Dear Brandeis community,

 

The virus that’s been making its way around the community, as viruses do, landed squarely in our household this week, with our preschooler Alma succumbing to this bummer of a bug. Yesterday was a fevered day, without much shape to it. She spent the entire day in her sister Sonia’s bed, where she’d been propped and padded by Sonia first thing in the morning, and set up with all manner of books and crayons. This flu is just wretched enough to have kept her abed basically the whole day, but the “sick bed,” as she called it, seemed to help. It was a new way of seeing that room, that shapeless sick day.

 

I start there partially just as a parent—we had a restless night with Alma, it’s on my mind—but also in looking back at what I’d hoped to share this week. My days at school are filled with all manner of meetings—and I say that joyfully, I love talking with everyone in this wonderful community, and getting to know individuals and the school better by doing so. Sometimes these meetings are fairly straightforward: to check in on logistics for the State of the School for next week, for example. Other times they’re more surprising—I spent a lunch hour brainstorming with sixth grader Max B. and Student Community Board Co-President Quinn K. about how to support a township in South Africa devastated by fires in December, which led us to discussing the gap in aid between major NGOs and small local organizations.

 

Between the meetings though, I make a point to get out into the school and classrooms. There are concrete versions of these visits, where I have a specific teacher’s name on my calendar (so that I can be sure to visit every class and see every teacher in action this year). There are also more open-ended times, which sit on my calendar as “MBW,” which technically stands for “Management by Wandering” (and surprisingly enough, is a real idea in business leadership. These are some of my favorite moments, when I get to witness an intense building session with the blue blocks on the playground, or sit and chat with a teacher during a quiet moment in her classroom, or just wander in to whatever is happening (and there is always something happening) in a middle school class. Regardless of what I come upon, these glimpses of the life of the school always offer new perspectives on what we are about.

 

This week I wandered into an eighth grade English class, where students were working on a creative analytical project related to the beautiful Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” (While it was not planned, I love that Wallace Stevens is getting so much play in these Words of the Week this year!) Kids were working in teams to take the elliptical, almost haiku-like stanzas that make up the poem and create visual explorations of them. There were students running down to the art room, pairs hunched over Photoshop on laptops, and a great deal of relaxed, happy energy throughout the class. It was inspiring. I sat with the kids for a bit, and wandered on my way. But I left with those many ways of looking at Stevens’ thirteen ways of looking dancing in my head.

 

In thinking about perspectives, and the many perspectives that make up our school community, I was reminded to check the Sparks box, to see what diverging flints have flared for kids and families in the past couple months. There is so much energy on those notecards! Joys, reflections, exhortations… Following are just a few of the moments of light and connectedness people wanted to share.

 

“Warning: This will make your day. Shalom! Aloha! Lookin’ good. You are amazing.”

 

“Thank you for sharing so much of yourself with us.”

 

“Candles gleaming in the fast gathering dark / A long table / filled with the remains of a feast.”

            —from “A Hannukkah Celebration,” by Isabella C.

 

“I accomplished 14 nutcracker performances, man am I tired. Your friend Max.”

 

“Please turn this school back to BHDS. I prefer BHDS!”

 

About 25 different abstract representations of feelings, as offered by our pre-literate siblings.

 

 

Wishing you all broad perspective and joyful ways of seeing in the weekend ahead, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan