From the Rector: Rethinking "Unplug"

It’s a small white sign with black letters, and it has occupied a prominent place on my various office desks for almost 20 years. As more and more of our lives are being spent focused on screens, “unplug” may have appeared counter-cultural and, perhaps in a curmudgeonly way, revolutionary good advice.

E-mail threatens to overwhelm us – so unplug. Social media makes us feel connected but then overwhelms us and makes us feel angry and depressed – “the rage machine,” as it is now known – so unplug. We play our music so loudly in our earbuds that we damage our hearing and can’t possible hear ourselves think – so unplug. The sign offered a seemingly simple solution, until COVID-19 changed our world last March, and we at SPS took the show online, so to speak. As much as we needed to be able to unplug, it no longer became any kind of viable option.

For young people, a school is so much more than a building that houses classes. Schools educate, socialize, and civilize. Teachers work with whole families in addition to individual children. Schools around the world and around our country provide meals and attention and care for children, and the children of the world and of America have been going without for almost a year. COVID’s cost to their future – and, thus, to all of our futures – has the potential to be staggering. The children of America need to be back in school, plugged in to the resources – friends, teachers, mentors, coaches, activities – that light up their lives and inspire their growth. If we have learned anything over these many months, it is that we can do more with less, but that our time in person, together, with friends and family, is precious and priceless. Being plugged in could not be more important.

Here on the grounds, we have been largely “in person” this year, with a “remote” hiatus of five class weeks spanning from just before Thanksgiving, through the Christmas and New Year holidays, to the end of January. We’ve adjusted to masks, to personal distance, to changes in schedule, and to de-densified classrooms. We’ve modified how we dance, how we sing, how we compete, but we have done everything possible to make each day matter during what can seem like an endless, anxious, uncertain time. Our health has been strong, our students have been responsible and resilient, and we have all found internal, spiritual resources that perhaps we did not recognize before. There will be many takeaways from this time that make us better teachers, that support better student wellness, and that strengthen our community. “Silver linings task forces” will be part of our work in the coming spring weeks.

We reconvene in this new year, with new optimism for the potential vaccines offer. We do so conscious of the privilege it is to be together in person, focused on learning, teaching, and growing, plugged into the living, human, flawed, energetic community we are, eager to get on with life, to make each day matter for each other, and to become stronger and better as individuals and as a whole. Being a member of the St. Paul’s School community has always been a privilege, but perhaps we have never been so conscious of it as we are now. It is with grateful hearts that we turn to the work of the rest of this COVID winter and look with great optimism to a spring of rebirth and renewal.

Sincerely,

Kathleen C. Giles