From the United States Senate

I was pleased to receive this letter from Mark Udall, U.S. Senator from Colorado. I thought it was a classy personal touch that he included a hand-written note and I'm feeling somewhat pleased that he may be one of the few people around whose handwriting is worse than mine! I wonder when we'll catch up in person....

Speech to the Graduating Class of Stanley British Primary School

(to listen to a recording of this speech, click here)

May 27, 2011

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, a particularly great morning to the graduating class of 2011 and good morning to an enormous sea of former students and parents who are here today.

Before I start I was thinking last night how eloquently David Marais thanked all of us as 8th grade parents for helping so much with all the graduation festivities and I thought I would take the opportunity, from all of us as 8th grade parents, a round of applause, to thank David Marais and all he’s done for our 8th grade class.

Thank you for giving me this podium on this important day. A couple of years ago, when David asked me to give this speech today, there were mixed emotions in my household. I felt some joy and pride that for the first time we were going to hear from a graduation speaker who represented a section of the school other than the middle school, and who was also the parent of a graduating student. My daughter Emma, on the other hand, was mortified that I might take this opportunity to embarrass her publicly. As if I’ve ever done that before! You need not worry, Em. You have my word. And even though David knew that this would be the last day as Stanley students for Emma and her 8th grade friends, what none of us could have possibly known then was that this was the day that I would also be saying goodbye to this school.

So here we all are, at a day that perhaps many of us thought would never come. For some of you graduating, it’s only been a couple of years or so, since you started middle school at Stanley. For others, who began their Stanley careers in 345, it’s been maybe 4 or 5 years that you’ve been at the school. We learned at the Rose Ceremony on Wednesday, that for twenty of these graduating students, you’ve had nine full and happy years on our campus. And for some of us graduating from Stanley today, it’s been twenty-one years.

We’ve all seen many changes in our time here at Stanley. In the last month, we’ve broken ground on a new entrance to the school. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen Matt and Kathy’s and Katie Boston’s classes move into their own building. We’ve got a new elevator in the middle school and a bell system so that Alexandra will get you to your next class on time. We’ve started Family Groups and we’ve finally got cool new uniforms for the sports teams.

For many of us, in the last five or six years, we’ve said goodbye to a founding head of school and welcomed a new one. He’s taller and plays the banjo better than the old one. And when I say ‘old’, even though you seem to have carelessly left Carolyn behind at the Little White House in Brockenhurst, I mean ‘old’ with only affection and gratitude. We’ve got to know wonderful new teachers and we’ve said goodbye to others. Today, we say goodbye to a few more.

Back in 2002, when this class began their illustrious careers in kindergarten, important events were shaping our world. The Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City. The US invaded Afghanistan. The body of Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams was frozen cryogenically in two separate pieces and a little TV show called American Idol debuted, leading Kelly Clarkson to break a record held for 38 years by the Beatles when her smash hit A Moment Like This leapt 51 places to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Here at Stanley in 2002, Sara Stern graduated from the intern program and was hired to teach 345, the school broke ground on the construction of the gym, Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated and ESPN fame was coaching our basketball teams, and at the Holiday Program, Ted’s class performed The Grinch Who Stole Christmas - again.

Before that, in a time we used to call the nineties, some of you started at Paddington Station as two year olds here on an abandoned air force base at Lowry in what are now our K12 classrooms – when they were much smaller and not connected by a hallway. To get to the classroom at the end, you had to go through all the preceding classrooms, probably tripping over great piles of asbestos as you went.

I distinctly remember meeting several of you, kids, parents and even grandparents, at that first ice cream social for our two year old class. That was the time I distinguished myself in my naivete as a parent who clearly only had girls. The two year olds had taken a trip to the local fire station and everyone was excited to dress up and act like firefighters. I took it upon myself to provide a little realism to the make-believe, cutting up an old garden hose into four foot long strips, knowing that Addie and Jade and Lily and others would love putting out pretend fires with the mini-hoses. I hadn’t taken into account two year old boys, kids like Niall and Cole and Jack Longenecker, who proceeded to snatch the hoses and beat the living daylights out of each other. The teacher had to remove the weapons forthwith.

Those of you who are graduating your second or third child from Stanley today, and you’ve been here a decade or more, will remember the days when we had a split campus and all the challenges that that represented. Staggered start and finish times to the school day. For many staff members, much driving between the two sites. Two phone numbers, two receptionists, two places where we could lose your information, your tuition checks, and quite possibly even your children. I’m kidding, we never lost your tuition checks.

