Read the full transcript of Episode 89 of the NAIS New View EDU podcast, which features retiring heads of school Russell Shaw, of Georgetown Day School (DC), and Joan Buchanan Hill, of the Lamplighter School (TX). They join host and NAIS President Debra P. Wilson to share their learnings and lessons for future heads.
Debra Wilson: I am so excited to welcome Russell Shaw and Joan Hill to the New View EDU podcast.
For the past 16 years, Russell has served as head of Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC. He is a frequent contributor to The Atlantic on the topics of parenting, technology, and education.
And, for the last 15 years, Dr. Joan Hill has been head of school at the Lamplighter School in Dallas, TX. Joan is a recognized leader in experiential learning and a passionate advocate for excellence in early childhood education and independent school leadership. Joan is currently preparing to retire from her position as the Catherine M. Rose Head of School for Lamplighter, and I’m just thrilled to hear what the next chapter holds for both of these independent school leaders, and what their years of experience in this sector have taught them about the future of independent schools and education in our country.
Hello friends, Joan, Russell, so good to see you both.
Russell Shaw: Thanks, Debra.
Joan Buchanan Hill: Great to see you, too.
Debra Wilson: You both, you know, you're both looking kind of happy, our guests on the podcast can't see you, but you know, you're both kind of smiley as we head into the hundred days of May. I mean, you know, the checkered flag, you know, round on the track is going, going pretty well.
Joan Buchanan Hill: Yeah.
Russell Shaw: It is. For me, it's a bittersweet, you know, look at that checkered flag there. I'm excited for what's next. And I am also wistful that right now I get to hear children's laughter outside my office all day long, and I may not have that in six months. So that's real.
Debra Wilson: I believe that, I believe that. Well, let's start. You know, I did a little bit of an intro, but where I'd love to start is for both of you, just to give a little overview of your schools and to talk a little bit about when you got to your school, like what did it look like? Like where was it when you walked in the door? Joan, I'm going to start with you.
Joan Buchanan Hill: Sure. When I walked in the school in 2011, it looked very different than it does now. It felt the same, and I think it feels, you know, one would hope that it feels a tiny bit better now, but it looks, the physical layout is totally different. There's been a lot of improvements over the years.
Even, even from the curricular standpoint and the way that teachers relate to one another, all of that's different from when I walked in the door 15 years ago.
Debra Wilson: Joan, tell me a little bit about the enrollment at your school, what grades you serve.
Joan Buchanan Hill: Sure, we are located in Dallas, Texas, and we have 458 of the most curious, wonderful kids one could hope for. And we're pre-K through grade four. So the area of specialization is early childhood.
Debra Wilson: Excellent. Russell?
Russell Shaw: Yes, I am at Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC. We are a pre-K to 12 school of a little over 1100 students in our nation's capital, founded 80 years ago in 1945 as the first integrated school in then-segregated Washington DC. So first public or private integrated school. And we've had belonging and inclusion and justice at the core of our work throughout our history.
This is year 16 for me. So when I started in the summer of 2010, I was just the fifth, and am the fifth head in the school's history, which is fairly unusual. I'm going to finish with 16 years, which is exactly average at Georgetown Day School, five heads with an average of 16 years each. And the school continues to be a place that is joyful and ambitious and wants to actively prepare kids to have an impact in the world.
I think the world has changed around our school. I think that there's a lot less trust in institutions. I think that Washington, D.C. is a very different city than it was in 2010. And we are doing our best as an institution to be responsive to those changes.
Debra Wilson: What do you think is the number one change that you've brought about at your schools?
Joan Buchanan Hill: So, when I think about coming to Lamplighter 15 years ago, there was less of a focus on mental health and wellness during that time. In fact, it was pretty much ignored. And now it occupies a central place within the curriculum and within all of our plans for students. Belonging and creating communities where students and parents all felt like they had a stake in the school was not as prevalent as it is now. And I think that's been a positive change.
Also, when I look at curriculum development, so the three things that would be health and wellness, belonging and creating close knit communities, and then the third one is curriculum development. The curriculum now is more narrow and deep. When I came in, it was broad and shallow and we tried to do a lot of a lot. We've culled that back, and now we're working on creating greater depth. And we've been doing that over the past decade or so. We know we can't teach everything, but what are the salient points? What are the most critical things that we believe kids need to leave here being secure with?
Russell Shaw: So I'm going to cheat and say two things. There's a physical change, which is we were on two campuses that were several miles apart. And we built a new lower middle school campus across from our high school. So there's obviously a fundamental change in just how the school lives together.
Programmatically, I am really proud of the ways in which our kids have the opportunity to engage with authentic problems in the world. We have a fabulous program called the Impact Lab that oversees things like a policy institute for high school kids, where kids engage with and wrestle with and work to address national and local policy problems, internship programs. And these are not just for high school kids, this starts with our youngest kids. So we have really developed opportunities for kids throughout their time at the school to actively engage in solving problems, that learning is not abstracted as something that is practiced through engaging in the world.
Debra Wilson: I love that. Having been on both of your campuses and seeing that, it looks different given the different age groups that you serve. But when I think about both of your programs, there's so much about the relevance of education and how you keep kids engaged.
Joan, I particularly love, you have that hands on kitchen area that is just beautiful. Russell, Joan actually has like a little farm on her campus too, which is—
Russell Shaw: —Ooh, I want a farm.
Debra Wilson: Yeah.
Russell Shaw: We have a petting zoo that comes to campus once a year, but that's as close as we get.
Joan Buchanan Hill: You know, the founding of the school is what led us to this. When the founders came, and by the way, Russell, I'm so impressed that you're the fifth head of the school. My school is similar in that. The board is not one to whipsaw around, and I'm number four in 73 years. So it's similar. Our schools are similar in that way.
But back to the farm. They believed that kids needed to experience farm animals. And so Russell, now we have a flock of chickens for a chicken and egg business that started over 55 years ago, and the kids run it. So I loved hearing what you said about kids taking risks, solving problems, and being at the center. In addition to that, we've got a couple of goats and a llama and pigs. It is just...a great place for little kids to grow up. It's, you know, they were able to annex the school right in the city of Dallas. So in the city we have, you know, you've got a farm, which is really cool.
Russell Shaw: I think every school needs a llama.
Joan Buchanan Hill: Every school needs a llama. And Debra mentioned the teaching kitchen and we have beautiful gardens because again, the founders believed that kids needed to know where their food was coming from and they needed to participate in that.
So over the years, we built a wonderful teaching kitchen so that kids could then take those vegetables, whether they're grown in ground or using hydroponics, they can make any number of things. And it's so funny because parents will say, my child never eats radishes. And the strange things that we're able to cook up and invite kids to taste some things that they never would taste at home.
Debra Wilson: Thinking about that, so I was at an AI event last week, and it was totally technology forward. But listening to the two of you talk about this and sort of how do you keep education experiential and relevant for kids? How are you thinking about that when you look at the history, you know, your leadership history and your time in education and your time in schools? And you're thinking forward in education. I mean, how are you thinking about the experiences we're talking about for kids and what does this look like in an AI technology forward space? How do you think leaders should be thinking about balancing those two things?
Russell Shaw: I think that at our best, our schools can be counter-cultural and can sort of cut against the tide. And we have a world that is turning away from community, right? Our attention is being atomized. People are joining less things. Our schools do community really well. They give kids a model of what does it look like to collaborate, to engage with people who see the world a little bit differently than you do.
And I would argue that artificial intelligence is accelerating the sort of atomization and turning towards screens, and turning towards replacing humans, and the skills that our kids need to learn in our schools, how to navigate ambiguity, how to reach across and learn from somebody else, cannot be replaced by AI. So for me, there's an opportunity for independent schools in particular to sort of accelerate human to human interaction and learning in a way that AI will never replace.
Last quick thought on this is, you know, we, a few years ago, as did many schools, moved away from having phones available to kids during the school day. And it has been great. And you have kids walking down the hall looking at their laptops. And there was a piece in the Times, you know, there was a piece in the Times this morning that schools that all moved to Chromebooks are now questioning whether that actually is the way to go.
