My Visual Autobiography

Daffodils and the Classroom

Daffodils are frequently confused by weather patterns. Right in the middle of winter a few warm days will cause their green shoots to appear. Blooming will usually begin in spring, but even in the same garden they will flower irregularly rather than as a cohort. Daffodils remind me of middle school students.

One of the many things I’ve enjoyed about my career is having wonderful discussions with teachers and parents regarding the behaviors of middle school children. Middle school aged children—let’s just say the ages between eleven and fourteen-- are simply fascinating! Noted anthropologist Margaret Meade once called them betweenagers, and said that we are more dissimilar at this period of development that at any other time in our lives. If I’m in front of a group of adults leading a conversation regarding this phase of growth, I usually ask the group to raise their hands if they themselves enjoyed those days.

Rarely is a hand raised. There is always the tittering of nervous laughter in the room. I suspect that uncomfortable memories are bubbling up.

There’s the girl who is unhappy that no one notices her. Moments later she is horrified that “people are looking at me!” The once docile and compliant boy becomes too physical with his peers, and “keep your hands to yourself” (a fairly common phrase in preschool and kindergarten) reappears after an extended absence. Odd vocalizations and facial expressions, including dismissive snorts and eye rolls, become commonplace.

I have found that rude behavior increases dramatically at this age. The big surprise, however, is that these betweenagers are largely unaware of their rudeness. When challenged, they are almost always baffled by the adult’s “over reaction” to the event. Even when the adult is quietly advising corrective action, the child will demand to know why he’s being “yelled at.” Skillful and wise adults can often reach betweenagers with the news that certain behaviors are unacceptable. When this moment occurs, the betweenagers are horrified at their own actions! Their penitence is obvious.

Many years ago when I was head of an independent school in Virginia, a seasoned middle school teacher came into my office to voice her frustration with a language arts class. “How many times do I have to teach the same point?” she demanded. “Well,” I countered, “how many students do you have?”

That’s an exaggeration of middle school teaching, of course, but the point remains: we are more dissimilar at this age than at any other time in our lives. That’s why I think an academically competent third grade teacher could teach a high school course, and a high school teacher who understood child learning theory could function well in a third grade classroom. Neither would necessarily succeed in a middle school room.

The middle school years are tough on everyone, it seems. Some parents wonder what the school did to their lovely little boy or girl; some teachers wonder if the child has any discipline at home. And all children know at a gut level that their world is changing forever. Their full flower will come later in their schooling career. If we’re lucky, like an early daffodil, maybe we’ll get a glimpse of it along the way. Maybe a former student will come back to tell tales of high school or college.

Our job is to help them grow, supporting each other as well as those to whom we’ve entrusted our children. The great schools of the world will address this remarkable age with curricula and teachers who understand the challenge.

Christmas Plans 2011 so far: please add items

THURSDAY
e arrives on Thursday December 22. Pickle will get her from the airport.
FRIDAY
Brian arrives on Friday at 9:40 a.m., December 23. Pickle and e will pick him up from the airport. They will go to 2650 and "move in". Morristown Selbies will arrive around 3:30 at 2602 and "move in".
PaPa has made dinner reservations for 14 at the round Holiday Inn at 6:30. No plans for later that night so far. This could be the night for a "last minute movie outing".
SATURDAY (Christmas eve)
Plans made by e and Isabug: we will have a "potluck" supper at either house, where everyone who WANTS to cook (King of the World, Isabug, e, Pickle, Mere, Mamacita) will make dinner and serve on disposable plates. KOTW will make white chili. Those who want will attend midnight mass. One present may be opened on this night if necessary.
SUNDAY (The Nativity)
Everyone will gather at 2650 for gift exchange at, oh, say, 9:30? Perhaps I will whomp up a quiche or something. Mere, let's talk! Brian's plane leaves at 1:36 p.m., so he needs to leave the island around 11:30 or so. In the middle of the afternoon we will have a Christmas dinner at 2650 consisting of All American Tenderloin, maybe some twice bakes and salad, etc. Crafts will follow?
MONDAY (St. Stephen, protomartyr)
Morristown Selbies will take e to the airport at 8:00 and then continue back to Tennessee.

Sermon: John the Baptizer

Sermon on John the Baptizer

All Saints Episcopal Church

Morristown, Tennessee

Advent II, 2011

Henry G. Selby

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable unto thee O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” (PS. 19)

There are people in this world, annoying people, who are always pointing out what’s wrong with things. In fact, the people I’m talking about seem to be unable to contain their observations. They are compelled to share them, welcome or not.

You know the sort: they may not know the precise details of what’s wrong, but they can smell a problem a mile away! There’s something wrong in Washington! There’s something wrong in the church! Your plan won’t work!

Sometimes they turn into curmudgeons. Andy Rooney, of 60 minutes fame, was one of these. H.L. Mencken, who wrote for the Baltimore Sunpapers was another. Don’t get me wrong: they’re not simply complainers! In fact, they are usually right. There is something rotten in Denmark. They have a genius for what won’t work or what needs fixing. And most other people find this genius to be very, very tiresome.

If you recall the Enneagram class that Cindy and I did several Lents ago, you may remember that this spiritual type is a “one” (out of the nine types). The area of giftedness for a “one” is that they are discerning, wise, morally heroic and often noble. Their dark-side, however, is a huge fear of being corrupt or evil. So you

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see, in sniffing out a problem “over there” they are always suspicious of themselves at the same time. In a nutshell, they want to be good. They thirst for righteousness. At their worst, they become moody, perfectionistic, angry, and sometimes irrational.

I am a “one”.

But happily, the sermon today is not about me! It’s about prophets, and particularly it is about John the baptizer. I think the prophets were all “ones”: they saw problems, made a great noisy rant about the problems, and (I’m guessing here) were profoundly uncomfortable with the task they were given to do. Why? Because they found themselves unworthy. That’s what ones feel.

So first, let’s be clear about this word “prophet”. I believe that if you exclusively think of prophets as “predictors” of future events, you probably will miss their greater message. The greater message is what’s happening now. Let me say that another way: prophets are really good at helping the rest of us to remove our blinders and see things as they really are, here and now.

The last of the prophets of Israel had been silent for 400 years before John appears on the scene. To the locals, he probably looked just like they imagined someone from long ago: camel’s hair garment secured with a leather cincture, eating locust and wild honey, coming out of the wilderness, wild hair, wide eyed . . .

“It’s a wild man! It’s Elijah,” they thought. Elijah had prophesied almost 900 years before John. Listen again how Mark begins his version of the Gospel: As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

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"See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,

who will prepare your way;

the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

`Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight,'"

And Isaiah was prophesying about 750 years before John! If I asked you to picture a resident of Hamblen County from 700 years ago, what image comes to your mind? Well, that startling image that you just drummed up is similar to what the Judeans saw in John.

But in any event, John appears. In today’s gospel lesson the writer we call Mark jumps right into the prophecy of John.

First, Mark reports that Isaiah had foretold the messenger John. Then, John encourages everyone to be baptized . . . literally and figuratively, in a very symbolic and sacramental way, washing away their sins. But then, like a good Enneagramic “one” John denigrates himself by saying that one even greater is coming

. . . “one whose sandals I am not even worthy to untie.”

We’ll come back to this in a moment.

So several questions come to my mind. The first one is, why in the world would people from the whole Judean countryside and all of Jerusalem listen to a wild man who tells them to wash away their sins in the River Jordan? But they did, didn’t they?

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I think the answer to this question is simple: First, they remembered their scripture (remember Isaiah?) and they responded to God’s word. They were on the lookout and they were ready! Second, they recognized their own sinfulness and need for confession and repentance.

“Wouldn’t it be great to unload all those burdens I’ve been carrying my whole life?” The answer is an unqualified “YES!”.

The next question that occurs to me concerns the meaning of John’s phrase that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

I suppose most of you know that John was Jesus’ cousin. I think this is probably true. He was the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and St. Luke tells us that Elizabeth and Mary were cousins. Since Luke is so precise, I would think that this relationship is bona fide. Unfortunately for me, my NT professor at St. Mary’s Seminary was Raymond Brown, the foremost NT thinker of the 20^th century, and he doubts this relationship. But let that pass.

That second question, the one about baptizing with the Holy Spirit, is powerful. John Baptist would have called this a baptism by the breath of God: the Ruah Yaweh. This, said John, is what the one who comes after him would give to you and me.

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So here we are smack dab in the middle of Advent. We’ve lit two candles on the wreath, our liturgy and music is constructed to cause us to lean forward in expectation of the coming of Jesus. We are expectant, but solemnly so (look at our colors!), and in political jargon one might say that we are “cautiously optimistic” about what this birth might bring.

But in the meantime we’re decorating, and planning parties, and buying presents, and running back out a THIRD time for more scotch tape. The good scissors have disappeared from their drawer and the hectic holiday season is in full swing. It got an extra big push from retailers with their Thanksgiving day “black Friday” one-day-early thing this year. Wow. “If I can only get that new Kindle Fire my life will be complete!

