Sabbatical Speech
Sheryl Koyama, Deerfield Academy
So right now I’m feeling a little bit like Paula Poundstone during Lightning Fill in the Blank on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Just in case you haven’t listened to this NPR show, the person who is in last place going into the final round goes first, filling the air time in a moderately humorous way until the people with real knowledge have their turn, but given my high regard for Ben, this feels appropriate.
Nearly two years ago I wrote an ambitious sabbatical proposal that focused on three areas: to improve my skills as a leader of international student programs, to explore academic support at other schools, and to become “proficient” at Spanish (possibly not the best choice when your Head of School is from Colombia and your Dean of Faculty is from Argentina. Not easy to fake that one…) I made good progress on all of these goals and while I could spend my short time with you giving you a travelogue of my adventures in Bogata, La Ciudad Perdida, Cartagena, Orlando, Newport, Seattle, Vancouver, Boulder, Denver, Miami, Oaxaca, Puerto Escondido, Mexico City, London, Corfu, Vienna, Bratislava, Prague, Lima, Ollantaytambo, Cusco, and Heath, I am, instead, going to draw upon the great example set by Mary Ellen Friends when she gave her sabbatical report. She focused on just one day in her sabbatical and magically wove her yearlong experience into her description of that day.
But a couple of preambles. The first weekend of my sabbatical year our church service was focused around the 23rd Psalm. We were asked to reflect upon the passage and share how it impacted us at that point in our lives. I realized that the upcoming year was my unique opportunity to lie down in green pastures, to be beside still waters, and to restore my soul. The second preamble is the surprise that I felt the day that Deerfield opened without me as I sat in Charleston after evacuating Disney World with my son Justin during Hurricane Irma. Realizing that Deerfield was able to open its doors without me gave me cause to pause. I cannot speak for others, but I probably have an overblown sense of my own importance and the fact that Deerfield did not come to a grinding halt in my absence is both startling and reassuring.
For this talk, I’d like to focus on my two weeks in Peru with World Leadership School last July. This trip was a late addition to my year’s itinerary and the only thing that I did that was specifically focused on teaching mathematics, although it did force me to use my budding Spanish skills extensively and offered me the opportunity to improve my trip leading skills through conversations with and observations of the leaders of this trip. Twelve teachers from across the US and Canada who taught Kindergarten through College met in Lima and then travelled to the small town of Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley. The purpose of the trip was to explore Project Based Learning but also included fantastic excursions including an unforgettable homestay in the very rural Quechan village of Tanccac, a ceremony of thanksgiving with the local shaman, and the obligatory, but no less breath-taking trek Machu Pichu.
While some of the projects that were developed related to Peru, many did not including mine, which involves population growth and the numerical, social and economic impact of a one-child policy. One afternoon we discussed why we needed to travel to Peru to do this work and whether or not we could have just as effectively completed the work in an intensive weekend seminar at the Springfield Marriot.
For many reasons, we agreed that we could not have done it. For starters a regional conference would be attended by teachers from the area, most likely teaching the same grades and possibly even the same subject. The excursions between intense workshops gave us the time for reflection and refinement that we would not have had in weekend conference. Those impediments to change that we are all so quick to identify in our own schools became minor stumbling blocks or even opportunities to modify and grow when viewed from thousands of miles away. And finally the conversations that I had over the two weeks with educators ranging from two Kindergarten teachers from Town School for Boys to the Assistant Dean of the Faculty at Choate, challenged me as a teacher and re-ignited my enthusiasm for teaching. Quite honestly, at that point in the year, September looked like a freight train rushing at me and about to either crush me or pick me up and carry me off at a pace that would leave the joy and rejuvenation I had experienced over the past year far behind me. I was worried about the demands of my job in the Academic Dean’s Office and so I was pretty much ready to mail in my class prep for Algebra II this year, a course I’ve taught countless times in the past and one for which I have a pretty good shtick. In fact, I had resigned myself to slogging through my last 7 or 8 years at Deerfield until I could retire and return to the pace of life and adventure that I had experienced during my sabbatical year.
These two weeks in Peru made me realize that the light I had thought of as the headlight of a dangerous and threatening oncoming train, was instead the light of the dawn of a new school year. I began to look forward to innovating as a teacher and to bringing my best self to the classroom for my students every day that I can.
In the past few weeks, many people have asked me how it feels to be back and if it feels as though I had ever left. My response is that it feels great to be back. I have colleagues who inspire me and students who challenge me in a just the right way. And yes, it does feel like I left. I did lie down in those green pastures, I did get to be beside still waters and I did restore my soul.
Oh, and on the second attempt, I was able to help Justin fulfill his goal of breakfast in the Cinderella’s castle
…and I got married.