So I think that we are in this process of figuring out our relationship to technology. And of course, AI is going to challenge us deeply. We can do it well, or we can just wait for it to happen to us. And I think our schools need to be called to lead on this and do it well.
Joan Buchanan Hill: I think that's absolutely right, Russell. The only thing I could add, if there was one skill that I'd like kids to make, that we make sure that kids have, if we can call patience a skill, that's what kids need. It's the number one skill that I hope they acquire and remember because AI is opening up the world to everyone. And we are going to have to engage in the best possible ways, and we are going to have to lead.
But we also have to remember that learning and teaching take time. The brain is wired in a certain way and while the machines can accelerate, the human experience doesn't, not necessarily. And if we can help kids to listen more, be open, and be patient with the learning process and be patient with one another as they develop relationships, I think that I have full confidence that the future is as bright as it can be. Because as you said, Russell, AI is coming. It's here. How are we going to engage with it? What are we going to do? And we don't have to figure it out all at once.
Debra Wilson: I was introduced to a new term last week. They talk about using AI for some cognitive offloading, which can be actually a very helpful thing, right? It helps sort of alleviate some of your mental load. But then there's this term called cognitive surrender, where you're just giving it over to AI. And I made a joke that when I was 14, I would have paid a lot of money to cognitively surrender my French class, right? I was a terrible French student.
And I think about that with kids, right? Like how do we think about working with kids with technology, like a technology they need to learn to use? It will be a skill, right? And you want kids to have these skills before they get into college. But how do we teach them to use it responsibly and not cognitively surrender?
Joan, kind of what you're saying, right? The patience of learning and sort of those deep squats of the hard part of learning.
Joan Buchanan Hill: And I challenge our teachers, although we finish in fourth grade, I challenge our teachers to look for ways for deep learning in their classrooms, because kids don't have the dinner table that we had growing up where you could wrestle with complex, tough stuff, and you don't finish it in one meal. You come back again and you think about it and you noodle and you, you know, you persist. And I hope that that persistence, that persistence and resilience doesn't become short shrift to what a machine can do fast. Fast is not always best.
Russell Shaw: I'm worried about cognitive surrender. I see it all the time. You know, I imagine our athletes going to the gym and doing their bench press and having a forklift there. And it's sort of like, the forklift can do this a lot more easily than I can. And they would understand that that's actually sort of undermining their ultimate capacity. But for kids sitting at home alone with a homework assignment, the ask, and Joan, you talked about patience, but the ask of a 10-year-old or of a 15-year-old to say, I know I can press a button and have these answers instantaneously, but instead I'm going to sit here and get really uncomfortable and struggle and make mistakes, et cetera. That is an extraordinary ask of a young person.
And I think our schools need to think really hard about how we can make that ask of young people in a compelling way, in a way that they will not just say, yeah, whatever, boomer, I'm going to press this button because then my homework's done and I can go do whatever I feel like doing.
Joan Buchanan Hill: I think one thing helps if we're all in the learning process together. We don't hand off the work. We're in the work. We are the work. And I think when kids see that being modeled, there's less of a chance that it will be handed off in a sort of flippant kind of way. But hey, I'm trying to figure this out too. What do you think?
I think that teachers, the sooner educators and all of us leaders adopt the attitude of not being quite sure, not being so certain, not having it all together, then things get real. And then you can really work on it. And you work on it with kids as equals, not as superiors or being told. But I don't know any more than you know about this thing. Let's figure it out together.
Debra Wilson: What do you think that looks like with the student school day? So when I think about what I've heard you both just say, and particularly, you know, Russell, your image of the 10-year-old or the 15-year-old sitting by themselves in a room with their homework in front of them.
You know, when we, when the three of us all did homework, I mean, hell, we didn't even have the internet, right? You had your textbook. You might have had Encyclopedia Britannica. You might have been at the local public library if you were really lucky. And you just did your homework, whatever that was, and you were assessed on whether you did your homework. It was, you know, I don't know, cheating was limited to calling your friend on the phone and they didn't have any more resources than you did, right? So you had to plow through because that's how you were assessed.
