Our first 35 days of school and the challenges and opportunities of diversity

On our first 35 days, the challenges and opportunities of diversity, and a very special leader…
 
The first 35 days of CSS-MSE…
 
Last week we turned 35 days old.
 
For those of us laboring for months to open CSS-MSE this is no small milestone. The staff and I are still trying to catch our breathe after 10 weeks of professional development, one week of bridge to school, and 7 weeks of school…. Today is a moment to celebrate, pause and reflect…
 
To our students…
 
My thanks to our extraordinary students who have made this last month such an incredible experience for me and the rest of the CSS faculty and staff. You are both our soul and our purpose. Thank you for challenging us, for questioning us, for being willing to help us build your school. Thank you for your enthusiasm, for your ideas, and your courage in being part of this experiment. Thank you for honoring us by allowing us to teach and learn from you. Thank you for your patience with the glitches and for the mistakes we have certainly made in this first month.
 
We realize that CSS is a new and challenging environment for you. We recognize that we are making academic demands that many of you have never experienced before. You are now dealing with as many as 8 teachers with different personalities and academic expectations. You now take many more courses than you have ever taken in your life. Your school day is longer, you no longer have a homeroom teacher. And you are with students who are academically closer to you than ever before. You come from different parts of Upper Manhattan, and from many different ethnicities and life experiences – dealing with this diversity is challenging and, we are confident, also exciting. We are a bit tight with space and we are expecting many things from you.…On top of all this you are all entering adolescence – a period in your life that is both the most exciting and one that involves great changes in your mind and body. These changes will at times seem overwhelming and at times exhilarating. Be patient with yourselves and with those of us – your teachers - entrusted with helping you grow and learn during this critical period of middle school and adolescence….
 
To our parents…..
 
Thank you for your overwhelming support. Parents have helped in the building of our classroom and hallway infrastructure, donated materials and furniture for our faculty lounge and common spaces, donated instructional and fitness equipment, assisted with our phone tree, manned our open houses, hosted the faculty dinner, and helped in countless other ways. Our parents are also, and very importantly, deeply involved in teaching: two parents are teaching elective courses, and more than 30 different families have helped with fieldtrips. Grandparents, uncles, sister and brothers have also become involved in different ways. We feel your presence and your backing in everything we do.
 
Thank you for trusting us with your children
 
The faculty has asked me to thank you for the wonderful faculty dinner that parents and grandparents hosted for us a couple of weeks ago. It was truly special to be treated with such kindness and consideration after this grueling and exciting month.
 
To our core teachers… Professors Nalley, Cota, Jones, Dominguez, Hill; Dr. Thomson and to the army of staff, interns and volunteers that support them…Delores, Natasha, our two Monica’s, Dana, Lymaris, Abel, Jenn, Maritsa, Dr. Kuhn and her graduate students
 
In scarcely two months you have mounted 21 courses, 5 clubs, several afterschool programs…you have prepared 4 classrooms, 3 offices, the gym; …planned hundreds of lessons, corrected countless papers, reflections, quizzes, exams and projects….
 
Thanks to your efforts and creativity, our students can take an incredible array of courses – many rarely found at the middle school level - Engineering and Science or Pilates and Science Fiction Film; Spanish and English Language Arts / Jogging and Orienteering; Philosophy and Advanced Math / Dance – Portrait Art – Swimming; Architecture – Geography – Government…among more than a dozen others.
 
Not too many middle schools – private or public, offer such curricular and co-curricular diversity so early in their institutional history…
 
And coming down the pipeline are film making; mural painting, photography, Hispanic art-music and cuisine; marine biology; and our special June-term intensive field expeditions courses studying City Architecture; our Water course where students will explore the life cycle of water from its origins in the Catskills; and our island diversity and culture in Puerto Rico….
 
