What happens when you put a microphone in front of four guys who forged a lasting friendship by way of independent schools? You get Straight A’s. We’re not talking about grades but about the four independent school leaders whose careers brought them together and sent them on a professional and personal journey that has lasted for more than 20 years—and about the aptly named Straight A’s Podcast that they started in order to tell the stories of independent schools and to chop up the issues and challenges in the community.The Straight A’s are Art Hall, head of school at Lakehill Preparatory School (TX) as of July 1, 2021; Amani Reed, head of school at The School at Columbia University (NY); Abe Wehmiller, associate dean of faculty, Deerfield Academy (MA), as of July 1, 2021; and André Withers, assistant head of school at The Madeira School (VA). Together they have more than 80 years of experience in independent schools and have seen it all across all school types—boarding and day, K-12, West Coast, Southwest, East Coast, really big, really small, and in between.
For a recent podcast episode (season 3, episode 7), their friend and fellow independent school administrator Jeff Mercer, director of middle school at Chadwick School (CA), moderated a conversation among them in which they reflect on the journey to leadership and their lived experiences at independent schools. They talk about their decades-long friendship, the podcast, leadership, the state of schools in the midst of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, what independent schools can and should look like, and much more. What appears here is an edited version of the episode.
The Power of Friendship
André Withers: There’s something special and unique that I get from the unit that’s the four of us but also each one individually. That in itself sustains me, but to know that there are three men I can count on and call brothers, who are going through very similar familial, career, and individual journeys running in parallel to my own life, that’s sacred to me.Art Hall: Our relationship pushes us to be better. It’s like when you’re on a team and there’s that one player who pushes you to be better—and when you’re on a really good team, you never think you’re bigger than the team.
And that’s kind of how we feel when we’re around each other; whether it’s virtually or in person, we’re always pushing each other to be better, congratulating each other when we have something special to share, and knowing that in the long run we’re all in this together. The product that we produced, this podcast, has given me light when I sometimes feel like there is no other light at the end of the tunnel. This podcast and this friendship have put a lot of wind in my sails.
Amani Reed: The reality of our relationship is that we have experienced all of our professional and personal stages together. And if you think about all of those milestones in someone’s life—marriage, the birth of children, parenting—over the course of 20 years, we’ve been able to support each other through that and our progress throughout our roles in schools, as teachers, as administrators, as leaders.
Abe Wehmiller: I hear a lot of folks in schools, a lot of educators, educators of color, in particular, talk about the feeling of isolation as they move through that journey. And I understand that from my own experience in schools. But this group has provided me a way to overcome that; I never feel isolated in that same way, knowing that we’ve got a weekly session or that these guys are just a call away when I need it. That’s been an important professional support for me.
It also gives me a sense of perspective; we all tend to get a bit focused in the weeds of life in our own schools. One of the great things about going to conferences is networking and getting a sense of what’s going on in other schools because it helps you develop a more balanced approach to what’s going on in your own school. And with all the different schools that we’ve been at over the years, having this group to collaborate with and bounce ideas around with helps with that perspective.
The Power of a Podcast
André: Shortly after we all met at a conference and became fast friends back in 2000, we started saying, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to work together?” Right around 2007, I think, we decided to start a group to mentor other administrators of color. We wanted to be able to provide connections, resources, conversations, and mentorship, and we started The National Diversity Leadership Collaborative [NDLC]. And you know it would be just our luck, we started that with a soft launch right before the crash of ’08. We quickly pulled back on that venture, but we didn’t pull back on the notion of working together.Shortly thereafter, I started noodling on ways in which we could be thoughtful and help schools through some of their biggest challenges. And it just sort of hit me—what about a podcast? It’s a great way for the four of us to get together and do what we do at conferences and when we’re on a call with each other—try to solve some of these big issues and challenges and also just to cut up a little bit.
So the podcast was a no-brainer, a great low-cost, high-impact way for us to get together and tell the story of independent schools. And from there it just kept evolving. The genesis was how can we serve independent schools—we’ve seen the landscape of school leadership change, how the headship in particular has evolved, what schools are struggling with—and the podcast was definitely a professional venture. But then after a while, it became a creative outlet. When you start thinking about branding, editing, telling the stories of schools in an authentic way, it’s definitely a creative outlet.
As leaders, so much of what we do on a daily basis is in response and reaction mode—there really isn’t time in the day to do something creative where you are constructing something thoughtful and unique that paints a picture. But I think we’ve all now been able to find a way to do something creative in addition to what we do every day.