Before that, we were dealing with getting onto our Lowry campus through barbed wire fences, over parts of runways, and through plenty of mud. Tim remembers those days, sixteen years ago, when we spent a few years developing a middle school curriculum and taking out all kinds of debris that the US Air Force left behind – red velvet bar stools that we removed from the room we still call the pub, cast iron desks that weighed more than a small car, and plenty of bedroom furniture from the duplex houses that are now these classrooms.

For those of us who taught in the old building up the street at 1301 Quebec, we got excited when we built an addition which housed, three new classrooms, an extended day room and a giant multi-purpose room. That thing was massive. Compared to the gym today, that room was like, as big, as a small part of it, maybe the size of the music room if you pull Jill and all the instruments out of there. We played basketball in there. I directed my first ever play Black Ships Before Troy. Heck, we had the whole Holiday Program in that room. We were crammed in, we were hot, but we were happy. Hm, I guess some things don’t change.

Before that addition, we were four little classrooms and a basement. I taught down there, in the basement, for 2 years and mastered completely the art of pipe-dodging. The pipes down there in that basement are five feet eleven inches off the ground and I’m six feet one By the end of those two years, all my head wounds healed and I was able to teach math and give spelling tests, wandering around my classroom looking like someone out of Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.

Back then, in 1990, when I began teaching at Stanley, fresh out of college, fresh off the plane from England, when my accent sounded more like Prince William’s and I still knew how to spell properly, leaving the “u” in words like “colour” and “flavour”, we were a tiny school. We had about 85 students, K-3, and a staff of less than 20. Everyone knew everyone else. We were just thinking about offering health insurance to full-time staff members, we offered French and a writing class we called language lab, and a third of everyone’s day was spent on choice time. Some of our current teaching staff were students back in those days. Some of them hadn’t even started kindergarten then.

And of those twenty staff members or so who were at the school when I began, half of them are still here today. I think that’s remarkable. And I’d like us to acknowledge them: Carolyn Hambidge, Chris Lewis, Betsy Lewis, Leneta Jones, Ida Daniel, Joanna Hambidge, Barbara Guynn, Mary Aandahl, and Debbie Montgomery; and several other current colleagues had already been involved in the school in significant ways: Kim Hartsen, Lynne Forstot, Mary Ammons, Jane Hile, Martha Markson, and Lloyd Slevc.

We have to acknowledge them and give them our deepest gratitude and here’s why. You see, when teachers and staff members leave, they get a canvas bag with the Stanley BPS logo, the Stanley bag. You know how many people I’ve watched over the years get that darned bag? Twenty years I’ve watched friends and colleagues score with that bag, and I never got one. Not until this year. This is mine! And here are these folks giving their blood sweat and tears to this school for a quarter of a century or more, and no bag. They deserve our thanks and our appreciation.

Because when you have people who have been around an organization for two or even three decades, you get something that you can’t buy anywhere. You get institutional memory. And that’s important. You get deep-rooted knowledge of the values and principles on which a school is founded.

It’s why these 8th graders who’ve been at the school all these years make such terrific tour guides to prospective families. You remember choice time. You remember taking apart motorbikes with Chris and building giant, potentially dangerous, playground structures out of junk. You remember singing your way around Star K Ranch with Mary Jo, (and please allow me to take a moment here to thank Mary Jo who has been a wonderful, creative, amazing teacher for my own children for six years – thank you, Mary Jo) or learning about yourselves by building life-size body dolls with Lynne. You remember fully integrated days, when in 345 we didn’t clean-up from one period to the next because we were just so absorbed in everything we were studying. Days when math and science, reading and writing, social studies and the arts, all collided and the result was giant, occasionally messy, projects, that sometimes went on for weeks because that’s what we were into and we wanted to know more. You remember getting dressed up for Colonial Day and having to pay taxes to King George in order to use a pencil or go to lunch and you remember leaping on the RTD bus with no idea where we were going and ending up across town on some grand writing adventure or scientific exploration.

And now, here we all are at the end of the road. What have we learned? So much. So much we didn’t know before. For me, in all my roles here at Stanley, as intern, teacher, mentor, theater director, scheduler, parent, division head, director of programs and of operations, and, as I was once referred to, “that gal who runs the Coffeehouse”, what have I not learned? It’s been twenty-one years. That’s the length of a childhood and more. We’ve all done a lot of growing up in that time. Especially me. I started out in a traditional English family, sent away to traditional English boarding schools. About as different from Stanley as you can imagine.

This school, and the people here, have taught us all well. It has taught us how to watch and listen to children. It has taught us what a joyful place school can be. It has shown us that the process is more important than the product. It has taught us the importance of play. It has helped us understand what it means to be a lifelong learner. It has surrounded us with color and creativity, laughter and friendships.

And I’ve got to know one other thing here.