All this is possible due to the special interdisciplinary talents of our faculty and staff…their dedication to the art and craft of teaching, and their profound commitment to our children – to providing our children with a transformative educational experience….please a well deserved round applauses for our teacher-heroes…
 
Now I want to address three other similarly important issues that concern our future:
 
First a reflection on the challenges and opportunities of diversity. We are blessed by being one of the most diverse selective science, math and engineering school in the state and in the nation. Our diversity is of national prominence and one of the things I am personally most proud of. At CSS-MSE students from all walks of life, of all shades of skin color, and of different beliefs and cultures, learn together. They philosophize and debate and discuss all manners of issues together – they are learning actively from each other – from their differences, and also from their commonalities...
 
This is a beautiful thing to see, and the whole world is watching. In a world marked by disgusting and nonsensical divisions, by racism, by genocide, by ethnic strife, by a mentality of us vs. them, we have a special responsibility to show a different way: that we can derive a special kind of strength, a special bond, from our human diversity. And also that our lives and that of our children are enriched by the multitudes of experiences that encapsulate our differences. This is a moral imperative for all of us and part of the special challenge and opportunity of our institution….
 
At the same time CSS-MSE, as a young community where we do not yet know each other as well as we will in a few years of shared experience, we need to be patient, kind, empathetic and above all inclusive and tolerant. We must also come to terms with the challenges that come with this beautiful rainbow – challenges that stem from those very particularities of culture, of language, of values, of perspectives and experience that also so much enrich us. I do not have an easy answer to these difficulties – but I do know that we all share a common passion for our children, for their future, and for the future of the world they live in. This is as fundamental a commonality that anyone can imagine because our parental love is a stronger bond than anything that could possibly separate us. I think that if we recognize this common bond – our common love for our children, their education, and their future, we can overcome the differences that sometimes threaten to separate us.
 
Secondly a call for a shared introspection and analysis at….more or less the halfway point of our 1st Fall semester….
 
40 days is a good moment to reflect and look back on what we accomplished, celebrate on the many things we can be rightfully proud of, reset some of our goals, and ponder about some of the things we need to work on as an institution and as a community. Please share your thoughts on the posted sign-up sheets, or if you prefer, more privately in the cards that are on your table. We want to hear it all – the good, the bad and the ugly.
 
Our capacity for reflection - being able to assess ourselves critically and constructively, is a key determinant of our success – and an essential part of our commitment to science and reason, and to being an ethical and responsible institution….You may recall my commitment to an ethical leadership included a public call for being held accountable…this accountability must start now. Over the next few weeks I have instructed all members of our community to participate in one way or another in providing us with feedback. Call me, write to me, leave an anonymous comment in our webpage or drop it in our suggestions box outside our office…
 
We want to hear it all: the things we have done well, the things we need to improve on, and my favorite - the total disasters…Let us not be afraid of self criticism or self reflection…
 
Finally I want to share with you a public thank you to one member of our community –SOMEone who has been essential for css, and for me personally.
 
Building a school is like building a family, so this thank you is very personal. In life, or rather in my life, I have too rarely encountered people one feels an intimate connection to – and even more rarely one with whom one shares a vision and common passion for building something important – that is someone who is both a soul mate and a partner in arms.
 
This special person – a renaissance man of sorts who masters many crafts; a scientist and engineer, a philosopher, a cook, a carpenter, a computer builder and software designer. A mover and a shaker, someone with that very rare combinations of qualities: possessing the vision, a plan on how to do it, and the commitment and stamina to get it done against all kinds of absurd obstacles. A maverick who understand we must take risks and who can also be one’s best sounding board, and a voice of caution, reason and wisdom. Someone who can watch your back and cover for you. Someone I trust my son to and whom I trust your children to. A good friend and confidant. One of those few men one encounters in life with whom great battles can be fought, won and lost with. Or as the great Cuban poet/singer Silvio Rodriguez would say it
 
“Un hombre con quien se puede luchar toda una vida…un hombre de los imprescindibles”.
 
Andrew thank you for being there for me, for the students and faculty of CSS, and for sharing our common dream of building a great school. As a small token of our appreciation or as the DOE bureaucrats would have me say it as a instrument for increased efficiency, communication and organization, and so that I may expand my ability to exploit your many talents 24 hours a day and on weekends, vacations and holidays ….your very own electronic assistant.