As you're thinking about school leaders and what school leaders are facing and like watching this unfold, do you think this calls for thinking about a change in either how we're teaching, what we're sending home with kids, what we're asking them to do on their own at home?
Russell Shaw: Absolutely. And I think it calls for a lot of experimentation. Our first semester this year, our English department in the high school tried an experimental policy, which was, all writing assignments were going to be done in class without internet access for the entire semester. And that was such a radical notion for… English has always been, go home, draft it, get feedback, do another draft, et cetera.
And yet they were playing this cat and mouse game that's being played in schools across the country, which is, did you actually write this? Is this content you came up with? Is this a phrase that you would actually know how to put together? And rather than having the conversation be about how can we catch you, it's, we're going to have you in the gym doing reps in front of us. And we're going to give you feedback on that.
Is that the long-term solution? I don't think so. Is it great to be experimenting and trying different things and trying, you know, what is a homework assignment that could be AI proof? How can we know? What I know for certain is that education, the way that we've done it for the past hundred years, will not hold up to this new era. So we have to try a lot of different things and assess them for efficacy. We're not going to get it right the first time.
Debra Wilson: Russell, what did the kids think of that?
Russell Shaw: Some of them were really mad. And they were, I mean, for two reasons. One is I think that there were some students who maybe had gotten more comfortable pressing a button and felt stymied around that. But then others legitimately are, you know, the way that I write is I get up, I walk around the living, you know, dining room table, I take a walk outside, I come back, I write a few more sentences, I flip through a book.
And what we're saying is, no, actually the way you're going to write is in a 45 minute block, sitting at this desk, with not getting up, not moving around, et cetera. And I think that there was in a way a narrowing of how we were allowing them to approach the work. But at least there was a “what we know for certain” is the inputs that's going into this assignment. So I think that, again, I celebrate it as an experiment as we are trying to figure out how we can move into this world where the rules have suddenly changed on us.
Joan Buchanan Hill: Can they coexist? Can there be times that, hey, we're going to sit down at the table, at your desk and we're going to do quick writes. Because I really want to hear what you think. Because if we're only reliant on the machines, we're not going to get new knowledge necessarily. They're not going to get their knowledge in a sort of unvarnished way. And I just wonder if those two things could exist together and make the students stronger. I've not done that, Russell, given the ages of my students, so it's a real question. Can it happen that way?
Russell Shaw: I think, yes, and Joan, to your earlier point, I think that the opportunity here is to, where we can engage kids as partners in this work and to say, look, ultimately, this whole project of schooling is about internalizing some capacities that will serve you for your life. And we don't want to rob you of that. So how are we going to figure this out together?
How are we going to go on this journey together? And asking kids, we had this remarkable experience. Our middle school principal is teaching seventh grade health this year. And she asked her seventh graders about the role of AI in middle school. And the kids said, across the board, we should not be using it. Because if we do, we will not learn the things that we need to learn.
And it was this remarkable sort of, you know, presence of mind of these young people that, you know, not in the moment, but sort of, if we address this problem in the abstract, they get that this is actually going to short circuit or undermine a learning process that's going to be really important for them.
Joan Buchanan Hill: And then down the line, what are those things that happen because you didn't learn to read well, you didn't learn to write well, you didn't learn to think critically. I think there's some societal implications that are very negative that will happen if we give up as educators and rob the kids of a chance to wrestle and struggle.
The struggle is part of why we exist as schools. Without the struggle, you know, people would sit around and eat bonbons, but it's a fact that there is a struggle.
Russell Shaw: That’s exactly right.
Debra Wilson: Well, and that's sort of what work and leadership is all about too, right? As the kids move on and they get jobs and they do all of the things, that perseverance, that ability to struggle, whether you're using AI or not, right, is half of the battle of doing whatever it is that you do all day long that gives you purpose.
This is such an interesting conversation. Like when you think back even to the early 2000s, the idea of engaging students in such an articulated way, to be super clear with them about the purpose of education is just a different approach to education, right? And how you're asking kids to engage in their education and the why behind what they're doing.
Joan Buchanan Hill: I think it's authentic and I think it was done, but it was done in a less honest and open way, right? Now we're saying we have this new technology, we're all figuring it out together, and we're going to let you behind the curtain because there really is no curtain. And we have to work on this together. And I think that authenticity will breed a sort of confidence that children have in adults that they may not have. They may not want to get around the rules so much if they know that they're part of the process.
Russell Shaw: I think that's right, and I think that part of what makes this moment unique and why it is so essential that we engage in partnership with kids is the speed of change. You know, if you think about other technological revolutions in the world, you know, they happened over generations. And five years ago, five years ago, no one had heard of ChatGPT, right?
And now there are people, many of our kids, many of our college kids could not get through a day. They use it for everything. So it's happened so fast. And adults, most of our kids, I would argue, are far more fluent in the use of these technologies than the adults are. And so we have to ask for their partnership because we don't even understand it.
I mean, like, how are you using this? What are you doing with it? And what do you think it might be getting in the way of? You may know AI better, but I have a little more life experience than you. So how can we think together about, to your point, Debra, the purpose of education, what is school for, and how we can realize those goals together?
Debra Wilson: So widening our aperture a little bit, I know you both mentor up and coming leaders. And as you think about how your own leaderships have shifted, right? I mean, I very purposely asked the two of you because you've both, there's only been a handful of heads in both of your schools and you've both been there for a good window of time. When you think about the leadership skills you call on now, versus when you started 15 or 16 years ago, and as you're mentoring new leaders, like what does this time call for from new leaders?
Joan Buchanan Hill: I love that you asked the question and framed it in the way that you did, Debra, because in the last five years, we've had a global pandemic. There are deep economic and societal changes, and we are called every day to be optimistic and joyful on the part of the kids we serve.
And what I’ve found within our younger faculty members, there is that kernel of hope, despite having had all of the aforementioned things, there's hope. And I think it's because of the growth mindset. They don't feel like it's over. They feel like they're at the top of something that's just beginning, or at the bottom, if you will, of something that's just beginning.
I’ve found young faculty members bring an esprit de corps, a let's do this. It's so fun to witness because sometimes the senior faculty are a little jaded. They're a little, you know, sick around the gills, if you will, but the young faculty know that they've overcome big things in their generation, maybe more so than in any other generation at such a compressed time. Global pandemic, that was a big thing. These deep economic difficulties and huge societal changes.
And they persist. They continue to get up every day. They see the joy and the hope in their students, and they want to be part of it. They want to lead it. So I think being able to encourage that, keep learning, we don't know. We don't know it all. In fact, we don't know. You know, Artemis just went around the other side of the world. And we don't know enough to really make big decisions, but we can keep learning. And I think if there's anything I think that Russell talked about at the outset, that you, Debra, have mentioned, it's how necessary it is for us not to be jaded, to think it's done, but to have a growth mindset and to know that there is so much to learn. And to engage in it in a positive way and with our students.
Russell Shaw: I love that, Joan, I agree. We need leaders to be learners. Back in 2009, when I first saw the posting that the head of school job was open at Georgetown Day School. And I was a middle school head and assistant head of a Friends school in Philadelphia. And I sent the posting to my wife and she wrote back and she said, Head of Georgetown Day School sounds great. Why not governor of California?
So it was this like, good luck, buddy. And so I was like, what the heck? I'll throw my hat in. And suddenly I found myself in this job and sitting in finance committee meetings and sitting with leadership team members who had been working in the school for decades. And I thought, what would a head of school say right now? You know, I am, I am the person who they are looking to for answers.
And, as I think one matures as a leader, you learn actually that, you can't and shouldn't have the answers, and the capacity to tolerate ambiguity and to say, well, you know, there are actually multiple sort of competing values at play here and how are we going to navigate those tensions? There is the classic Rob Evans line about the difference between problems and dilemmas. And the hardest things that we have to wrestle with in our schools are the dilemmas, where actually there are a lot of good values that we care about here and that they don't necessarily point us to one solution.
And so as I think about young leaders, I think it's about cultivating them as learners. I think it is about letting them, giving them the comfort that you don't actually have to have all of the answers. You have to sort of narrate your thinking. You have to show up with your values. You have to be, in some ways, a container for the community's anxiety around tensions. We sort of have to hold that anxiety and say, you know what, we're going to make our way through this together. We're going to navigate these tensions together. And frankly, if there were easy answers to these things, someone else would have solved it already. So, just being a non-anxious presence and helping folks to tolerate ambiguity.
Joan Buchanan Hill: I think that's so right, Russell, because the more we model that, the more our faculty relaxes, kids relax, and it becomes a place where everyone can be their best and authentic selves, because they're not charged with doing something that is nearly impossible on their own.
Debra Wilson: How did you both, again, when we invited you on the podcast, you both struck me as uniquely aligned with your schools. So when first time heads, people looking for their first headship, right? They're excited to get a headship. And now more than ever, I say it's so important that you personally, your values align with your school.
In some ways, I think, Russell, because it's about that ambiguity, it's a lot easier to be guiding and directing a bit if you're that aligned with your institution. You know, you are both so situated in schools that so, and it's a little chicken or egg, right? Like if you visit both of your schools now, like which came first, like the school or the head? Because you do grow closer together over time. But when you're talking with aspiring heads of school about how do you find that alignment, what do you tell them? Do you talk about alignment at all when they're thinking about it?
Joan Buchanan Hill: I think yes, and it's to be a keen observer and get clarity for yourself. You know, don't want the job so badly that you will not be who you are and make decisions that are against your better judgment, because people will find you out. They'll know, and it won't be good for you.
So I think being a keen observer and then figuring out, what are the two or three things that you would, what hill would you die on? And you'll find over time, modeling that, other people will die with you on that hill. You won't be alone, because you will have built a culture that is sustainable, that's durable and that people trust.
Russell Shaw: I love that, Joan, being a keen observer. You know, you get these limited windows into a school during a search process, but pay attention. And that's true for the head. That's also true for search committees. You know, it can be very easy to sort of be narrow and transactional in that moment of the search, and yet to think about, in 10 years, is this person going to embody the values of our institution? And what are those values and what is it that we're looking for? I think it is, you know, both sides need to think really clearly about what's most important.
Joan Buchanan Hill: 100%, because I watch some of the young aspiring heads want it so badly. They'll say and do anything, but man, you got to live that. And until you're able to really put one leg in the pant leg and the other and be willing to live it, and find that hill that you can all together rally around, then you become an imposter, you see? And when you're an imposter, you've got a short shelf life, because people don't want Memorex. They want the real thing.
Russell Shaw: You know, I love that, Joan, and you're making me think of, so when I was at Abington Friends School, there was a group of five middle school heads that would get together once a month and talk about our jobs. And the group was called the Middle School Heads Association of Philadelphia or MISHAP, which is the perfect name for a group of middle school heads, right?
And it was Ken Aldridge, and it was Daryl Ford, and it was Nancy Van Arkel, and it was this fabulous group of people. And Daryl was the first one of us to jump into Headship. And I went and spent time with him at Penn Charter, and I said, Daryl, so what's it like? Tell me about this. And he said, look, you get paid more than other people. You get a nice office. You get to give a lot of speeches, et cetera. But if you don't love the school with everything in you, if you don't feel deeply called to the mission of the school, the job is just too hard. You've got to believe in the place. And he is so right. And he was so right.
These jobs, it's really hard. And you have to show up every day with this. I am doing important purposeful work. And I am going to persevere through the lawsuits and through the enrollment shifts and through the really knotty discipline issue, because I am, on behalf of this institution and mission, trying to serve some greater purpose.
Debra Wilson: So one more leadership question. How has your thinking about working with boards, your school boards, evolved?
Joan Buchanan Hill: So I think it's the responsibility of the head to lead the board as best they can, and to develop a good relationship with the board chair. But the board terms are at the most six consecutive years. And if you're in for longer than that, you need to really be the lead on that, because you will have board members around you who were not part of the hiring process, don't know why you were hired, and they don't understand where the school should be going.
Heads are washing out at such fast numbers because the board, who may have six years total term, will make a decision that is not in the long term best interest. And Russell and I have been at schools that are old, and we've had long tenure, and we know that a quick decision is not always going to sustain an institution over a period of time. And so the head has to be involved in that, I think.
Russell Shaw: I think part of the job of headship is narrating again and again to the board, this is your gig and this is why, and this is why it's so helpful to me and why I'm so appreciative of it. And to Joan's point, who is on the board changes. And you can say, we have had this conversation about sort of access versus affordability 15 times. And yet for a group of trustees, it's their first time having the conversation. And so we have to figure out, how do we keep it fresh for this next generation of trustees?
On Monday night, I had my last Monday evening board meeting of my 16 years, after like 120 of these. And for my update, I presented on jobs for Georgetown Day School’s board in welcoming the next head of school. And I think that these baton passes are precarious and really important. And so part of what I tried to do is lay the foundation for another really long tenure at Georgetown Day School, because I think long tenures are good for schools.
And, you know, charge the board with, this is a really important moment, and I believe you have the capacity to step up to it and this is what that stepping up looks like. So the thing that changes is, you know, in 2010, I was just waiting for somebody to tap me on the shoulder and say, we've made a terrible mistake. And, you know, sorry, we meant the other person. And now I actually am able to do some teaching about, this is what actually good governance looks like. And if you cultivate that partnership well, I think boards will listen.
Joan Buchanan Hill: I think you're right, Russell, and I couldn't, I have nothing else to add other than that's how schools get better, by having that throughline of a long-term head. No, I loved what you said.
Debra Wilson: All right, last question. Because you're both extraordinary leaders, how have you prepared for this next transition? I mean, Russell, you started by saying, you know, in six months, you won't be able to hear children outside your window. Although we've got a couple schools who might, you know, be happy to like parade kids past your house.
Russell Shaw: That would be great.
Debra Wilson: How have you thought about it?
Russell Shaw: So, my wife is a rabbi. And one of the things that precipitated my transition is she has taken a new pulpit in Colorado and I'm going to be joining her there. She started, we've been back and forth this year. So I'm going to be relocating there this summer for at least a few years.
And she gave a high holiday sermon last year about, she had been at a synagogue in DC for a decade and made the decision to leave. And she talked about being a trapeze artist and letting go of a bar that was a very comfortable bar without knowing if the next bar was going to be there. And that's what this moment feels a little bit like for me, and having some faith and trust that that next bar is going to show up, and I'm going to be able to grab onto it and do my next thing.
I will tell you that when people say, congratulations on your retirement, I have a nearly anaphylactic reaction to that. I'm like, I'm not retiring, I'm doing my next thing, and I'm excited to be writing more and doing leadership development, and also want to leave a little bit space, of space, to see which next bar I might grab onto.
So I am preparing by both trying to be as present as I can each day to the joys of my job. And also, I think ultimately, as school leaders, we get to model all kinds of things. And what does it look like to sort of model growth and transition with openness and curiosity and grace? And so I'm doing that for myself, and I hope it might be meaningful to some others as well.
Joan Buchanan Hill: I love that homily that she developed. I love that trapeze artist, and I could see grabbing and then catching. I love that.
So I don't have a big plan, which, I love not having one. I'm going to write, and I'm on some other boards, and I'm going to devote time to that. But mostly I'm not going to be, I don't know, I don't feel like I need to decide. For the first time! I mean, I don't need to decide. And I love it.
Debra Wilson: That is, after this many years of making so many decisions every single day, particularly through the pandemic when, you know, school leaders, I mean, Heads of school were suddenly making decisions they probably hadn't thought about in, you know, at least a decade, whether it was carpool or, you know, you name it. The notion of being free from decisions is, that is a statement in itself, Joan.
Well, friends, thank you both so much. I actually, I can't wait to see what the next trapeze bar looks like for both of you. So definitely keep us updated. And I just appreciate both of you for being on with us today and having this conversation.
Russell Shaw: Thank you, Debra.
Joan Buchanan Hill: Debra, thank you.