You remember the Jack Palance character in the movie City Slickers? The grizzled wise old cowboy, Curly, who asks Billy Crystal: “Do you know what the secret of life is?” and he holds up his finger and says “This”. Billy Crystal says “Your finger?” and Curly says “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean sh…”. And Billy Crystal asks him, “But what is that one thing?” and Curly just smiles and says “That’s what you have to figure out.”

Twenty one years at Stanley, and I think I’ve finally got that one thing figured out. It’s something Carolyn told me when I first got here as a cherubic-faced twenty three year old. She recites it often, her favorite quotation from the inscription in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece, the Oracle at Delphi. I didn’t fully understand it back then, but I do now. It’s this. “Know thyself”. That’s the one thing. “Know thyself” Twenty one years at this school and I’ve got to know that one thing here.

I know myself. This school does an amazing, sensational, inspirational job of helping people know who they are. It’s worked for me and it’s worked for my students over the years and it’s worked for my own children. And I think it’s worked for you, graduates of the class of 2011. The schools I attended when I was a kid did a lousy job of helping me figure out who I was. They taught me what to think, where to stand, how to fit into the crowd. I’m thrilled that you have been given this opportunity to know yourself and take your own place in your world.

We are all scattering to different schools– you to high schools in Denver, Aurora, Highlands Ranch, Englewood, Erie, Santa Barbara, me to an elementary and pre-school in Boulder.

As we head away from Stanley, I challenge all of us to keep with us everything we’ve learned at this school. We hope that we’ve not only educated you as kids, we have helped to develop you into amazing people. I hope you’ve learned what you need to help yourselves succeed. I challenge you, when you leave this place, to be kind and stand up for yourselves and others. I challenge you to self-advocate and be great team-builders. I challenge you to be outstanding contributors to your community. I challenge you to see the beauty in our world and to use your talents and skills to add to it. Whatever your passion, whether it’s music or computers, sports or photography, theatre or painting or advanced calculus, or anything else, I challenge you to pursue it with energy and spirit and enthusiasm. Go out there and be the best that you can be. And do it with love.

So, it’s the last day. You’ve got your diplomas. And I’ve got my bag. One colleague, Joan, wrote something on it from Dr Seuss, himself a wise grizzled old cowboy in his own way. It says:

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

Thank you, graduating class of 2011 for all of your gifts you’ve shared with us at Stanley. Thank you for allowing me to be part of the journey. Be well, do good, and keep in touch.

Thank you very much.

(photo credit: Jim Thomas)

What do a head of school and a theater director have in common?

This summer, as I prepare to take on a new role as a head of school, I realize that I must take a hiatus from one of my great loves – directing theater. For many years, I have loved working with groups of kids, from age 8-18, bringing plays to life. I’ll be too busy this summer getting to know my new school community and preparing for the new school year. I’ll miss my theater camps – all the amazing people and the breathtaking creativity. And, as I was contemplating this change, a question emerged:

What do a head of school and
a theater director have in common?

I wonder if the two roles are so very different, because I believe that a theater director and a head of school both:

➢ ensure everyone feels good about their role

➢ bring together a vision and a script

➢ rely on the diverse strengths of others

➢ pay attention to casting

➢ challenge people to stretch beyond their comfort zone

➢ allow everyone’s voice to be heard

➢ juggle many balls in the air at the same time successfully

➢ manage their resources and budget

➢ keep a sense of humor

➢ share expectations with parents that the kids will be stars

➢ listen to the opinions of others

➢ honor everyone involved in the production

➢ wear lots of different hats

➢ do frequent sound checks

➢ work together on a unified goal with the cast

➢ take care of the details

➢ make the best of the inevitable slip-ups

➢ spend lots of time preparing

➢ appreciate those working behind the scenes

➢ know when to step out of the limelight

At Friends' School, I’m looking forward to getting to know all the amazing people and being part of the breathtaking creativity.

Break a leg!

Choice Time

Sheena Iyengar is a professor at the Business School of Columbia University and the author of The Art of Choosing. I heard her speak last week and came away highly impressed by both her delivery and her topic. She spoke at length about her research on choice and about her book in which she aims to help us become better choosers. I was one of almost 4,000 people in the audience who listened to her fluid and eloquent presentation, given with no notes and in complete synchronicity to a slide show that played behind her. There is nothing remarkable about that for a gifted professional speaker who has clearly done her homework and knows her stuff. Except for the fact that Sheena Iyengar is blind.