It reminds me of the airline pilot who came over the loudspeaker.

“Hello. This is your captain speaking. I have some bad news and I have some good news. First the bad news: we’re lost. The good news is, we’re making real good time.”

I think the wonderful thing about Mark’s account here is that all those folks out in the Judean countryside and all the people in Jerusalem KNEW that they were lost. I’m not sure we really do.

We have an opportunity this morning to listen to John speak directly to us, to hear his words: to absorb them and ask “what is he really saying to me?”

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Do you recall that in other versions of the story John says that he himself must decrease? And do you recall from this morning that John says, “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals”?

I believe that what John is telling us today is just this: we need to get ourselves out of the way. We need to get ourselves out of the way.

I need to get myself out of the way. Because if I’m blocking the light with my own worldly needs, I’ll never be able to see that baby lying in a manger and know who He is.

Get myself out of the way. It’s not easy. It’s often agonizing.

Then . . . and only then . . . the need for scotch tape and honey baked hams and Kindle Fires will start to dim a little bit. And even those things that we consider more important: our health . . . the mental or physical health of a loved one . . . the economy . . . may begin to assume a proper place in the true hierarchy of our needs.

For you see, brothers and sisters, even here in the middle of Advent, we are an Easter people.

T.S. Eliot asked the question in his poem The Journey of the Magi

were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

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We are privileged to see the child Jesus in his manger. We are edified by his good news. We are saved by his sacrifice. And it is in the resurrection that our hope lies: “at the last day to be with all the saints in the joy of God’s eternal kingdom.”

So my friends. Let’s make a commitment this morning to follow God’s word as foretold by his prophets. It’s not too late. Will we join together and do this in our hearts?

“Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight”

And now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed as is most justly due, all might, majesty, power, dominion, and glory, both now and evermore. AMEN

A Typical Day at School

April 15, 2011, was like any other day. That is, it was like any other rainy day with thunder and lightning. The eighth graders at All Saints’ Episcopal School had gradually entered their homeroom and were greeted by their teacher, Mrs. Golden. Like so many other times, Mrs. Golden began the day by asking the students what they wanted to share. Connar Capps was first.

In the middle of her sharing, a thunderous bang echoed through the room. Chad Gregory interrupted and announced that he thought that someone was breaking into the room. “No,” said Mrs. Golden, “it’s just the storm, Chad.” Moments later there was the sound of shattering glass. Calmly, and in a low voice, Mrs. Golden simply said “zombies.” Then she hit the red button, the mysterious red button that students had always wondered about, the red button below the white board. “Eighth grade: at times like these our capacity to retaliate must be, and has to be, massive, to deter all forms of aggression.”

The white board flipped over while she was talking. On the other side were weapons of every kind. “Children,” she continued, “it’s time to lock and load!” She grabbed a Spas 12, tossed an AK-47 to Hank Selby, and Sara Spain took a machete. The rest of the students were in the process of getting weapons when the first zombie entered the room. Mrs. Golden blew its head off with a single burst from the Spas 12. The second zombie, however, ate Dylan. “Die, monster!” screamed Abby McGarel as she threw a knife between its eyes. The battle was intense.

Chad Gregory looked like he was going to be the next victim, but Gabe Sexton attacked with an exploding arrow in his crossbow. As the arrow made contact with the zombie, it exploded early. The zombie was killed, but Gabe was blown backwards for ten feet. Taimur Kouser and Sophie Assadnia double-teamed a particularly ugly zombie whose nose had rotted away. Chad, recovering from the attack, borrowed Sara’s machete and beheaded another.

Just as quickly as the attack began, it ended. No more zombies were left. The students were worn, bloody, and exhausted. “What was that all about?” they asked their teacher as she replaced the weapons and pressed the red button again. The white board swung back to normal.

“It’s my turn to share,” Mrs. Golden said. “I was trained by the Navy SEALS and the CIA in all forms of weaponry and combat. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I have been waiting many years to use my skills right here in our school. Today was a great victory. We will miss Dylan, though. Now, children, use your magic fingers and point to the next vocabulary word.”

Filthy Memories

By Hank Selby

I was only six when it happened. It was the scariest day of my life… well, so far. Explosions, bullets, and fire were everywhere. The terribly repulsive scent of gasoline and burnt flesh was not a pleasant odor. Surprisingly though, neither the gunfire, nor the explosions was the thing that frightened me the most. It was the screaming; the horrifying screams of young children helplessly calling for their mothers and fathers to save them. Oh, if only their parents could have been quicker. No soap will be able to cleanse the memories I have kept from that day, seventeen years ago.

