Listening, Sharing, and Doing Our Best
As we all face this ongoing crisis, it has become clear to me that solidarity and togetherness—community—will be how we all get through with as much health and well-being as possible. Community itself is anchored in relationships, and these relationships, in turn, require trust. Trust does not come through grand proclamations or mere good intentions; rather, it emerges from a principle that was recently emphasized to me by a kind colleague: You tell folks what you know, you admit what you don’t know, and you commit to learning and discussing what wasn’t known before.
It was in this spirit that we hosted the first Community@BrowningConnect, a regular series of chats with our community, on Monday, April 20. This will give me the chance to address questions that are on our collective mind during these tricky times, and I was grateful to all those who both attended and submitted really thoughtful and fair questions. For those who were unable to join, these are among the things that I know:
There is concern about tuition specifically, and financial health generally, amidst all the uncertainty caused by the crisis. Our board, our financial aid team, and our business office have already begun contingency planning, and our school will be doing all it can to support families with both short-term and longer-term needs. To the very best of our ability, we will work to keep Browning boys at Browning.
Both faculty and families are giving incredible efforts to make BrowningConnect successful for our boys. This has been a period of undeniable sacrifice, generosity, patience, and compassion among all participants in our program, and this skill and good cheer is bearing us through some very difficult times. I remain particularly proud of our faculty, who have met the most significant challenge of their professional careers with open minds and strong hearts.
Whenever it comes, re-entering school will require a lot of consideration and planning, both in terms of logistics and program. We are already thinking through what would need to be done to assess our boys’ learning through BrowningConnect, to take advantage of potential summer learning opportunities, and to keep everyone safe, particularly if we are still under a regime of modified social distancing.
As a parent, I recognize that it is natural to worry about all that is being “lost” or “missed” in this period of adjusted instruction. But I also know that particularly when learning online, both research and our brief experience show that moments of independent learning and intrinsic motivation, emphases on social-emotional awareness, and a sustainable schedule are vital not just to student engagement, but to real skill development, knowledge retention, and enduring curiosity.
Of course, there are also many things I do not know. These include:
When we will be permitted to open the Red Doors on East 62nd Street. Whatever the state of the dispute between Governor Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio over potential re-opening dates, we have yet to receive guidance from health officials about how we could re-enter our building safely, which will always be our preeminent concern. We will continue to monitor this situation.
The proper balance between structure and independence, the proper level of challenge, and the correct volume of teacher encounter while we are teaching and learning online. While BrowningConnect is serving many boys well, we have not yet figured out how to give every boy a uniformly excellent experience. We will continue to gather feedback and adapt in the name of creating the best, most responsive program we can.
How to make the best self-recorded video. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a suitable method of communication, nor does it mean that I cannot improve. If you continue to give me your patience, I’ll continue to work on it! (This calls to mind the other important principle that has governed our time in crisis and our attitude to all of BrowningConnect: We’re going to do the right thing, and we’re going to do the best we can do.)
Finally, in the name of learning and discussing what wasn’t previously known, we will have our next Community@BrowningConnect chat on Monday, May 4. I hope to see you all then and there; in the interim, please stay safe and healthy, and thank you for your togetherness—it is what gives us hope, and helps us to heal.