Reflections on MLK Day

I commend whoever made the decision to designate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a national day of service.  Dedicating some time to our communities seems a worthy way to honor the legacy of a man who dedicated his life to justice and equality.   For the past several years, I have tried to get us organized to engage in some kind of service project on MLK Day, and this year, I managed to get the three of us, my husband, son and me, signed up with DC Cares to do some painting at a community center in the North Capital Street Neighborhood.  

We rousted our fifteen year old out of bed in time to leave at 8:30 and headed downtown.  We joined a group of approximately twenty other volunteers at the Perry School, a building built in 1891 that is now used as a community service center that also houses a number of social service organizations including LIFT which is where we worked.  As the LIFT representative explained to us, LIFT is a non-profit organization that helps low-income people to obtain employment, housing, education, and health-care.  While they recognize that the causes of poverty are complex, they believe that “getting help should not have to be.”  The most interesting aspect of this organization, however, is that the counseling is provided by trained college volunteers.  In this way LIFT aims not just to assist the individuals who seek their services, but also to give their volunteers “a transformative experience” through their work with their clients.  This experience “pushes volunteers to grapple with our country's most challenging issues related to poverty, race, inequality, and policy” and they go on ‘to pursue careers across all sectors and become lifelong leaders in the effort to improve the practices and policies that aim to eliminate poverty.”  So the organization impacts the fight against poverty in two ways: by helping needy individuals and families and by creating foot soldiers and hopefully colonels and generals to serve in that crusade.

We spent four hours painting the walls of LIFT’s offices in pale gray, orange, and blue.  The experience was in many ways quite similar to the painting the senior class did on their retreat day last fall at the Ferebee-Hope Elementary School in Southeast.  LIFT had just moved into these offices and it was fun to watch the space transformed by fresh paint.  My husband, who at times in his life has had his own contracting firm, quickly assumed responsibility for organizing the work and making sure that it was done on a level at least somewhat close to his exacting standards, ones much higher than the DC Cares folks probably expected.  We had to sand the spackling to smooth out the walls; we had to take the plates off the outlets and the data lines; we had to tape with exactitude.  Fortunately, another man taught our son how to use a roller so he actually listened.  My husband has a way of asserting himself that feels helpful, not intrusive, and while the resulting paint job fell far short of his standards, it was still much better than it would have been without him.  We and one other man stayed well past the ending time to wash brushes, clean buckets, and organize supplies.  As we walked out, my husband thanked my son for staying (he was pretty hungry by that time) and explained that you always stay and clean up (a lesson maybe he could apply to his room). 

As we discussed our experience over lunch, we agreed that while it was rewarding, we would prefer to do something that had a more direct impact on people in need.  As LIFT reports, more than 46 million Americans or one in six, live below the poverty line.  Painting the offices of an organization that helps address this national problem has some value, but we honestly had to wonder why the LIFT volunteers didn’t paint their own office.  Perhaps we should have stayed home and helped the sixty odd Lower Schoolers and their families and friends who made sandwiches for Martha’s Table.  Anyway, I plan to actively seek out some opportunities for us where we will have a more direct impact on people in need. 

We tend to think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a civil rights leader who led the fight against racism.  But we also know that he extended his message and moral authority beyond the plight of black Americans to address other inequalities and to oppose the Vietnam War.  He was, of course, in Memphis where he was assassinated to support a sanitation workers’ strike.  While the majority of the sanitation workers were black, the cause was about economic justice as much as race.  We have made enormous progress in eliminating the de jure racism that ignited the early stages of the civil rights movement.  We have also vastly expanded the opportunities for black Americans, progress most obviously symbolized by the election of a black president, an event many people – black and white – never expected to see in their lifetimes.  Nonetheless, significant inequities based on race still exist: disproportionate percentages of African-Americans live in poverty, are unemployed and incarcerated, and on average African-Americans score lower than other ethnic groups on standardized tests including the SAT.  Other groups continue to experience the injustice of prejudice, and some, such as Muslims, we’ve added since King’s time.  We also know that the middle class is shrinking and the gap between the richest Americans and the rest of populace has widened significantly in the last several decades.  It is this disparity, at least in part, that fuels the “occupy” protests.  And then there is the persistence of sexism that manifests itself in so many ways. 

So King’s work is not finished.  He challenged white America to live up to the promise of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and as Americans we all have an obligation to continue to strive for that ideal.

One of the many benefits of working in a school is that we live everyday with the idealism of youth.  While we might think this promise of equality an unrealistic dream, many of our students do not.  Last week, the faculty were fortunate to take part in a meeting run by eight of our students who attended the National Association of Schools Student Diversity Leadership Conference.  All of our girls served as student facilitators at this conference that includes over 1500 student participants from independent schools around the country.  The conference, which runs parallel to the adult People of Color Conference, gives students from different backgrounds an opportunity to interact with one another, share experiences, learn more about issues related to diversity, and develop action plans to make their schools more inclusive communities.  I want you to pause for a minute and contemplate the fact that these sophomores and juniors lead a meeting of their teachers around race, gender, sexual orientation, and discrimination, very sensitive topics.   Their leadership raised our awareness about a number of issues we haven’t fully addressed but should.  Numerous faculty have commented on what a terrific meeting it was and what an outstanding job our students did helping the adults to talk about important but hard questions.  Like the founders of LIFT and their college volunteer staff, these amazing, powerful, compassionate girls are carrying on King’s work; they inspire the adults in their lives to do the same. 

The Importance of Relationships

Last week, I shared my annual review of my gratitude journal, highlighting, in the process, the importance of people.  That list included people who had offered support or counsel, who are wonderful colleagues, who are doing inspiring work with our girls, and beloved students – current and former, friends and family.  It probably won’t surprise many of you to know that people, or rather having positive relationships, is one of the most important components of happiness or well-being.  Indeed, Caroline Adams Miller and Michael B. Frisch in their book, Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide, call relationships “the Holy Grail of Happiness.” 

The research on this topic is so extensive that I can’t exhaust it here, but I’ll share some of the more interesting findings.  Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, has consistently identified relationships as key to happiness.  He and Ed Diener, another student of happiness, took a random sample of 222 college students and examined their levels of happiness based on six different scales; from those 222, they analyzed the characteristics of the happiest 10%: what distinguished them from averagely happy and unhappy peers.  They discovered one key distinction: “These “very happy” people differed markedly from average people and unhappy people in one principal way: a rich and fulfilling social life.” They spent less time alone, more time socializing, and “they were rated highest on good relationships by themselves and by their friends.”[i]  Seligman has actually moved beyond happiness to study and advocate for what he calls “well-being” or “flourishing” which he has decided constitutes a better measure of life satisfaction than happiness.  He has identified five pillars for well-being:  positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. [ii]  Connections with other people remain central to fulfillment and life satisfaction.

 Every researcher and writer on positive psychology emphasizes the importance of relationships.  Sonja Lyubormirsky in The How of Happiness has a whole chapter entitled “Investing in Social Connections” which includes two (of a total of twelve) Happiness Activities related to this topic: “Practicing Acts of Kindness” and “Nurturing Social Relations.”  Based on her own and others’ research, she identifies eight characteristics of the happiest people.  The first of these is that “they devote a great amount of time to their family and friends, nurturing and enjoying those relationships.”[iii]  She begins the chapter asserting, “The centrality of social connections to our health and well-being cannot be overstressed.”[iv]  Echoing Seligman, she goes on to explain that “The happier a person is, the more likely he or she is to have a large circle of friends or companions, a romantic partner, and ample social support.”                 

Having positive relationships enjoys the added benefit of being “bidirectional,” meaning that having good friends and strong romantic relationships both makes us happy and promotes having more positive relationships.  As Lyubormirsky says, “romantic partners and friends make people happy, but it also means that happy people are more likely to acquire lovers and friends.”[v]  Indeed, both Seligman and Lyubormirsky point out that we don’t really know which comes first, being a happy person or having friends, but regardless, the data is very clear that happy people have strong social networks.

Women particularly benefit from strong relationships, a fact borne out by a Harvard Medical School study of nurses’ health.  This longitudinal study of thousands of nurses over more than thirty years has found that the more friends participants have the more joyful their lives and the physically healthier they were as they grew old. [vi]  And this, by the way, is one of the many values of girls schools.  Girls in girls schools develop particularly strong friendships that they maintain through their lives, providing crucially important emotional support. 

