I never had the good fortune to really know Dawn Hochsprung, principal of Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, though we all know of her now
because she was among the innocent victims of an unimaginably heinous mass
shooting yesterday. However, on a
different level I feel as I do know her. She was a doctoral candidate in
educational leadership at Sage Graduate School in Albany, New York. I completed
the program there just a few years ago. So did Dr. Janice White, former
superintendent of the Saratoga Springs City School District who was a member of
the same cohort. Janice has retired from school leadership and is an adjunct
professor at Sage. She was interviewed over the phone last night by CNN’s
Anderson Cooper because Janice instructs a class in which Dawn Hochsprung was
enrolled. The focal point of that class is moral courage and leadership. I also
experienced that class and read the same books and engaged in comparable discussions
on values and convictions, meanings and missions.
All of the classes in that Sage
leadership program require projects and presentations that demonstrate an
understanding and application of concepts and skills. Dawn not only
demonstrated what moral courage means, she displayed her commitment by making
the ultimate sacrifice while exercising responsibility for those she served.
Yesterday morning, immediately
after hearing the “pop, pop, pop” of what proved to be gunfire, Dawn and two
colleagues (the assistant principal and the school psychologist) burst from the
conference room where they were attending a parent meeting, and ran in the
direction of the sounds. The assistant principal crawled back to the room wounded;
Dawn and Mary Sherlach were later found dead. Who knows how much time passed
between the point at which the shooter saw these two staff members and the time
he raised his automatic pistol and proceeded to kill them in cold blood?
Perhaps a matter of seconds. But, those seconds proved to be a precious amount
of time to others who were scrambling to find refuge from an unknown assailant.
One can only conclude that in their attempt to intervene in a crisis, these staff
members saved others from a similar fate by giving them more time to react to
the threat and hide.
Imagine that you are a parent
or teacher and acting as a member of an interview committee at your local
school. Your task is to hire the best candidates for a vacant staff position.
However, you have to choose between two separate options: either a person devoted
to obtaining medals for test scores; or a person dedicated to confront the
scores of tests of their mettle. Which one do you pick? I firmly believe that
before you can lead improvement in test scores you must be able to prove the
test of your mettle. Once you have earned the trust, respect and credibility that
form moral leadership and thus develop the political and social capital and integrity
required for successful change efforts, then the performance rates will
increase, but the reverse placement of those two qualities will not necessarily
produce the school climate where I would enroll my son or daughter.
Now, I’d like to share an essay
I wrote that was published in the "Harvard Desktop" about schools and crisis following the tragic consequences of the
terrorist acts of 9/11 that I believe is as relevant today as it was eleven
years ago.
Opposite Directions
It was perhaps the most conflicted of any week in a career
that spans two dozen years as a principal. Never before had I experienced such
a wide sweep of the emotional pendulum in such little time. The difference
between the beginning and the ending was tragically brief, 94 years separated
by a matter of days.
On Saturday, January 5, 2002 I attended the 100th
birthday celebration honoring the great grandmother of one of our kindergarten
teachers. That was the first time I had ever met a centenarian and she readily
qualified as the oldest person I had ever known. Three days later, I was
informed that a six-year-old kindergarten student in our school, had died. He
was the youngest person I had known who passed away.
***
The tiny elderly woman bounced around, almost as aimlessly
as a pin ball in an arcade game, as she shuffled from person to person and
posed for photographs. Her movements had the same effect that directors obtain
by conveying speed in films through slow motion. I had seen her several times
at school when she came and played an astonishingly active role in assisting
her great granddaughter with class parties. She helped shepherd the
kindergarten children about the varied activities without a trace of discomfort
or inconvenience. It was truly amazing and inspiring.
At the party, a display of mementos highlighted her life.
The front page article in the local paper that day called attention to her 100th
birthday and chronicled her migration from Hungary, along with other personal
accomplishments. It was surrounded by faded and yellowed photographs of the
past, various newspaper clippings heralding special occasions associated with
her life. There were countless other artifacts. The most interesting piece of
the collection was a copy of her driver’s license, which listed her birth date
as ’02, predating cars and before anyone imagined the turn of another
millennium and the resulting confusion computers would have with another ’02.
The hall was festive and full of people. Most of them were
members of a vastly extended family that stretched from New York to Alaska.
They were renewing connections that had withered by separations measured in
time by calendars. I could see people of all ages, from newborn babies to the
100-year-old honoree. The occasion provided a human landscape that an
anthropologist could examine with the same delightful intrigue of a
paleontologist investigating fossil-filled rock formations. Mixed in were
people like myself who shared interests and acquaintances with the woman
somewhere along those 100 years. There was her doctor, the mayor of the small
town where she resided, fellow senior citizens, friends, and neighbors.
The diminutive woman, perhaps no more than four feet six
inches, hustled about fueled by the adrenaline and excitement of such a special
event. She was the center of attention and absorbed the notoriety, transferring
it into energy that allowed her to scurry about the room and among her
well-wishers. She shook hands, received pecks on the cheek, and posed for
countless photographs. Her smile broadened with each flash, her eyes sparkled
with every kiss.