Diagnosed as a toddler with a rare form of retinal degeneration, this superbly intelligent woman was completely blind at the age of 14. I wonder if she has a strong sense of what an audience of 4,000 might look like. That might be a plus as a public speaker. It might calm the nerves. I found it remarkable how she was able to regale us with stories, quote exact figures from her research, and show both amusing and informative examples to illustrate her point, all in perfect order with the powerpoint she had created. As a budding public speaker who still relies on cue cards highlighted by keywords, I found her talk to be an exquisite paragon of the art.

Iyengar’s talk was about the relationship between leadership and choice. Some leaders are literally born into the role. Others are simply born with bucket loads of charisma and naturally rise to the top, while most of us in leadership positions have arrived there because we have developed the ability to choose well and to enhance the power of good choices for transformative good.

Her book begins with the story of Steven Callahan who, in 1982, was shipwrecked and became one of the first people ever to survive on the high seas for more than a month. He drifted in a small raft, finding his own food and drinking water, for 76 days, ending up on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from where he started. He says he overcame almost certain death by choosing “to pilot myself to a new life or to give up and watch myself die.” It was the power of his own choice that saved him.

I am proud that the school where I work, and where my daughters attend, teaches children how to make good choices. This is such an important part of our educational philosophy that we actually have a period of the day called “choice time”. And it is exactly what it says it is – a time of the school day when students get to choose what activities they would like to partake in. Teachers put out different types of materials, quite often art supplies, items to build with or glue together, thingamajigs where scientific discoveries can be made. And if a child does not choose to spend time doing one of the choices set out by the teacher, he or she may choose to do something else. Quite often the choices presented are connected to the current area of curriculum study, but sometimes not.

Children who have recently arrived at our school and who have not been exposed to having this much choice in the classroom sometimes struggle to pick an activity and to focus. But soon they learn how to make good choices, how to collaborate and negotiate with their classmates, and how to trust their own judgment. Some of our students come to us from traditional classrooms where they have been told where to sit, when to talk, whom to talk to, when to get up, where to go, and what to do. They are not used to making choices of their own. At our school, we have discovered that, at choice time, children actively engage in the process of defining themselves. They are given the opportunity to make decisions and think for themselves, and they shine.

Isn’t this what we want from our college graduates, from our work force for the 21st century? Don’t we seek collaborators and team players who know themselves, think for themselves, and have great ideas? That’s what I want for my own children.

Iyengar spoke of the vast differences in how certain cultures perceive choice. For example, Anglo-Americans crave individuality and feel empowered from having more choice, while Asian-Americans tend to value choice less and have deeper trust of group norms. She also warned that too much choice, as all parents can attest to, can be detrimental. Have you ever taken a small child to a good-sized grocery store and asked them to pick out a snack?

However, she highlighted one study that she had done, in which two groups of children were given anagrams to solve. One group was given the choice of several topics that the mixed-up words were about. They were also allowed to choose which pen, out of five different colored markers, they wanted to write the answers with. A second group was given no choices – they were assigned the topic and the pen. Not surprisingly, Anglo-American kids who were given the choices performed two and a half times better on the test than their peers with no choice. Interestingly, Asian-American children performed significantly better when told that their topic and pen color had been chosen by their mother. All great evidence of the power of choice.

It is clear that effective leaders today have to be dedicated practitioners of the art of choice. They have to understand the people they lead and work with them to give them the right amount of choice to empower them. Sheena Iyengar herself was dealt a rough hand in the game of life, a disease that robbed her of her eyesight. She chose to rise above it, to become an expert in her chosen field, and she chose to shine.


The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar, published by Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, 2010. A link to her website appears in the left column of this blog.

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

I’m one of those people who feels flummoxed when a button pops off. I have no idea what to do. I know the theory behind the needle and thread, but my hands barely fit in men’s extra large gloves and my fingers certainly aren’t up to the task of threading a flimsy piece of cotton through the eye of a needle. Even as an agnostic, I probably have a better shot at entering the kingdom of heaven on the hump of a camel than getting a thread through that absurdly tiny hole. And even if I could, once threaded, I have no idea about how to sew the button or tie the knot at the end, limited again by gargantuan fingers.

Such is the handicap for my vocation as a director of children’s theater. Unlike the well-paid professionals on either coast, my lot is to be in charge of the whole kit and caboodle – set design, set building, lighting, sound, special effects, music and yes, I’m sorry to say, costumes.

For the first three productions I ever directed, my assistant director and I tried to coordinate costumes ourselves. The result was a mismatched collection of ill-fitting clothes: suits too long, shirts too wide, dresses too big. The costumes were a mess.

For production number four – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – I began to learn from experience. I fired myself from costumes, fired my assistant director entirely and hired my friend Jane.

