his is the first in a blog series focusing on the skills required for headship in today’s changing world.

Recently I was sitting out on my porch looking out on the Okatie River and catching up with an old friend. I was in the first days of recovering from a May orthopedic procedure that would keep me off my feet and housebound for the month of June waiting for literal marching orders from my doctor. From this procedure and considerable travel beforehand, my blog writing had taken a holiday as I pushed through the late spring, getting increasingly comfortable with my inner consultant, so to speak. However, having this chance to “talk shop” was a welcome break from the daily routine of recovery—watching the tide rise and fall on the Okatie River—and our conversation stimulated this blog offering—and the series to follow.

Well, I won’t mince words: NAIS blew it. When offered the chance to have a “Design the Revolution” conference-sponsored showing of Most Likely to Succeed, the new documentary on innovative responses to the present and future education design landscape, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) gave the offer a quick sniff and turned the opportunity down. And that’s a shame. Sure, the conference was over a year in planning and shifting the program around to accommodate the film would have been daunting; I mean—good lord!—the programs were already printed. But shouldn’t NAIS model good teaching and adaptability? And really, doesn’t every good teacher seize special moments, change the plan, and invigorate the educational environment when opportunity knocks?

The current revolution in education seems to confuse those people not directly involved in or up-to-date with the field, in part I think because of the “eduspeak” involved: flipped classrooms, STEM, STEAM, MOOC, Common Core, Race to the Top, project based learning, and so on. This uncertainty mostly affects the Baby Boom generation, people who are indeed puzzled by much of “the new” in this rapidly evolving digital culture. Despite not having a Twitter account or not fully grasping the joys of Instagram, this 50+ generation is nonetheless eager to understand the educational climate, to figure out the language, to be connected. And why not? They are often called upon to take care of their grandchildren, and even pay for their education.

What the college sexual assault phenomenon means to independent schools

When an out-of-the-blue parent call starts with “Headmaster, you have a serious problem,” your focus goes way up while your stomach goes pretty far down. When I received such a call one spring in the late 1990’s, I got up, closed my office door, and said, “You have my attention.” The caller—the father of a younger girl at Blair—told me that he had reason to believe that a senior boy, in fact a post-graduate senior (meaning the boy would be at least 18-years-old) had had sexual relations with a freshman girl. It was, he allowed, consensual and oral—which is in fact “sexual relations” in legal terms—but nonetheless of significant concern to him both for the students involved and the school generally. Having learned about the incident through social media of some sort (and I suspected but never discovered if he was talking about his own daughter), the father then asked, “What would you do if I told you the boy’s name?” Without hesitation I replied, “Call the school lawyer, who I suspect would then call the district attorney.” There was a long pause, before he said, “I ask that you think about a way to use this incident in an educational way, and then get back to me. Then I shall let you know whether or not I want tell you more.”