Remarks by Rector Kathy Giles to Faculty and Staff
Aug. 28, 2024
It is a pleasure to open the 2024-25 school year this morning. Special welcome to our new colleagues who have joined us since last fall and to those joining us in the past few days. This School community never sleeps; we didn’t take the summer off; we are the little town that could, the little town that can, the little town that does, because we do our jobs together and do them with caring, purpose, and pride. THANK YOU to everyone for the huge lift that gets us to this point, to being ready to do our work with our students this important year. I am deeply grateful for the myriad ways our team is creating excellence across St. Paul’s School. The “we,” rather than the “me,” is evident in everything we do, and we make our school strong.
As an adult community, we bring our whole selves to work every day, and work at a boarding school inevitably becomes life in this community. The quiet heroism that daily life requires is much in evidence among us. We will celebrate together this year, from the arrival of new colleagues bringing fresh energy to marriages and births and graduations and championships to the completion of the new Fleischner Family Admissions Center and more. And we will work with uncertainty, anxiety, complexity, sadness, and loss, as well. And we know that we can work with all of it — we see resilience and strength and quiet heroism in many people sitting here today, and because we work with children, we can be focused on the future and optimistic. I hope that everyone here this morning describes themselves as an educator, someone who plays an important role in the educational mission of St. Paul’s School and in the good outcomes of our students. The work we do, as educators, is our contribution to the greater good. And our society and world are in need of educators who define and embrace our work in this way.
Before the students arrive, we can spend a minute to think about our own learning and growth as individuals and as this School. School is about growth and learning, and just as our students sometimes are less than enthusiastic about the array of demands we place before them, we know the same feeling. We know our mission; we know our guiding principles; we know the values articulated in our School Prayer. We see them around school; we say them; we try to live and work them. We know that the safety and well-being and thriving of our students, the honoring the central trust of children and families whom we invite and who choose us — we know that these are sacred, weighty responsibilities for which we are well-equipped, but which require constant reevaluation and change, as in our efforts this year around cell phone containment. We know all these things — and even then, it can be hard to want to learn, grow and change in response to the constant demands our environment and world make of us. We want to feel confident that we know what we are doing, that what we are doing is right, and that we are doing it well, the best way we know how. For many reasons, our organization has undergone transformational change. The constant push of change can challenge our sense of well-being and competence. It is hard to be a joyful learner when you feel that the learning curve is steep, often you don’t get much right, and there is a harsh response to failure.
And — not but; and — it is clear that we as a school have learned a lot, and one of the most important understandings we have developed is that we continue to have a lot to learn and that it will be good. Whether it is the Slate program in admissions or the changes necessary to decarbonize campus or the mind-bending challenge of how to think about possible roles for artificial intelligence in the learning processes of our students or on-going work on how we can become the healthiest, best school possible for our students, we can be certain that we will continue to have a lot to learn. The second reading today talks about the challenges of wanting to become better — a better school for our students, a better place to work, a better community. A better educator, a better colleague, a better person. Stanford University psychologist Carole Dweck established the concept of “growth mindset” in the early 2000’s, and it can be defined as follows:
“A growth mindset in the belief that a person’s abilities can be improved through their effort, learning, and persistence. People with a growth mindset tend to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and learning, and are able to experiment, ask questions (“ask better questions” — best advice!), and take risks. They view setbacks not as failures but as learning experiences. They are open to feedback and find inspiration in the success of others. And they believe that dedication and hard work pay off.”
There is an essential optimism, accompanied by humble confidence, to a growth mindset that goes beyond the task at hand to the idea that our work, applied broadly, with principle and persistence and diligence and commitment, does indeed serve the greater good. At St. Paul’s in 2024, we have every reason to be optimists.
This school year, as our country and our world continue to wrestle with change, uncertainty, pessimism, and anxiety, I hope we will look for and find in our work together the great energy that comes from making things better. At a meeting last week, talking about the huge amounts of infrastructure work around our campus that have been causing headaches and worse all summer, our own John O’Shaughnessey told us, “It’s going to work out tremendously for all of us in the future.” I’ve written that statement across my bathroom mirror in permanent marker. This statement is made from a growth mindset, from the perspective that the work we do creates the opportunities we want. Having a growth mindset allows one to be a joyful learner, rather than a reluctant or resentful learner, and being a joyful learner puts us on the path to wisdom. Wisdom requires a growth mindset, because wisdom leans forward, not backward. Wisdom incorporates experience, knowledge, judgment, and offers insight that helps us, facing forward, do better, be better, and learn better. Each of us here, at all the different stages of life and career in which we find ourselves, are at a different place in the development of our growth mindset and in our search for wisdom. Even as we acknowledge that truth, we can also acknowledge the joy of living and working in a beautiful place, in a community that values the learning and growing we do, throughout our lives, and its pursuit. As we work with change and uncertainty this year, whether in the broader world or here in Millville, I hope we can help each other be joyful learners, wisdom-seeking learners, people who in our own work model for each other and for our students the optimistic, humble, confident belief that principle, purpose, persistence and dedication pay off and that together the “we” is greater than the “me.”
And as we practice this growth mindset, as we seek wisdom perhaps against the noise of the outside world, I hope we will aspire to be the good. It’s a long story, but Ralph and I were sitting in a gas station in Idaho this summer when I noticed that the minivan in front of us had this sticker on its rear window — not “be good,” but “be the good.” Those are two separate concepts, created by that little definite article in between “be” and “good.” I hope we can not only be good, but I hope we can be the good and work on being the good — being good for others, being people of the light, as Sam Lovett often reminds us. The first reading, Psalm 23, is well known and a fixture of many faith services, from baptisms to funerals, and it reminds us of the good in our lives and world and also of the power of humility, courage, optimism, persistence, and faith. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death; we sit at table in the presence of our enemies; our cup runneth over; and we know with confidence that goodness and mercy are with us. Of course there is darkness, suffering, and pain around us and in our world; we can bear it, and we can fuel our resilience balancing our focus on what is not right with an appreciation of what is right and good. Our students need affirmation of what is right and good. In the terms of our School Prayer, in all the joys of this life, we always want to be kind; in our happiness, mindful of those less happy, and eager to bear the burdens of others confident that indeed, we walk through those valleys of shadow towards the light because we believe in and remind each other of the good and know that when we trip or fail in pursuit of the good, mercy enables our recovery. We can be the good. In our lives together here, in our work together here, we can affirm the good, focus on what is good, and let it lift us all up. There is constant pressure in our media-saturated lives to focus only on what hurts, what is wrong, what is bad, and our young students feel that pressure acutely. Our response can be yes, those issues require our attention AND the Love Divine is with us all the days of our lives, and we can see and know and be and do the good. It is a both/and, not an either/or. That’s why this beautiful place exists, and that is why we do the work of St. Paul’s School.
We have so much to learn this year, from and with each other. There is so much to do, for St. Paul’s to make the important contributions we need to make. It is a wonderful time to work together on being a great school for our students, our society, and our world. Let’s do that work together this year focused on and confident in the good.
May it be so, and amen.