Jane sees the world differently from me. She’s lived with dyslexia for more than fifty years. She sees the world in pictures and gets muddled when she’s tired. It’s easy for her to mix up the names of cast members, especially those with similar names. Jack and Jake confuse her. She would never be a big money winner on Jeopardy where the kings of quick-fire rule.

She has raised three children, almost exclusively on her own, and all three are excelling in the creative arts – Lisa in dance, Reed in theatrical lighting design, Mark in the culinary arts. Jane understands children with learning differences better than any teacher I know. On an instructional level, she simply gets what they need. Yet she drives certain colleagues batty because she communicates erratically and wanders in late to staff meetings, often dragging a large messy bag along with her.

And she has transformed my stage. She has hand-made fat costumes out of hula- hoops for Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. She has dressed a full cast of nearly forty kids in historically accurate period costumes. She handcrafted both the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, breaking a few sewing machine needles along the way. Over the last five years, she has been responsible for over one thousand costumes, each one exceptional and coordinated with its stage mates.

But more importantly than how each costume looks, Jane has made a personal connection with each young actor and made sure that each and every cast member feels good in their attire, is comfortable, and knows the character he is portraying. Jane knows that a child who has had a say in her costume, who has been heard, who feels at ease, will be a better more confident performer. That child will feel successful and will raise the levels of children around her. He will be proud of his work and will naturally go on to greater and better things. Confidence and success are powerful tools in the education of young minds.

With needle and thread, hot glue guns, machines that attach beading and sequins, buttons and zippers, Jane has brought my stage to life. More traditional minds don’t always understand her value and don’t always speak her language. But if they take the time to look past the baggage and the mess, they will get her. Jane has made an enormous difference in the lives of hundreds of children. She is a master educator and a gift.

On Books and Integrity

There’s a man living in Boulder, Colorado by the name of Thatcher Wine. He sounds like he should be selling malbecs and chardonnays. But an oenologist he is not. He’s a bibliophile, you might even say a bibliomaniac. He has a passion for books. Collects them. He started out binding books for people, but now runs a business helping the wealthy build their private book collections and libraries. He makes a good living from it too. They say that if you have to ask him what his fees are, you can’t afford him.

Some of his clients are collectors of books themselves, seeking rare first editions or leather bound complete works. Many don’t care what’s inside the book and won’t ever read them. They just want something to look snazzy in their home, a professionally designed attraction to go along with their collector art and their collector antique furnishings. Thatcher selects just the right books for their space – the perfect height, width and color – to enhance at maximum effect their multi-million dollar mansions. Most people he charges by the book – the more rare, the more pricey. But he has a few clients he charges by the foot. People buying books like they buy rope at the hardware store.

He has one client who wanted more books than he has shelves for. A double set. This is a client with a big home and a big checkbook, who regularly holds fundraisers for candidates on both sides of the political spectrum. A client who likes to hedge his bets, sits on both sides of the fence. And he plays his bookshelf cards accordingly. One set of books by the religious right for one set of visitors – Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck; a completely different set for the liberals – Molly Ivins, Teddy Kennedy, Hilary Clinton. Thatcher Wine has designed opposing sets of books for opposing occasions. I wonder if the books are glued together for ease of transportation. And no one quite knows what this client’s actual tastes in reading are because he keeps the books he actually reads in a private corner of his house. He doesn’t want his guests to find out.

I think this is appalling. It reminds me of an insecure middle school child who is desperately trying to fit in with his friends. He works so hard to buy the right clothes, wear his hat at just the right angle in the misguided and futile hope to fit in. As adults we like to think we’ve outgrown that sort of silliness, but it isn’t always true. How often do we show our true colors? Are we always comfortable putting all of ourselves out there for others to see?

When I was a boy growing up in England, I was a big fan of Arsenal Football Club in London, the team that others loved to hate. It was hard to stand up sometimes and tell new acquaintances which team was mine, in fear of mockery. Now, here we all are on Facebook, presenting one very thin slice of our lives to our ‘friends’. At the beginning of the year in which I got divorced, I Facebook-friended an old buddy from grad school. We followed each other’s postings for many months before taking the time to really write and fully catch up. I was living through a rough year of grief and loss and my friend had no idea. It wasn’t stuff I was putting out there for the world to see. I was only showing one set of books. Is this any different from the client who switches out his bookcase?

Another case. About five years ago, I had the opportunity to apply for a big job that I’d had my eye on for years. I knew a lot of the people on the search committee and did my best to tell them what I thought they wanted to hear. I’m not sure I ever presented myself as ‘me’, and I felt out of alignment and disingenuous. I didn’t get the job. I was disappointed and it led to a serious amount of soul-searching on my part.

