by Tim Bouman
“I’m not flexible.”
With a look of panic in her eyes, one of our veteran teachers delivered this statement completely deadpan, without a hint of irony. She meant it. Having successfully taught in Lutheran schools for more than two decades, she had a routine and a rhythm. An excellent, compassionate teacher who went above and beyond for her students and her school, she had found what works and cherished her routine. It’s like that old joke: How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb? The punchline: “Change?”
Let me put things in context. I had just told my staff that we all need to be flexible at an in-service teachers’ meeting on Friday, March 13th…2020. We were discussing the rapidly evolving situation concerning a virus that sounded like it was named after a beer that everyone was suddenly talking about—and what we might do if we needed to temporarily close our school for a couple weeks while it all got sorted out. I had suggested that we might need to rethink some assumptions and do some things differently. You know, be flexible. Reading the room, I saw it was not just this one teacher, but many who were clearly uncomfortable with what this all might mean.
You know the rest. We got through the spring, teaching from home, and went through all the stages of grief ending at a grudging acceptance. We did all the things schools did a year ago: yard signs for seniors, virtual award ceremonies, Zoom town halls, a live streamed, socially distant outdoor graduation, etc. We were thrown for a loop, but we got through it and our amazing teachers kept our students engaged and learning.
Fast forward to August 2020. The new school year was about to begin and our staff was once again gathered, discussing how in the world we were going to do this: open a school in a pandemic with all the health mitigations and technology needs in place to serve students both in person and at home. Like it or not, we needed to rethink some things because business as usual was no longer an option in 2020. I called out my one teacher and said, “This year, I need everyone—even you—to be flexible.”
This turned out to be a blessing. Changing school culture and re-thinking how a school operates is a tall order in the best of times. But we literally had to start from scratch with so many aspects of our school. While it was painful at first, it eventually became freeing. Necessity is the mother of invention, and pretty soon we were not thinking twice about doing things radically different. After all, we had moved graduation from the 4th Sunday in May to late July—and we were not struck down by lightning! We completely re-did our grading policy for Spring 2020, using a system we came up with that both rewarded engaged students who put in the work, and also acknowledged the struggles other students had learning remotely, changing policies that had been followed for decades. And more students succeeded because of it.
Our flexibility and innovations continued. In August when we realized we were not yet quite ready to open school, we decided to delay it a few days, a move that would have been unthinkable a year prior. Freed from constraints, we simply sent an email to parents to let them know (“By the way—we’ll start school next week, not at the end of this week.”)—and heard not a single complaint. Our teachers found software that allowed students to virtually do science labs from home. We collaborated like never before, problem-solving how to enable students to write or type on PDFs and turn in virtual worksheets (Kami!), and how to keep remote students on task (GoGuardian!). We had virtual parent-teacher conferences, which enabled all parents with a computer to meet. New this year, students who were unable to be physically in school for any reason could now attend school through the class live stream.
Over time, this spirit of trying new things and letting go of “but we’ve always done it this way” started to inform not only how we reacted to Covid, but how we are proactively re-thinking even non-Covid aspects of school. How do we best measure student growth? Could we always live stream chapel to the broader community? How could an asynchronous learning day still be utilized after the pandemic? Are our discipline policies fair and equitable to every student? While change is difficult, we have seen how being forced to change has led to an increased comfort with it, enabling all of us to re-examine what we do and why we do it. God willing, this new mindset will last beyond the pandemic. While this past year has been painful, I do believe that through it God has blessed us with a fresh mindset and opportunities to try new things, embracing positive change, freed from the tyranny of the “this is how we always do things” mentality.
And what about my teacher who wasn’t flexible? Nobody has embraced this new mindset more than she has. At staff meetings now, whenever I propose a new idea or suggest a change, she smiles and proudly says, “I’m flexible!” In fact, she has been one of our biggest innovators, constantly coming to me with new ideas. I thank God that coming out of the pandemic we are a school that has broken out of some old habits and emerged stronger and more flexible in order to better serve the needs of our students and advance our ministry of the Gospel.
Tim Bouman is the Head of School at Walther Christian Academy in Melrose Park, IL. He can be reached at tim_bouman@waltheracademy.org.