Category Archives: Stephen Dexter

Stephen Dexter

Write makes Might

“We all live with the objective of being happy, our lives are all different and yet the same.” (A. Frank)

I waited in line for two hours in the rain with my family this past weekend in Amsterdam to see Anne Frank’s House. The line stretched all the way around the corner and down the block. It was phenomenal. Even after all these years. What was that about? There are monuments all around the world to people who have suffered and sacrificed. Why was this one so special? Why did people stand in line so long?

My daughter posing with her own diary at Anne Frank's statue
My daughter posing with her own diary at Anne Frank’s statue

After I got over the dark, narrow stairs, the moving bookcase, the tiny, cramped corners, the shaded windows, I began focusing not so much on the physical evidence of her suffering, but the psychological achievement of her writing. Of course, it is the diary that became famous for obvious reasons. A transcript of childhood sprinkled with the hopes and dreams of a child laced with the fears and anxieties that no child, nor human, should ever experience but on far too many occasions still do. What made it pertinent, I guess, was that my six year old daughter was there with me and I can only imagine how she would have come to terms as a person in that situation. Would she have written her thoughts in the way that Anne did? Would she have developed any coping mechanism if she were shut off from the world in such a way?

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” (A. Frank)

In a video at the end of the exhibit (Anne’s father Otto actually lived until 1980 and died in Basel), he says, “What I learned most of all from this experience was that you as a parent can never really know your child even though you think you do.” In spite of all the time together, in that space, over years, to imagine that your child’s experience, learning, and expression can still be so elusive, a voice so independent and even unnoticeable that a parent may not recognize it, I found fascinating.

My walk away? There are few things more valuable in the human experience than the desire to express, and the lengths to which a person, even in perilous danger, will go to carry that out. I left that day, watching my daughter clutching her diary in the rain, hoping that in spite of what might be happening at school and in spite of my flawed parenting, that she never, ever lose that spirit that burned in Anne for so long and has given the rest of us hope.

Stephen Dexter

Write the Speech

SJobs giving speech

We often talk of how important reflection is in our work. But did you ever write “The Speech?” Have you ever sat down for an hour or two, preferably with your favorite coffee mug close by, and committed it to paper? I’m not asking you to write anything like Randy Pausch did several years back when he was dying of cancer, but it’s something that is inside each one of you, and needs to come out. There’s the “If I ran this place this is how it would work” speech, the emotional “death of a colleague or student” speech and a wide selection of personal themes depending all on your mood, your message, and what you need to share. Whatever speaks to you. My favorite is the “final speech,” the last lecture in its purest form, a look back on all that you’ve done, tried to do, succeeded at, failed at, and hoped for. I visualize my colleagues and students while I write it to gauge their reactions. The things I thought were funny, the things I learned from, the stuff that I wish I could change but cannot, the people I needed to thank. But mostly, the feelings and reflections on what happened over the past four years.

It was harder than I thought. There are things people have said that you want to correct, actions you’ve taken that you want to clarify, people you’ve hurt with whom you want to make amends, students who inspired you who you want to thank. Giving credit where credit was due. Opening yourself up to criticism, judgment, observation. Stephen Barkley, a lecturer and teacher trainer, said at the April ECIS Conference in Berlin that “teaching is a team sport and a public act.” It was astonishing to hear it put in such a way. When do we ever express that feeling? So, I imagined my audience of peers and colleagues as I wrote, some shifting uncomfortably in their seats, some smiling with acknowledgement, some maybe even puzzled. But when I finished it felt cathartic. There it was. Four years of work. The goods, bads and the uglies. What I learned from it, what I hoped to take away, and what I even regretted. All in the context of hoping that I made a difference.

If you cry at least once while you do this, you’re on the right track. Get writing.

Stephen Dexter

“I appreciate you in advance”

LAS students show appreciation
LAS students show appreciation

Listening to NPR podcasts is one of the ways I keep my toes in my past American life. In fact, “This American Life” is one of my favorites. I recently listened to a February story about Harper High School in Chicago’s South Side and its culture of violence. 29 students current or former were shot this past year and 8 died. One person in the story said if this happened in most parts of America even after one death there would have been panic followed by mourning followed by hopes it never happened again. At Harper, it has become a way of life.

What caught my attention was the Principal. Principal Leonetta Sanders. I have worked in violent and drug plagued schools. Not to the extent of Principal Sanders, but the traumatic experience as a dean of students came back to me all the same. During one point in the story, a social worker breaks down crying, not because she wasn’t accustomed to the job, but because as she said “You never know where it’s going to come from at any time and you cannot stop it.” That’s exactly how I felt.

What a far cry from the experience most of us have in international schools.

Principal Sanders is a hero to me. In the audio, she often complimented students or even disciplined them with the phrase, “I appreciate you in advance.” Reflecting on this comment, she went on to say one of the hardest things about her work is that you never know if what you did made a difference, made the students do better, made them make good decisions and make something of themselves. You just do the best you can and hope for the best.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. We never get to see that, do we?