Amani: NDLC came out of this place in which we realized that we had really benefited from mentorship and sponsorship from a whole generation of leaders and educators in independent schools that we frankly weren’t replacing. We were beneficiaries, but we weren’t actually giving that back into the system. And so, as I reflect on our history, it was partially selfish because we wanted to tell our stories and think about our journey, but it was also really about trying to engage other people about independent schools. They’re amazing, they’re complicated, they’re all of the things that we know, which I think has really been the foundation for what the podcast has turned into. No two episodes are really the same, other than the way in which we chop up the issues and think about them from different perspectives and try to share what we’re thinking about our schools and the model more broadly.
We have had some pretty amazing conversations—a roundtable with some heads of school, some really innovative first-year teachers who were reflecting on what it meant to be a teacher of color in a predominantly white school. And those are moments where you feel like you remember why you’re doing this work. You remember what it means to be part of a school community.
Art: The microphone really is a unique device. You give that mic to someone, and they hear themselves in the headphones, and it’s like “I got something to say!” Quiet teachers who normally only shine in front of students all of a sudden find their voice and come alive, and it brings us along with them. People talk about their journey through hip-hop. People talk about their downfalls. We’ve had heads of school where you can see in their eyes that they’re reflecting on their journey from when they first thought that they could teach all the way up to “Hey, guess what, I’m actually running this school now!” This podcast gives that voice to folks.
Where Schools Go Next
André: I think we’re in a critical moment for independent schools to reenvision and reimagine themselves. And I’m hopeful that schools look at themselves as taking on a two-part revolution.One is about what and how do we teach now. There’s a real question about how to contextualize and talk about the things that are happening in the country. And connected to that, part two, is that I want independent schools to figure out how they can be private educational institutions but still have a public purpose. I think we’ve been so insular; we’ve only been thinking about educating our kids, about the impact that we can make in the independent school realm.
This is a time in our nation and in the education revolution, a moment to really think about how we can leverage reimagining ourselves so that issues of sustainability are no longer as big as they once were, to reimagine who we are, how we do what we do, and have a purpose beyond our gates. I really am hopeful for that. But I also know that there are some schools that won’t make it through COVID. And there are some schools that are hunkering down and trying to make it through COVID so they can get back to what was the normal. But I think the really astute schools, the schools that want to put a stamp on education and be leaders in the industry, will figure out how to make that two-part revolution happen.
Art: COVID and Black Lives Matter coming at the same time have caused a lot of schools to pause and reflect. I don’t doubt that schools are doing that. But I am a little suspect as to how long they will do it.
Are we reacting to a moment or are we building ourselves for long-term leadership and development? That’s what I hope. COVID is a serious situation, but I also see a light at the end of the tunnel there. Black Lives Matter is ongoing. You have to ask yourself what’s going on with Black men and the police—and that’s just one aspect of Black Lives Matter—why do we keep hearing these same narratives? As independent schools, we have a moment to shine, because now we can take on this curriculum—it’s something we need to take on as educators. How do we do this so that it’s not just a moment in time where we go “OK, nobody got shot by a police officer in 2022, so I think we’re good”? We have a responsibility, especially with this podcast, to make sure that schools are pushing themselves. You can push yourself and still remain true to your mission. You can push yourself and still remain true to your constituents because it’s not a Black issue; it’s a human issue.
Amani: The multiple pandemics here are not only so real for our schools, they’re fundamental shifts in how we’re thinking about education. We were already in the middle of an educational revolution. We were already thinking about schools in some really different ways a year ago.
The independent school model has been in trouble for a long time. Our tuitions were outpacing the economies we survive in. We were thinking about how we rely on annual funds for our basic programming, and here in New York City, it’s rare to find an independent school that is under $50,000. Those are huge numbers that have very real impact, and when financial aid is a big part of what makes our schools accessible—it’s a big deal to recognize that the model is broken.
COVID has forced us to look at a lot of the things we have taken for granted as part of the benefit of our schools—small class sizes, the relationship between our teachers and our students. They’re put in a really different perspective when you’re imagining what online learning looks like, both in the short term and the long term. Our schools will never look the way they did eight months ago. They just can’t. And so, as we look at the post-COVID era, it’s hard to imagine the model not looking very, very different if we’re going to stay true to our broader missions and to André’s point about serving with a public purpose. If we remain committed to that, our schools have to change and they have to change substantially before we make them inaccessible for too many families.
