Dear Monroe School Community,
It is still several months before my position as the new District Administrator begins, but I want to open our communication early in my anticipation to join your community. Having spent many, many summers in the White Mountains, I feel as though a childhood dream is coming true. The majesty and ruggedness of the North Country is reflected in the good people who inhabit its valleys, notches and high country, and I look forward to meeting you.
I am a parent, a teacher, a professor and a principal, and with each role there are several universal truths that have guided my professional and personal practice. One truth is that nothing good is possible without healthy relationships based on honesty and therefore trust. Another powerful truth is that every child has a special gift waiting to be discovered and each is uncovered in a different way. Our approach to teaching and learning must reflect the individual needs and passions of each student.
While this may sound difficult, it is a belief that must guide the practice of every educator. By working as a team with shared language and shared principles, we can help each student become a person who loves to learn and therefore loves school. I have helped develop over 100 school leaders in my career, and I have no illusions. This work can often be challenging – but without the belief that every child can learn AND that it is our job together to find the pathway to that end, it is too easy to blame the child, blame the family or blame society.
For the last six months, I have been writing a weekly letter home to the parents and community members of the four schools in Berkshire County Massachusetts for which I am Principal. While I started the newsletter, the teachers fill the pages each week without being reminded because the response from the communities we serve has been so positive. You may read my letters at: SBRSD.ORG. These letters will give you a good idea of my educational philosophy and practices.
You may also visit principalresidency.org to see professional leadership development work of which I am very proud. I invite you to write me at: tom@principalresidency.org to share your ideas for “our” Monroe Consolidated School if you wish. Please do so anytime you have a question or comment.
One of my goals includes making this little school the gem it deserves to be. To accomplish this will take an open line of communication among the staff, students, parents and community members. I hope we can start with some potluck “Town Hall” type meetings during the summer where we can begin our relationship with face-to-face conversation, guided by what is best for children.
Through the interviewing and hiring processes, I have been made aware of some of the issues facing the Monroe School Community.
I am committed to providing an excellent school program that is also respectful to the taxpayers in these uncertain times. It is important that we do a full analysis of Special Education services.
Every child that needs special services should get the best service possible as early as possible. Through early interventions and best practices, many learning differences can be addressed without needing Special Education.
Having said this, there will always be children who need Special Education. It is our ethical and legal obligation to see that we have the resources to provide the interventions each child needs to achieve their highest level.
Children come to every public school in this country with a host of learning and emotional issues. The role of a truly excellent school is to find ways to have each child feel the esteem that can only come through hard work, personal responsibility and ultimately success. Together we will solve these problems and see families from surrounding towns wanting to tuition their children to Monroe. Hopefully, we will see the families who have left return and rejoin their school community again. This and more will happen through hard work as a unified community with a shared vision for the common good.
I have been blessed with two beautiful daughters whom I have had the honor of raising on my own for the last eight years. My older daughter, Kate, is studying sustainable agriculture and wants to own a small sheep and vegetable farm in the North Country. It is comforting to know that for the two years she has left at Sterling College, we will be “neighbors” -- allowing the laundry visits to be more regular.
My younger daughter, Zoe, is an artist and writer and is headed to Bennington College after having the choice of many excellent schools. She has taken this year to live on her own, work fulltime and has a beautiful studio space in Brattleboro.
They are both caring world citizens and I am proud of them. My love for my own children has always allowed me to love the children I have served. My children have been raised in a way that has encouraged them to believe they can do anything they dream of doing. They also were raised to know that school was an essential experience and one to be grateful for.
In closing, I would like to share a simple sequence of seven actions that help guide my personal and professional life. A wise elder friend who traveled the world looking for the nature of what makes a good person shared them with me some five years ago. This simple, nonpolitical, non-religious, non-controversial sequence of actions has helped me teach elementary teachers, train school leaders and run four schools with over 500 PK-6 students plus continue to
raise two young adult daughters.
The Sequence of Seven: Patience, Acceptance, Understanding, Compassion, Cooperation, Kindness and Love.