Our students are highly transient. Maybe on occasion a famous alumni will come back to give a speech, thanking the school and possibly leaving a grant. Of course recent college grads filter through to see their favorite teachers. But past that, do we really know? Are we able to, like Steve Jobs, hold up that I-Phone and say, “This thing really works and it’s good and it’s going to change your life.” Not exactly. And yet we have to bring that passion, that hope, every day.

Well, I am going out on a limb. Principal Sanders, you ARE making the world better. You ARE making a difference. And I appreciate YOU in advance.

Stephen Dexter

The Mission’s Position

If America’s President Kennedy had adopted the current school template in 1961 for declaring his mission to the moon, Neal Armstrong might never have had the opportunity to say he made a small step for man. There would have been inclusive statements about aerospace excellence in propulsion, broad declarations of lunar gravitational aptitude, and surely something about an individualized return to a home-like environment. But getting to the actual moon and back? Not so much.

His ambitious but simple statement said it all.

“First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

I recently attended a conference that featured a session on school missions.
I found it informative and complex, the speakers well versed in the delivery of what a good mission should include. We all did our diligence and compared various statements, unpacking the good from the not so good. We had insight. We laughed at the hyperboles.

However, what grabbed me was the session’s introduction. The presenters showed a clip from Apple’s popular “Think Different” campaign in the 1990s that featured rebels, troublemakers, and non-conformists. Gandhi, Edison, Lennon, Robinson, Earhart to name a few. It was when they were still the upstarts, challenging the behemoths of IBM, Digital, and Microsoft.

And then we politely carried on about global citizenry and politically correct ambitions of academic excellence and earnestness. No one stepped across the lines. How could we? These things go on our web sites!

There was nothing wrong with the conversation. We had some laughs about the vagueness and language of the statements, trying to be all things to all people while being none of them. One of the sample missions caught my attention. It aspired to educate homeless children. Everyone in the room found it so refreshing. So clear. Like putting a man on the moon by 1970.

I felt like asking the presenters how they thought the characters featured in the opening video clip would have participated in our conversation. Would John Lennon have sat patiently while we debated the meaning of global citizenship? I pictured him doodling on a piece of paper, distracted with boredom, and then looking up through his round spectacles, in a Liverpool accent asking us what the students thought we did with them all day.

The great ones, the game changers always seem to do what they do not because of but in spite of the institutions around them. We all know about the famous Harvard dropouts and the other failures that changed the world. They didn’t have patience for the conformity of learning. What they had was unlimited creativity, a lack of patience and a hunger for something else. This is bad news for the school mission statement. To be fair, it was a big institution that put Armstrong up there, and the rest of Kennedy’s speech on that day was quite verbose, sometimes bureaucratic, and even uninspirational. But what stuck with everyone, and what actually got accomplished, was the part that was clear, coherent, and committed.

So, I rewrote our mission. It won’t appear on my school’s web site any time soon. But it stays on a post-it by my desk.

“Challenge each student to make the world a better place. Now.”

Stephen Dexter

Urgent Matters

Leysin's horizon
Leysin’s horizon

Tragedy always brings an immediacy to life. Being from the Boston area, this feeling brought new urgency when I learned of the recent bombing at the marathon.

Do we have this urgency in school? Do we have an immediacy sparked not by tragedy but the passing time of youth and knowledge in front of us? Certainly the IB/DP or AP teacher feels this sense more than most with its assessments and timelines. But what about the rest of us? How long should it take to learn? What drives innovation and why is it so hard to do?

I am in the midst of a two year project to disrupt the way we do things with a new course called “digital literacy.” Its pilot name was Flex but I had to change it so people could infer its intent beyond something akin to a rubber band. The urgency I am invoking is within a question I asked two years ago. “Are our students any more compassionate, responsible, or innovative (our mission) than when they got here? How do we know?” Nobody could answer it. And yet we all work so hard.

So, we are starting, ever so slowly, to introduce a curriculum, etc. to answer this question and put students in the hot seat to create something that shows they have attained, somehow, this goal. What mystifies me is the process. If, say, an automobile or high tech company had no idea whether or not their product was successful, then how in the world could they get better? Would they even stay in business? Maybe this is what in part sparked the accountability/testing movement in America. But many believe (and research is starting to show) how disastrous that has been for innovation and learning.

I live and work in a small village in Switzerland. We did a town ‘cleanup’ day for Earth Day. We all focused on one thing and did it really well. We agreed on the task. We participated. We felt a sense of accomplishment. We celebrated. Isn’t that what makes the human experience work? Do we feel that way in our daily school lives? Is it urgent?

We’ll see how this ‘digital literacy’ thing goes. It might cost me my job. It might not. But if we cannot answer those fundamental questions with urgency about whether our students are ‘getting there’ then you better start turning that aircraft carrier.