Leading in Predominantly White Institutions
Art: Being four men of color in independent schools now is so different from when we started. I thought I was going to be at my first school forever. It was the first time I had been in an independent school, and I wrote the head of school and said, “I’m going to be here as long as you’ll have me.” And now here I am on my fourth school.And the head of school job has changed so drastically. Then you add the layer of being a person of color, well now, there’s an added risk for a school. You can have a great interview for a senior administrative position, but then the school has to look at its constituency and say, “Are we ready for that?” The more you’re in this journey as a person of color, the more you understand it. It doesn’t mean you like it. It doesn’t mean you cherish it. But you understand it.
That’s what I’m carrying with me through this journey. But at the same time, you know what, my grandmother wouldn’t have even had the opportunity to be where I am, so change is coming, and change is effective. It’s just that I can’t see it now because I’m in the change. I am part of the change.
Amani: The role of head of school is always quite isolating. There’s only one person in your school with your job—that’s hard. We’ve worked really hard to bring the heads of color from NAIS schools together to talk about what it’s meant not only to lead but to lead our schools in this particular time.
And my experience—which is very similar to that of lot of other people—is that the responsibility is huge. The responsibility of not only shepherding our schools through these difficult times but preparing for the future; recognizing there’s so much uncertainty is really critical. And then you add the DEI components to our work—all of us have been committed to that work from the beginning of our careers—and that raises the stakes in lots of ways for us to be successful in that work as we go forward. We think about that both for our own schools—today, tomorrow, in the future—and for our industry.
It leads to this complicated challenge of trying to figure out how to stay authentic to yourself as an individual in your school community, as well as being the leader who has to hold all of these responsibilities. Some of them are visible to everybody. But many of them are not. For me, keeping the equity and justice conversation at the forefront and the broader goals of the school has not only been tricky and complicated, but something I’ve been working on nonstop since the beginning of the calendar year.
I think it’s also important to remember that this isn’t just a head of school challenge; this is leadership at every single level. Everybody is working much harder than they were a year ago because the rules keep changing. The landscape keeps shifting.
Abe: This is year 26 for me in our schools, and as I think about potential transitions in my work, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my first year. Year 1 for me was right after I graduated college; I took a summer internship doing some sports writing, and then in August I was in a school coaching preseason soccer and teaching history.
And as I think back, I wasn’t even trying to change the world; I was trying to blow up the world—and the world of independent schools in particular! A lot of that came from my less-than-ideal experience as an independent school student and thinking about how I could contribute something to these schools that would change that experience for other kids. I was really focused—this is the mirror part—on telling my own story and using that as something to inspire or guide the experience of other students I was interacting with as a teacher, as a coach, as a mentor. That’s what I felt like I was contributing to the endeavor—just being my authentic self in that space.
And as I look back, I was probably a little bit too much of my authentic self. [Laughter] I was authentic but also just raw. I was making these big bold statements about the way things should be, and when I saw things that weren’t that way, making big bold declarative statements about the fact that I disagreed. One thing I was not in that first year was nuanced; I was authentic, but I was not nuanced.
When I think about what I’m trying to contribute to the endeavor now, it’s less about me telling my own story and more about helping others tell their authentic story—moving from mirror to window. And that’s where this podcast venture has fit in. If my year 1 contribution was “Here’s who I am and I’m bringing that to the table,” year 26 is “Here’s a skill set that I’m bringing that’s helping others elicit their authentic selves.” And I think that’s been my real growth point along the journey. Sometimes when I reflect on that, I wonder if I’ve lost some of the power of my authentic self. I worry about that a lot. Have I left some of that behind as I’ve discovered the nuances of how schools work and how to be effective as a change agent and mentor in schools? Have I, in taking some of that rawness away, also lost that authenticity? Have I lost some of the impact? And as I look at the next chapter, it’s really about synthesizing those two things.
André: I’ve received some sage advice at key points along my career. One was a bit of positive advice that you take to heart and live by about insulating yourself. We all have a tendency to fall in love with these independent schools, which is all well and good, but you still need to insulate yourself because (1) it’s a job/career, and (2) it will disappoint you (as well as give you professional highs).
The other piece of advice came from a head of school when I was having one of those brazen moments as a middle school director. I came in ready to be a change agent, ready to realign the grade levels and implement this and that. And he reminded me of two things. One, my job was to count desks and make sure that we had enough books—it was about keeping the train running on time in the middle school. And what he said was, “That kind of change happens between the hours of 5 p.m. and 7 a.m., not between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m.”
And that really stuck with me. I say that was negative advice because I was bothered by it. I wanted to be that change agent. But he was right; it comes with the job—the job necessitates keeping the train running on time, and it means being thoughtful about the change that you want to make.