We were living in Chicago, Illinois at that terrible time. My parents had taken me into the heart of the city to do some Christmas shopping. We parked in a high-rise parking garage. Who would have thought terrorists would have struck in a parking garage? The parking garage, though, was the center of their attack on the city.

Years later we learned that the terrorists came from Venezuela, a country that hates the United States. They believe that we have been cheating them out of their country’s oil. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’m sure that they didn’t need to kill so many of us to prove their point. The attack on Chicago was the only one they ever made. It was enough to change me for life.

My memories of that day are probably what caused me to enter the professional world of the Central Intelligence Agency. As a spy, I travel the world gathering intelligence to use against terrorists. As of today I haven’t had to kill anyone. On the other hand, I have been trained to defend my country by any means necessary.

The memory of dying children, collapsing concrete and steel, and burning flesh, is something that I will never forget. My work as a spy for my country is patriotic. Terrorism is bad. No matter what reason terrorists claim to have, it is bad. My work may never be done, but I intend to work as hard as I can to try to end it all.

The End of Education

The End of Education, or “What Does the finished product look like?”

Grateful acknowledgement is given to Jon Pless for inviting me to speak with you today. As an academic, I am accustomed to speaking in blocks of time that range between 45 and 55 minutes. Please sit back and relax. We’ve got plenty of time.

[Michelangelo Lodovico di Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor. Here’s what he said:]

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.

As a head of school, my principal job is to vision. There’s strategic planning, budgeting, short and long term maintenance documentation, staffing, building usage, and so on. But perhaps the most important part of the visioning process is one that I share with almost anyone who bothers to think about it.

That visioning involves “the finished product”. In other words, after a child has finished the prescribed course of study, what does this student look like?

So if you are a mom or dad, or if you are involved in the training and nurturing of young people, or if you are mentoring a new hire at your business, or if you’re on the endangered species list as a manufacturer, you too are trying to envision the finished product.

Now I recognize that there is a wonderful side track we could take with this thesis: that life is not a destination, but a journey. That a student or new-hire is never really a finished product. That the journey IS the destination. And all that type of thinking iS fun and true. But it is also true that every journey has waypoints, stopping points, side trips, and pitfalls. And my observations today have to do with the particular waypoint that is characterized by a graduation.

I think this is a worthy question for all academic institutions. At the terminal point (in our case it is currently 8^th grade) what do I want my graduates to look like? And what I hope to offer to you today is this: perhaps you can take this perspective on schooling and glean something from it that might be useful to you in your journey. If you can, hooray for both of us! If you can’t, well . . . at least I pocketed a few happy dollars to put in the pot on Jon’s behalf! So let’s get started:

Your second grade teacher had you answer the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. I have no idea how many of you said that you wanted to be working in an office. Probably no one, although I bet most of you do (or have done) a lot of office work. I’m also guessing that whatever you said in second grade bears little relationship to what you are actually doing with your life today. (I could be wrong, but this room isn’t brimming over with firefighters and police.)

When I was in second grade I wanted to be a proud member of the United States Marine Corps, but I also wanted to run the street sweeping machine that came down our road once in a while! Neither of those things happened.

What did happen is that I became a headmaster with a wife and three children . . . with LOTS of really interesting twists and turns in between. And as a dad AND and educator, I have given a great deal of thought to this idea of the end product.

So the title of today’s talk, “The End of Education” isn’t suggesting that schooling is screeching to a halt, but rather that the point of education (its “end”) has some sort of importance that ought to be considered once in a while . . . beyond, or at a depth that exceeds, simply the next step in life (“you know, like, getting accepted to a good college or finding a job”)

Now when I look at this question as a father, I am reassured at where my values really lie! Lillian, my eldest, a 27 year old church-going honors graduate of William and Mary, is the art director for a powerhouse advertising firm. She’s in love with a good boy, an assistant principal of a magnet school in Buffalo, NY, who wants to be a college basketball coach one day. This makes me happy. She’s making a good living, doing work she likes to do, and she’s a moral young lady responding to God’s call in her life.

Caroline, a 24 year old church-going honors graduate of the College of Charleston, is teaching at Charleston Collegiate, a prep school on Johns Island. She’s an accomplished flautist, engaged to a good boy who works with turtles at the South Carolina aquarium and plays jazz guitar. This makes me happy. She’s making a good living, doing work she likes to do, and she’s a moral young lady responding to God’s call in her life.

My last child, my “caboose” is Hank. He’s just 13 years old and is in the 8^th grade at All Saints. He’s a good writer, a good public speaker, active in our church, he’s athletic, a boy scout who has finished all the requirements for 1^st class rank with Troop 91, and is a dancer in “Camp Rock” that opens tonight! Hank makes me happy . . . so far.

