Given recent events that have roiled our nation, I feel that it is critical to reiterate our school district's core values, especially our commitment to "honor each person’s individuality, celebrate our community’s diversity, and support school cultures of mutual acceptance and respect." Below is an excerpt from my remarks to staff at our opening staff assembly, which I also e-mailed to parents.
Excerpt from Superintendent’s Remarks to Staff on August 28
First, I want to be as clear as possible that we all are responsible for upholding our core values of mutual acceptance and respect, by accepting our students, parents, and colleagues unconditionally, for who they are. No one should feel excluded from our public school community based upon their race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or disability. That is the law, and that is the right thing. Our schools must be inclusive for all whom we serve.
The question of accepting others’ ideas and beliefs is where things become more complicated. No student, parent, or colleague should feel excluded or unwelcome in our schools based on their political ideas or beliefs. Legally and ethically, in our professional work we must be politically neutral, as we must not use our power and authority to influence our students’ formation of political beliefs. The challenge is where some view an issue as political but others view it as moral. In the aftermath of what happened in Charlottesville and the rhetoric that has followed, I feel it is important to state, unequivocally, that tolerance of different political viewpoints does not extend to tolerating any form of hate, racism, bigotry, homophobia, sexism, or xenophobia in our schools. We must be politically neutral, but we must not be morally neutral.
Therefore, we must actively ensure that our students and our parents know and understand our core values, and we must actively work to shape our students’ character regarding universally accepted principles of respect, kindness, truth, fairness, and just treatment. We must be clear through both our words and our deeds that hate, discrimination, and intolerance have no place in our schools.
You may have noticed that I have used the term “power” to refer to what we possess as educators, and that is a very purposeful word choice. Each of us has the power to shape the environment in which our students learn and to influence the very quality of our students’ lives. Do not minimize the fact that this power is very real, and that we have a responsibility to use it wisely, and for good. So, in closing, I will quote the 20th century psychologist and educator, Haim Ginott, who in turn may have been adapting a passage from Johann von Goethe:
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all cases it is my response that decides whether a situation will be escalated or de-escalated or a child humanized or de-humanized.
And so, what will our response be to this challenging time? I hope that it is to rise up and use our power as educators to nurture the best of humanity in our students, and, as our student choir sang earlier, that they may know truth, and dignity, and peace, and hope, and freedom.
~ Dr. Joseph M. Sawyer
Superintendent of Shrewsbury Public Schools
Remarks at Opening Staff Assembly, August 28, 2017
Remarks at Opening Staff Assembly, August 28, 2017