Now a few years later, integrity is a quality I value most highly in myself. I don’t want to present myself as something other than I am. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you someone else is the greatest accomplishment.” I read that quotation every morning while I’m brushing my teeth. I was recently asked to apply for what might well be my dream job as head of a fabulous school. They conducted a national search and had more than fifty applicants. I knew I could only present myself as ‘me’. There were some tough questions asked at various points along the selection process, but I never once worried about how my answers might be perceived. I gave answers according to my own values and beliefs. And I got the job.

The job is in Boulder. I’m wondering about whether to invite Thatcher Wine to put together a collection for the bookshelf in my new office. Probably not. For one, I’m pretty certain I can’t afford him. But most importantly, I know that every book on that shelf will have personal meaning to me. The dog-eared and torn thesaurus my grandmother gave me for my confirmation when I was 13; some of my Dad’s childhood books, printed in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1930s; collections of some of my favorite essayists; books of inspiration and spirituality; a few outstanding tomes on education and school governance; humorous books; books about baseball. Every one will have been read and loved, several of them read fifty times or more.

A Modern Twist on an Old Poem

Following my annual reading at Stanley BPS's Holiday Program, December 17, 2010, many people asked to see a copy of the poem. It is not mine, but something I found online and then adapted for this audience. It was originally written by Harvey Ehrlich. About 20% of it is mine. I have no idea who old Harvey is, but all credit should go to him.


‘Twas The Night Before Christmas And Santa’s A Wreck


‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck.
How to live in a world that’s politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to “Elves”
“Vertically challenged” they were calling themselves.
And labour conditions at the North Pole
Were alleged by the union to stifle the soul.

Four reindeer had vanished without much propriety,
Released to the wilds by the Humane Society.
And equal employment had made it quite clear
That Santa had better not use just reindeer.
So Dancer and Donner, Comet and Cupid,
Were replaced by four pigs, and you know that looked stupid.

The runners had been removed from his sleigh;
The ruts were termed dangerous by the E.P.A.
And people had started to call for the cops
When they heard heavy footsteps upon their rooftops.
The people at PETA were all up in arms,
His fur trimmed red suit had caused animals harm

If that wasn’t enough, to add to his woes
Rudolf was suing over unauthorized use of his nose
And had gone on The View, in front of the nation
Demanding millions in fair compensation
And as for the gifts, why, he’d never a notion
That making a choice could cause such commotion

Nothing of leather, nothing of fur
Which meant nothing for him. And nothing for her.
Nothing that might be construed to pollute.
Nothing to aim, nothing to shoot
Nothing that clamoured or made lots of noise,
Nothing gender specific, for just girls or just boys

No candy or anything bad for the tooth
Nothing that seemed to embellish the truth.
And fairy tales, while not yet forbidden,
Were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden
No video games that could ruin the eyes,
No iPods, iPads, iPhones, nothing with ‘i’s.

No baseball, no football, where kids could get hurt
Besides, playing sports exposed them to dirt
Dolls were said to be sexist, and should be passé
Computers would just rot your whole brain away.
So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed,
He just could not figure what to do next.

He tried to be merry, tried to be gay,
But you’ve got to be careful with that word today.
His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground,
Nothing acceptable was to be found.
Something special was needed, a gift that he might
Give to all without angering the left or the right.

A gift that would satisfy with no indecision,
Each group of people, every religion,
Every ethnicity, every orientation
Everyone, everywhere…the whole population.
So here is the gift, it’s priced beyond worth,
May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth

Whatever your thing at this season of light
Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Mary Jo’s Starry Night,
Festivus, Christmas, Solstice, Diwali
We wish you great joy at your winter party
From our Stanley teachers and all of our crew
We’re wishing great joy to your family and you.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I’m wedged in behind a tall man. He does not have his seat back in the upright position. It is in my face forcing the compact TV screen up against my nose, rendering it impossible for me to bend my 6’1” frame and get any of the essentials out of my bag which is now crammed firmly under my knees. Yet it’s not the lack of space that bothers me most about the seat being shoved into my immediate field of vision.

It’s the close-up view of the back of the tall man’s scalp, his generous center parting, that unmistakable sign of depilation, his chrome dome. For this is a bald man. Correction. A mostly bald man. A mostly bald man in need of a haircut. The two inch wide strip of grey fuzz encircling the rear end of his cranial globe, sticking outwards, unwieldy and out of control, as if he’d just stuck his car keys in an electrical socket. White hairs protruding at all angles, some pulled down by gravity, some pointing sideways, others reaching for the ‘call the flight attendant’ button, making it look like he’s got the tail of a bichon frise wrapped around the back of his head.