[This is like that line from the Simpson’s movie when Bart complains to his father “Dang, Dad. This is the worst day of my life.” Consoling him, Homer says, “The worst day of your life so far.”]

My point is, that while I would never say Lillian’s or Caroline’s education has ended, I would say that they have already completed significant waypoints, like graduation and finding jobs, that have helped to complete a vision, a values-driven vision, that I’m apparently holding. Hank, on the other hand, is clearly still in process, like the rest of my students at All Saints.

Our mission declares that we will prepare students academically (well, duh. We’re a school! And for heaven’s sake we’re an Episcopal School. We’re the ones who rejoice in repeating that Jesus died to take away our sins, not our brains). So, we will prepare students academically, morally, socially, and physically in a diverse Christian environment.

But when they graduate in that glorious commencement ceremony next May, what do we want them to look like?

And it seems to me that the real goals of education, the truly important ones, the ones that endure for a lifetime, can’t be neatly summed up in curriculum benchmarks or by merely publishing standardized test results. And ladies and gentlemen, we are at a time in history when schooling . . . in its very familiar form . . . is changing at an unimaginable rate of speed.

Let me give you just one example out of literally hundreds: The school library (or even a community library) doesn’t need space to store encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other heavy reference books. Why not? Well, most of us carry the world’s largest reference library on our belts or in our pockets! Progressive libraries have responded well to this change: the idea of freeing up real estate in the reference section to provide glassed-wall meeting spaces with full digital connectivity has resulted in phenomenal collaborative learning at the high school and university levels. People want to be collaborative; they want to be connected. The glass walled rooms are part of a library movement called “public anonymity”. This new internal architecture is receiving rave reviews.

There is an emotional connection, however, that most people share with things like books, and ink, and pencils, and writing in cursive and memorizing the capitals of each state. As a headmaster I hear this emotional connection every day: “I just think it’s important to hold a book, to smell its pages, feel it. I just don’t want a Kindle for my child.” Or, “I just think it’s just terrible that children aren’t graded in penmanship”. These statements of “I just think it’s important for whatever reason” are valid, but it is vital, absolutely vital, that every part of schooling needs to be evaluated for its enduring qualities.

Do you think it’s important for every third grader to have the times tables memorized through the 12’s? I do. We do at All Saints. But Why? Really? And am I seduced into temporizing about the need for advanced memory work rather than grasping the mechanical process of repeated addition that yields multiplication? (And why stop at the 12’s if it’s so important?) If I argue for cursive writing, can I really support it as a means of literary and aesthetic expression, or will I bail out to a nearby argument regarding fine motor skills. My friends, there is strong emotion connected with these issues. The emotional component cannot be ignored, but again I would argue that at this point, especially at this point in history, with the digital world literally at our fingertips, the enduring issues of schooling are not going to be found in a table of contents or the answer key to a test. Perhaps they never were.

When I look at the end product I see a girl who knows how to stand up straight, to look another in the eye and tell the truth. I see a boy who has decent manners and can express himself verbally and in writing. I see students who not only have the academic skills necessary to succeed in the challenges that life will give them, but the moral compass and intellectual curiosity that keeps them truly alive.

I think you can see where I’m going with this, so I’m going to pause. I need to make something VERY clear: I am not opposed to memorizing times tables or cursive writing or learning that Austin is the capital of Texas. This is not my point at all. In fact, I’m usually in FAVOR of these things. What IS my point is that in every nurturing, mentoring, guiding, teaching, learning moment, we ought to be asking WHY in terms of the finished product. Just because something can be done does not mean that it should be done.

And I’ll tell you this: I don’t want highly trained, academically brilliant graduates of All Saints using their training for immoral purposes. Human history is rife with such examples: gosh, what can we do with this new invention? I know, we’ll make a weapon!

So, to sum up, it seems to me that the End of Education is to serve our moral nature. All Saints Episcopal School operates in a Christian environment. We intentionally, like every independent school that I know of, teach morality. We have a core values program of 6 virtues that are emphasized each of the six grading periods: Service, Tolerance, Achievement, Integrity, Respect, and Spirituality. We have an honor code and an honor council, morning devotions and the pledge of allegiance. Weekly chapels. And why do we do these things?

Because we believe that every child has infinite value and infinite possibilities in responding to God’s unique call to him or her. At All Saints, we live this way every day. Remember Michelangelo’s idea? Every block of stone has a statue inside of it? The sculptor’s job is to let it out! That’s why we’re here.