Do I dispense that advice now? I absolutely do, because I have come to find that the train running on time is absolutely critical. And if you can’t deliver on that, folks have very little patience to follow you into something bigger and grander. And do I still tell people to insulate themselves? I do, because I think that’s part of how you do self-care. I think that’s part of how you sustain yourself. And I think that’s how you wind up being able to put in 20-some-odd years in the game.
Art: The best piece of advice that I ever received from a mentor was “exude calm.” Always exude calm. He said that the world could come crashing down and—to André’s point—as you go, so goes the school. And he said, look, you don’t have to John Wayne the moment. But you do have to put yourself in a place where, as people look in your eyes, you are able to convince them that the situation is stable.
And I’ve taken that to heart, because there have been times when something’s been said that has rocked me a little bit, or I’ve received some bad news during the course of the school day; you have to eloquently and diligently respond to the situation—you can’t become inflamed. You can’t become enraged like you may want to, whether you’re Black, white, or in between. That’s a little bit of what I’ve always tried to bring with me no matter what job I’ve had.
Amani: To add to that, I will say that what it takes to do this job for more than 20 years is also recognizing what you need and what is needed to sustain you. One of the challenges with independent schools is that there aren’t a lot of other people who are looking out for you. We’ve landed where we are for a whole host of reasons, but I think we have an obligation to also continue to do that for other people to make sure that they get 26, 27 years in. We are beneficiaries from all of this work, and we have to make sure we give it back to the system that was so generous to us.
Start, Stop, Continue
Art: One of the signature pieces of the podcast is called Start, Stop, Continue. It’s our way of announcing to the world that we really do know what we’re talking about. [Laughter] It’s that part of the show where we ask schools to start, stop, or continue with a particular concept or behavior.André: It’s our fun way of getting to a closure point on an episode—and it also allows us to collect a little bit of anecdotal data. Over the episodes, as we talk to different folks who tell different stories, we’re going to be able to connect some dots around what people think independent schools should start doing, stop doing, and continue doing.
Abe: I’ll kick us off with a start. What’s something that schools should start doing? One that’s been on my mind a lot lately is to start committing to the mission. Whatever the mission is, be willing to say, “This is what we’re about, this is who we are, this is what we use as a framework for our decision-making, and this is what it’s going to look like on the ground.” And when that’s challenged, be ready to unapologetically go back to that.
And use that as a differentiator for your school.
Amani: I think schools need to start recognizing that they’re changing. Too many times I hear us saying we want to get back to the way things were. And I have this vision in my head of us in a dust cloud digging our heels in the ground trying to maintain momentum and hold back change. Change is coming. And we need to be prepared for what that looks like. I like the idea of embracing our mission because I think this is the risk and the danger of being slow to recognize that change is happening. Every decision we’re making is changing who our schools will be in the future. And we’re either going to make those changes deliberately by thinking about how our schools will emerge after this moment, or we’re going to find that our schools were changed in ways we hadn’t anticipated and hadn’t thought all the way through.
André: I want schools to stop nibbling around the damn edges. I think our schools have the most profound opportunities to do meaningful, needle-moving things. But we tend to over-process, to under-fund, to softly pilot, to look left and look right in our side mirrors to see what other schools in our market are doing. And we get comfortable with being just different enough from the school next to us.
Why not just really truly strike out in the biggest, boldest way? We’ve been pacesetting in education for decades, particularly around resources. But our niche has been what we don’t have to contend with in the public arena. I would love independent schools to come out of these crises with a call to action to be laboratories, to be community centers, to be extensions to rather than paths away from—and to do it in a big and unapologetic way.
Art: I think we need to continue to stretch and grow. We talk so much about leadership and what it means to be a leader at an independent school. We have seen some change—I’ve seen significant growth in female leadership in independent schools. I have seen a significant growth in people of color not just being the director of equity and inclusion but moving beyond that; I have seen folks who are in those DEI roles move into some serious power positions at their schools.
And I want schools to continue doing that. Be bold and lead. Lead in a way that inspires other schools. And take advantage of the moment, because what I’ve discovered in my journey through independent schools is that for every constituent who threatens to walk out the door—and some of them do—there are five people who are waiting to take their place. Whether you have a waiting list, whether you have a healthy endowment or are running paycheck to paycheck, there are always people who are willing to take their place. And many times, they bring more to your community because they’re all in.
If you’re a head of school or if you’re leading in a significant way at your independent school, know that, at the end of the day, when you’re doing the right thing, it is valued, appreciated, and understood by those who are supporting you.