Yet the hairs I can stand. After all, there have been many times that I’ve been seen sporting an uncombed do, misguided tresses reaching out at all kind of angles. It’s not the hair. What bothers me most is the unavoidable close-up view of the man’s follicles, the sheath-like cavities which once held his lustrous locks. All those thousands of tiny little holes that have now so clearly failed him. Orifices galore, intimate and personal. I might be looking at an enlarged image of his tongue, or perhaps a close-up of a moon crater, complete with crevices, crags, dark and light patches, even a possible site for a manned landing. This is a baldscape I have not asked for and do not want.

And why my adverse reaction, you ask. Simple. Fear. Dread. Absolute terror. That one day this will be me.

I come from a long line of bald men. Good men. Smart men. Tall men. But not men gifted in keeping what God gave them up on top. No coif of the year awards going to the fellas in my family. I am aware that male pattern baldness is supposed to be handed down on my mother’s side of the family gene pool. Try telling that to my brother, completely bald at twenty-four, oldest son of my father, not a cowlick left at twenty-four, only begotten son of my grandfather, shining like a billiard ball at, yep, twenty-four.

And now here come I, rapidly approaching my mid-forties, hanging on for dear life. Ever since I was nineteen, I’ve noticed the ebbing of the hairline on either side of my forehead. Year by year, millimeter by millimeter, the hirsute forces of my brow have been beating a steady retreat. I have been waiting for them to follow my forebears’ example and to begin stampeding at a high clip until I too shine like the dome of the state capitol building. But I have been fortunate that the inevitable retreat has been more tortoise than hare. Slow and steady, forever plodding onward, but taking its sweet time to get to the finish line.

Will I stay lucky? Will my present rate of receding continue – two inches or so every quarter of a century? At that speed, my hairline will reach the crown of my head when I’m close to seventy. Will I grow silver and distinguished in the manner of Richard Gere or Michael Douglas or will the current pace of hair loss accelerate at an ever-increasing velocity leaving me looking more like Ben Kingsley or Patrick Stewart? Am I destined to join the ranks of the men in my family, just a late bloomer clinging on to every strand? Will I end up like my father and brother, my glabrous noggin shining for the world to see?

Who cares? Well, quite obviously, me.

I’m worried that I’ve somehow developed an air of superiority over my less woolly friends and relations, that somehow I’m better than them because I didn’t draw the short straw when it came to hair loss. Am I really that vain, that shallow? Is this the same attitude aired pompously in TV movies of the week by the blond quarterback of the football team and the captain of the cheerleading squad? Because they were blessed with good looks, they deserve to be more popular.

My friend Fred, himself an early entry into the ranks of the smoothly sphered, tells me that being bald in college resulted in him looking older than his classmates, and therefore the one elected to buy the beer. A nice fringe benefit for having a composer’s haircut, and surely a ticket to popularity.

Yet daily I ponder and fret. What happens when the inevitable happens? Is there a way to prevent, or at least delay, a shining dome?

I read in a newspaper once of a Welsh farmer who had his cow lick the top of his head every day for years and that seemed to do the trick. Is that where the word cowlick came from? Unfortunately, I haven’t got a cow, and if I did, I’m not sure I’d want it doing that to my hair. It may be a possible cure for baldness, but fancy heading into work each day with bovine saliva running down your neck. Ugh! Would my cat do instead?

The Body Shop has a mint-based shampoo called Ice Blue which I buy religiously. I might really believe that that delightful, sensuous, minty tingle during my morning shower actually prevents an excess of hair falling out and blocking the drain. I continue to massage the diminishing areas while showering, hoping that a little additional blood circulation will put the brakes on my hair’s demise. And who knows? Perhaps it is working and that’s why I’ve been able to buck the trend established by the men in my family. Perhaps I’m saved.

Saved from resorting to products such as minoxidil or finasteride, marketed under the more commonly known names of Rogaine and Propecia, stuff that men less self-assured than I avail themselves of in the battle against their receding hairlines. Saved from looking into potential solutions offered by groups such as the Hair Club For Men whose website presents me with the delectable yet true possibility of delving into something called Non-Surgical Bio-Matrix Strand-by-Strand Process or, even more tantalizing, Microscopic Follicular Unit Hair Transplantation. What is most alarming is that if those two menu items don’t whet your follicles, they have a further link to Extreme Hair Therapy Products, as if the first two don’t sound extreme enough. I daren’t even click to find out, worried that I might come across an invitation to participate in Non Compos Mentis Lacquered Trichological Therapeutic Incisions, or perhaps just the names and phone numbers of some alluring and potentially nubile Welsh cows. I think I’ll pass.