As the Nurses’ Study showed, having positive social relationships with romantic partners, friends and family also promotes good health.  Scientists have found that surgical patients with more friends suffered less post-surgical pain than patients with few friends.  They have also found that social isolation leads to faster aging.[vii]  A Duke Medical Center study discovered that four friends proved a magical number in predicting heart disease mortality: patients with fewer than four friends were more than two times as likely to die of heart disease than those who had four or more friends.[viii]  Studies of communities with unusual longevity, Sardinia, Italy, Okinawa, Japan, and Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California, point to five characteristics these disparate peoples shared, and at the top of the list for all three was making family a priority and “keep[ing] socially engaged.”[ix]

Having strong social networks also provides significant assistance in weathering life’s challenges, even tragedies.  People who lost a spouse to accidental death or suicide who have a confidante, someone with whom they can share their true feelings, experienced fewer health problems following their spouse’s death than those without that emotional outlet.  Social support may even stimulate our bodies to fight disease.  Women undergoing surgery for life-threatening cancer who availed themselves of social support “showed greater natural killer cell activity.”  Participation in weekly support groups correlated with living on average eighteen months longer for female cancer patients.[x]

I think we all know this, but having friends support us in achieving goals makes us much more likely to succeed.  Ninety-five percent of participants in a four-month weight-loss program who were joined by several friends or family members reached their weight-loss goals as opposed to only 76% of those who participated alone; likewise, 66% of the group members kept the weight off for six months as compared to only 24% of the solitary participants.  The same goes for New Year’s Resolutions.  If you enlist others to support you in achieving your goals, you’re more likely to do so – for at least two years and as long as six years, which considering how few New Year’s Resolutions come to fruition, is an impressive statistic.[xi]

Despite what we may think, having friends also provides much more positive impact in our lives than money.  While good things, such as winning the lottery, make us happy for a while, overtime we adjust back to our previous happiness level, our hedonic set point, leading us to want more and more – and never be satisfied.  But that doesn’t happen with friendships, family, and strong romantic relationships.  Lyubormirsky explains, “One economist[!]has shown, for example, that people’s desires for happy marriages, for children, and for ‘quality’ children (as bizarre as that term sounds) do not change as they successfully attain those things.”[xii]   People often think that money will make them happy, and while we certainly need a reasonable income to be happy (and conversely poverty often leads to unhappy lives), it does not actually have the effect we anticipate.  There’s much research to support this contention.  In one example, researchers polled 792 “well-off adults” about their attitudes towards wealth; more than 50% asserted that happiness did not result from wealth and “a third of those with assets of over $10 million said that money brought more problems than it solved.”[xiii]

Nurturing and maintaining positive relationships with family and friends requires that we invest time and emotional energy, listening, celebrating others’ successes, and being there in times of need. However, the investment clearly pays off, making our lives richer, healthier, more fulfilling, and happier – flourishing. 

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[i] Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D., Authentic Happiness (New York, 2002), 42.

[ii] Seligman, Flourish (New York, 2011), 16.

[iii] Sonja Lyubormirsky, The How of Happiness (New York, 2007), 22.

[iv] Lyubormirsky, 125.

[v] Lyubormirsky, 138.

[vi] Caroline Adams Miller, MAPP and Dr. Michael B. Frisch, Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide (New York, 2009), 157.

[vii] Miller and Frisch, 107.

[viii] Miller and Frisch, 157.

[ix] Lyubormirsky, 139-40.

[x] Lyubormirsky, 161.

[xi] Lyubormirsky, 272-3; Miller and Frisch, 108.

[xii] Lyubormirky, 140-1.

[xiii] Lyubormirky, 44.

A Head of School's Year of Gratitude

At the end of the year, I have taken to reviewing my gratitude journal entries for the previous twelve months. This helps me remember the year that’s just finished and the many, many blessings I have. 2011 was an especially difficult year, so finding something to be grateful for each day was especially important for my emotional well-being. I repeatedly recorded my gratitude for people who were supportive, and the list was long: Trustees, parents, colleagues, and family. I also appreciated people who took the time to write a positive or grateful email. I was grateful when I mustered the courage I needed for a difficult conversation or a challenging presentation. I also reached out over the course of the year to a variety of professionals for advice, and I was grateful for the excellent counsel they offered. In retrospect, I can say that I have learned a number of important lessons. Effective leadership embodies many facets, including constant self-reflection and attention to improvement; events over the past twelve months have lead me to focus more on clear, effective communication especially regarding sensitive issues and visibility and connectedness.

Working in a school, honestly, offers a steady stream of opportunities for gratitude. As Head, I go to all musical and dramatic performances, which range from the scores of Lower School violinists playing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to the sophisticated and practically professional level of some of the Upper School musicians, singers and actors. Some of these are truly transporting, as you know if you’ve heard the Upper School Chorus sing “Shalom” at the end of the annual Winter Concert. I also had a wonderful student docent take me around the Lower School Art Show and I marveled at the fabulous—sometimes breathtaking—work produced by Middle or Upper School art students.