It was a remarkable ceremony that left me in awe of
everything she must have experienced, from Orville and Wilbur Wright to Neil
Armstrong, from World War I to expansive military conflicts too numerous and
frequent to assign Roman numerals. The perspective afforded her by virtue of
living 100 years is unbelievable and profound.
***
However, I would soon feel the shocking reminder of the frailty of human life, a life that would only experience six birthdays, six Easters, six July Fourths, six Thanksgiving Days, six Christmas Days, and six New Years Days.
The phone rang in my office at 7:30 that morning. I
recognized the name of the caller as a mother of two children enrolled in our
school. Her voice was weary and her words fragmented. She volunteered that she
was speaking on behalf of her neighbor and, in a tone that grew noticeably more
morose with each breath, she reported that the boy next door had died just
hours earlier. The boy’s Down Syndrome condition had fatally exacerbated a
viral infection. She explained that she was serving at the request of the
parents and alerting the school of the tragic incident.
There have been few surprises in my lengthy administrative
career. This was one of them. I spoke without thought and only measured my
words after hanging up the phone and attempting to recount what had transpired.
Somehow it didn’t seem believable or official, yet it was hardly something to
question.
I assembled the office staff who had trickled in while I was
on the phone. I closed the office door and explained what had happened. We
agreed that our primary focus in replying to this terrible situation was to
maintain our composure and pursue a course of action in concert with the values
and beliefs that have governed our school culture. We decided to exercise the
same constancy of purpose we had enacted following the terrorist strikes on New
York and Washington. That approach was articulated in the memo issued September
12 to the staff, and re-created below:
This is a day that will define us – not as educators – but
as people. This is a day that we were not prepared for by college, but by our
parents, family and friends. This is a day to ignore the scores on a test and
concern ourselves with the test of our mettle.
Our school is special
because of the people within it. You were each hired because of your care and
compassion, commitment and cooperation. If we are determined to pursue a mission
borne of fostering hope and feeding dreams, then we must sustain that belief
throughout this day and those that follow.
Let us conduct
ourselves with dignity and civility, sensitivity and faith. We must serve as
purveyors of information, and reservoirs of understanding. Rest anchored to
facts, not fiction; objectivity, not opinion.
When the school bell rings, on this day that the nation
mourns, we may be judged - not by grades and points, but by hugs and tears. If
we are resolved to a future of freedom, then we must remain strong, speak as
one, and act for all.
***
We easily found the church, despite never having been in the
tired-looking industrial town that hugged the Hudson River. The bulbous dome
that capped the Ukrainian Orthodox Church stood above the run-down brick
factory buildings. That dome, plus the lengthy trail of parked cars that
flanked the street, beckoned us to the right location.
The word somber does not describe the emotion that blanketed
the gathering of people brought to this small, nondescript spot of earth for
the expressed purpose of extending a saddened, tearful goodbye to the young
boy.
We stumbled past the grief-stricken gauntlet of people who
stood motionless on the sidewalk and made our way into the church. The pale and
aged exterior of the facility disguised an interior of bright azure walls
accentuated by icons splashed with gold. The Russian letters, except for a
backward R, were familiar, but the combinations of jumbled consonant and vowel
arrangements they made left the words foreign. There were a number of older
people who stood along the walls and encircled those seated in the pews. These parishioners spoke with appropriate
accents and followed the prompts of the priests and the choreography of the
church rituals.
No matter the age and background of those present, the
common denominator among the crowd was the focal point of their eyes. The small
casket that was placed on a table at the front of the main aisle was a magnet.
Of particular attraction was the size of the coffin. I had never seen a coffin
so small. It was a startling reminder of the child’s short life.
The route to my heart was navigated by a sense of sound that
was overwhelming. A stooped, older man sitting in the front pew with gaunt
cheeks and puffy red eyes distinguished himself as the boy’s grandfather by his
weeping as much as by his age. He seemed forlorn, and desperately willing to
trade places with the small grandson he had outlived, unlike the expected path
of successions of generations. The plaintive wailing of the grieving mother
resonated throughout the small church, engulfing those who came to say goodbye
to the child. Cantors, although chanting in a foreign tongue, expressed
themselves in the universal language of loss and grief, with dirge-like tones
and depressing rhythms.
The length of the ceremony was extended by the use of
English and Russian languages to convey faith based farewells to the six year
old. An hour later the congregation moved from the church to the next phase of
the funeral, ushered to the cemetery by state police cars. The tombstones
announced rows and rows of eastern European names. The somber, wind-swept
cemetery was bereft of color save the green carpet, mimicking grass, that
covered the mound of dirt from the excavated site of the grave.
It was soon over, after a few shovels of dirt were
ceremoniously tossed upon the casket prior to lowering it to its final resting
place.
***
While newspaper headlines splash plenty of ink across the land with tales of questionable practices and woeful test scores, the events of this week reinforced that schools are in the business of providing care, first and foremost. This essay is not meant to diminish the significance of academics and the responsibility of educators to effectively deliver instruction. Instead, it asserts that the fundamental basis of schooling exists within the following adage –
People don’t care
about what you know, until they know that you care.
Dawn Hochsprung really cared.
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