I’ve taken to wearing my hair a little longer these days, letting it flop around a bit in the front. I used to think that it gave me a foppish air like those dapper and dashing blokes of the English gentry in Jane Austen novels and Merchant Ivory films. A bit like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. But perhaps I’m just covering up the slowly expanding triangles of flesh appearing above my brow. If you can’t beat it, hide it. A prelude to the dreaded comb-over. John McCain on the presidential stump. Donald Trump on a windy day in Atlantic City. My image conscious teenage daughter thinks I should cut my hair shorter, so I would “look like a normal dad”. Whatever that is. Perhaps I should acknowledge that I’m involved in a huge cover-up operation, a Watergate of the cranium, and I should let down the façade for all to see. I should face up to the inevitable outwards signs testosterone coursing through my body like a man.

There’s always the option to shave. Michael Jordan made that cool in the eighties and the trend continues today. Don’t let them see you aging prematurely. Cut the receding hairline off at the pass. Go completely bald and they’ll never see where your real line of defense is. Bald is beautiful. How can Telly Savalas, Vin Diesel, Andre Agassi, Howie Mandel and countless others be wrong?

No. I’d rather keep my golden locks while I have them. They may be turning a gentle shade of grey at the temples. They may be continuing on their merry path northward. They won’t last forever. I believe I’m doomed to follow in my family’s footsteps, to be examined scrupulously one day by some guy behind me on a plane, the poor fool praying, not for a safe landing, but for a full head of hair. Please God let me not end up like that bald dude in the next row.

A New Appointment

I am honored and grateful to have been appointed Head of School at Friends’ School in Boulder. The announcement was made last month. I am thrilled to have been given this opportunity and I am excited to be joining a school community which is such a caring, supportive, challenging place for children and adults to learn.

Friends’ School is committed to educating the whole child – “head, hand, and heart”. It has an educational philosophy that is wonderfully aligned with my own. Although I have known the school for a number of years through my work for the Teacher Preparation Program, my visits this fall truly helped me to see the amazing work being done at the school by gifted educators and committed parents. I am so impressed at how everyone at the school believes in the vision and mission that they have laid out. I am happy to be in a place where together we will continue to uphold that vision and mission and where we will work to meet the challenges set out in the school’s five year strategic plan and to build a school that is financially sustainable while losing none of the personality and charm that makes it what it is today.

I am thankful to Community Board Chair Fred Marienthal, all of the Search Committee members and the entire Friends’ community of Board members, teachers, staff, parents, students, and alumni, as well Jim Bonney and Jean Lamont of Educators’ Collaborative who participated in the national search. They dug deep, thought hard, and, I believe, trusted their gut. I am also profoundly grateful to retiring Head of School Polly Donald, whom I’ve known and respected for years, who is committed to teaching me and helping to make this transition as smooth as possible.

In addition, it would be remiss of me not to thank my ‘family’, friends and colleagues, at Stanley British Primary School, the school I’ve known and loved for twenty years. They have taught me well, supported me in this process, and prepared me for this next phase of the journey. Lastly, I am so grateful to my own family for walking every step of the way – to Laura, to my parents, to my daughters Emma and Leah, and to my loving partner, Steph.

To my new community at Friends’, I am looking forward to getting to know you all, working alongside you, and continuing to create a school that is like no other - one where children are challenged to know themselves, where subjects are taught in experiential, fully integrated ways, where creative and critical thinking and children’s natural curiosity are celebrated, where we all become an integral part of a caring community, where everyone is challenged and honored in a lifelong journey of learning.

I’m posting the letter that the Search Committee sent out to the Friends’ community. It is truly a privilege to be here. Thank you.

Steve


ANNOUNCING OUR NEW HEAD OF SCHOOL


The Community Board is thrilled to announce that Steve de Beer will be our next Head of Friends’ School.

As a well-organized master teacher with administrative responsibilities at a progressive independent school, Steve has an excellent foundation to become our next Head of School.

Steve brings many qualities to our community as a Head of School, including:

• A deep understanding and commitment to the vision, mission, and educational philosophy of Friends’ School;
• Engaging and collaborative leadership skills
• Strong working relationships with parents, faculty and administrators;
• Direct involvement in our Teacher Preparation Program and respect of those who worked with him;
• Enthusiastic support of the arts, plus experience directing and producing children’s theater; and
• A wonderful sense of play, meeting children at eye level, supported by 20 years in the classroom and comprehensive knowledge of child development.

While visiting Friends’ School, the children were openly excited about Steve. Not surprisingly, they met him with great enthusiasm during his time in the classrooms.

Steve is very enthusiastic about the opportunity to lead our school. Please help us welcome Steve to our community!
We will continue to keep you updated with news regarding our new Head of School.

The Friends’ School Community Board