Athletics also presents its own opportunities for gratitude: winning a good game—particularly against a team to whom we’ve regularly lost in the past: Potomac in soccer, Portledge in ice hockey, Visitation in field hockey, or Holy Cross in swimming. Sometimes losing well is equally worthy of note. The Volleyball team lost a heartbreaking championship match this fall, but they played extraordinarily well, coming back from a two-game deficit to win the next two, in the process demonstrating admirable perseverance. Actually winning a championship certainly calls for celebration and gratitude, opportunities the Varsity Tennis and Ice Hockey Teams both offered during the course of 2011.

Beginning in September, I made visiting classes a priority (remember that focus on visibility and connectedness to which I had committed myself).  I have sat in dozens of classes from PE to Physics, from Third to twelfth Grades.  I often talk about our teachers in this column and elsewhere, and I am extremely grateful to them for their commitment to challenging our students, for their care and concern for them, for their passion for teaching, and for their creativity.  Whether it’s third graders presenting their research on holidays from around the world or fifth graders analyzing technological innovations or seventh graders creating math games or juniors examining the effects of industrialization or seniors studying great Spanish painters in Spanish 5 Honors, or any number of other examples, what happens in our classrooms is inspiring.

In the midst of the busyness of life, I frequently expressed gratitude for the respites of nature, calm, and even the completion of items on a to-do list. I often noted a beautiful day, spring flowers, or fresh snow. I appreciated the beach, the river or the canal, being out on the water in our boat, or even just a weekend morning walk around the campus. I love riding my bike and am glad when the weather permits it. I was grateful for quiet days, for time to read, for time to knit, for getting chores—whether school or home related—done. Good movies—a tear-jerker or a comedy—and good food—grilled artichokes, red velvet cupcakes, summer tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market, blackberries straight from the bush, or crisp, sweet fall apples all appeared in my entries. And I’m always grateful for Snow Days and Fridays!

The importance of people stands out on page after page of the notes I scratch each night before I go to sleep. How much I value my colleagues. How much I treasure the experiences with the girls. I was so tickled when the fourth graders invited me to ride a go-cart last spring. Making soup with the third graders, being a goddess at Greek Day, or joining the Middle Schoolers for a Community Service Day, each is special. My annual spring lunches with the seniors are always rewarding, interesting, and fun. My advisees delight whether we are just chatting away or actually engaged in project, like building a gingerbread house (which took third place before it collapsed!). Over the course of the year, I also had the chance several times to see former students, which any educator will tell you is one of the greatest rewards life offers. It’s so wonderful to see the paths their lives take, and it’s an honor to be allowed to step onto those paths periodically. Just in the last few weeks, I’ve visited with girls now in college, one just returning from a semester in France and the other getting ready to head off to China and London on a two-year Rotary Scholarship after she graduates in May. Last week, we had dinner with three of my former advisees, now college graduates. One is in her first year of medical school; one is getting a master’s degree in interaction design at Carnegie Mellon, where she has just created a new game for Facebook; and one has just returned from two years in China where she met a Finnish engineer, to whom she just became engaged! As you might imagine, that was a very fun evening.

Friends and family both feature prominently and frequently in my journal. As I’ve mentioned before in this column, I feel very fortunate to live near my brother and his family. Interesting, lively, creative people, spending time with them is intellectually stimulating and fun. It’s a gift that we celebrate birthdays and holidays together, that we can drop by after church, and that we often get together just because. I also adore the time we spend with my sister and her family. This summer, I was grateful that she, her husband, son, and daughter were able to evacuate from Hurricane Irene’s destruction on Long Island to our Block Island house, and we gained the unexpected pleasure of spending Labor Day Weekend with them and their dogs, who included five adorable puppies. Speaking of dogs, I probably don’t express thanks for our two often enough.

One of the challenges of being a Head of School is how little time one has to develop and maintain friendships. So, I am exceedingly grateful when we can eke out time with friends. We spent part of spring vacation in Florida with friends from Connecticut; a trip to California for a wedding allowed us to catch up with two different families we had been very close to when we lived there. We marveled at that most satisfying experience of picking up right where we left off more than 12 years ago.

Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for my son. Like all of us, I’m grateful when he plays well—either athletically or musically—when he gets good grades, when he’s happy, when he’s kind or generous. He also has a wonderful group of friends, and I often expressed gratitude for them. Over and over again, I recorded my gratitude for my husband: for his support, for his being an expansive host, for his understanding, for his organizing activities for our son and said friends, and for his encouragement that we spend time with our friends. The other person who appears in my entries repeatedly is my assistant, Janice DeMare; her support, perceptiveness, humor, and caring helps not just me but the whole school. Running schools is a rewarding, complex and demanding enterprise. It is impossible to do it alone, and I am eternally grateful to all who support me in this endeavor.