Leading With
Joy and Passion

The summer is an opportunity for school leaders to reassess and ensure that they are beginning the school year with their mission-aligned passion and joy. What are the plans that can be put into place to facilitate the deep social connections that are at the heart of successful learning? Let’s reflect on this incredible summer space and how we support building those joyous relationships through which futures are forged.

Leaders Self-Reflect

For a school leadership team, the summer is one of the most concentrated and consuming parts of the year and a time of intense self-reflection. Similar to preparing for a high-quality classroom teaching experience, the more preparation one does in the summer, the more smoothly the year will go. Even though one must always be flexible and pivot nimbly, the higher the quality the planning, the more likely even last-minute changes and adjustments to meet the needs of individual students will be more effective. With more experience, one does become adept at predicting accurately; nonetheless, there will always be surprises.

Experts Ask

During this summer planning space, part of the excitement, passion and creativity stems from collaboration. Successful school teams stay humble and recognize that no matter how much expertise we have, there is always more to learn. Experts in a field are cognizant of how much they don’t yet know, are committed to being lifelong learners, and are open to learning from everyone. This includes teachers, parents, students, office support and maintenance staff. Listening to others’ points of view offers clarity or shifts the direction of thinking in incrementally meaningful ways. Often, having expertise means knowing how to ask better questions, not miraculously always having solutions. Experts in education recognize the unique needs of each case individually and resist comparing children and situations.

Everyone Has Their Moment

Ben Azai says in Pirkei Avot, “There is no person without his/her hour.” (4:4) We must treat everyone with dignity and strengthen our resolve to commit to this value. It is a clarion call for how we interact with children—we never know what will be their spark, their click or their moment of joy that will propel them for the rest of their lives. We hope that sometime in their school journey, we will be zoche to create an opportunity for a child to find his or her moment and purpose, the catalyst for his or her future. The summer is our time to recharge ourselves and reinforce this deep messaging as adults who carry the grave responsibility of children’s lives.

The Story’s Slant

Emily Dickinson was a poet who had frequent slant rhymes in her work. (Longtime readers of my articles notice that I often share unique interpretations of Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets, and this one will be no different.) For poetry aficionados, utilizing slant rhyme can be a technique that evokes a particular feeling. At its most basic definition, a slant rhyme is a rhyme where only the last consonant sounds are the same, unlike a traditional “perfect” rhyme where the last syllable and the accenting of all the syllables are aligned.

I often think about this idea metaphorically, though, and particularly in relation to the capacities of educational leadership. “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” wrote Dickinson so wittily. Although the term “slanted” often has a negative connotation in our modern era, Dickinson’s use emphasizes the positive and reflects on our human capacity to frame the stories we choose to tell.

Educational leaders are in the position to create stories and narratives about their teachers, their students, their parent body and through their beliefs, bring those stories to life. At the same time, there must be sensitivity and awareness that everyone around us is constantly writing stories in their heads about everyone else. How do we respond to others’ perceptions and inner narratives with empathy? Surely, one aspect of being human is guaranteed—no two of us have the exact same perceptions, and sometimes, even within ourselves, we may have multiple storylines or points of view.

Balance and Rejuvenation

There does have to be balance. Sometimes, if one is too extreme a philosopher and so intent on seeing everything from everyone’s point of view, it can be difficult to proceed forward, and there may be a certain amount of paralysis. Balance is always key. We certainly know that the traits of humility and patience are fundamental to the learning experience for children. While the emotional labor of leadership can be heavy, through collaboration and kindness, leaders find safe spaces to process the emotional burdens they carry, and lead the new school year with passion and joy.

Chana Luchins is principal of general studies at Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva.