually woke up naturally and well-rested at 7:30 a.m., the time I’m usually arriving at school.  I looked out the window at the 15” of snow already on the ground and the gorgeous thick flakes still falling.  Steph made a delicious cup of morning coffee while I began to crack the eggs for breakfast.  My thoughts turned to the snow shovel leaning against the garage wall and how I should start putting it to good use.  No, I thought to myself, the shoveling can wait.  I’ve got all day.

Rainy and Inspiring Days In Seattle

I am grateful to have attended the National Association of Independent Schools conference in Seattle last week.

It was an amazing opportunity to re-unite (and empathize) with first-year colleagues from the Institute for New Heads, the conference I attended in Atlanta last summer, and to be inspired and educated by great speakers.  

Several friends have been asking me about my experiences so I thought I would share for all.

The theme of the conference was innovation.  As I wrote in my Among Friends' blog last week, it was inspiring to learn about all the incredible innovation that is happening in independent schools across the country.

In a nutshell, I attended talks by: 

Bill Gates (Microsoft), who spent more of his time talking about how his foundation is funding teacher assessment programs - I would have loved to have heard his thoughts on personal innovation.  Too bad - I didn't get close enough to hit him up for a donation!   I thoroughly enjoyed finding a spelling error in one of his slides (learing instead of learning).  Not only that, but I and hundreds of others around me were taking notes on his talk on an Apple computer product.  It’s nice to know that nobody’s perfect.

Pat Bassett (president of NAIS), who highlighted the big shifts on education over the last ten years.  Not just the 5 'C's of 21st century skills (creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and cross-cultural competency) , but the way the internet has presented amazing ways for teachers to share ideas and use resources.

Amy Chua (The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother), who was far more charming and personable than the media portrays.  She talked a lot about the humor in her book and remains convinced of the importance of holding kids to high standards.

John Hunter (subject of the forthcoming movie World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements) This is a movie that will be shown on PBS in May - and we should all watch it. He's a humble gentle 35 year veteran teacher who has literally invented a superbly complex game for helping kids understand world politics.  He got by far the longest standing O of the conference - minutes longer than Bill Gates!

John Medina (Brain Rules) Many of you know the book.  An amazingly gifted presenter on the latest brain research and what we know about parenting.

Dan Savage (Savage Love and the It Gets Better project), a Seattle humorist, columnist and gay rights activist who's youtube channel has gone viral in helping GLBT teens feel heard and supported.  A sensationally inspiring presenter.

I also attended seminars to help me learn about successful strategies for asking for gifts for my school and for hiring well.

In between, it was wonderful to network with heads of schools and other independent school people from Colorado and across the country, to visit with Jim Bonney (Educators Collaborative, Friends' head of school search firm) whom I had never met in person, even though we have talked on the phone many times, and to sneak in a lovely lunch with my friend and marketing guru Monique Davis.  

All in all, apart from the incessant rain, (c'mon Seattle I was expecting better and did you really have to put your schools on a two hour delay because there was sleet in the air?!) I enjoyed a hugely busy and successful three days.  Great seafood too!

I'm grateful to everyone at Friends' School and Steph Bruno (who's also a great blogger by the way!) for keeping things running so smoothly in my absence. 

It's good to be back!