Atrium School & Governor Baker's Announcement
April 21
Dear Atrium Community,
At Governor Baker’s noontime press conference on Tuesday April 21, we learned that Massachusetts public and private schools are now closed through the end of this academic year. This directive applies to Atrium School. Our robust distance teaching and learning program will continue to grow powerfully, to match this latest challenge.
While we anticipated this development, my first feeling was sadness: I miss you all, and it pains me to learn that it will still be some time before we can see each other again, face to face. My second feeling was a deep sense of resolve: Atrium School – our families and alumni families, our faculty and staff, and most importantly our students – will continue to grow through this. We will all thrive in ways both expected and unexpected.
To ensure that everyone in the Atrium community has the same information, please read this full message. It offers some “fireside chat” thoughts first, and then conveys important working assumptions and now-confirmed facts about our return to school. This letter also describes how Atrium School’s Board of Trustees, leadership team and staff are planning the school’s path forward.
Our Optimism Is Tested
I am by nature a hopeful optimist, but this last month has tested that. My optimism – and likely yours too – has been challenged by despairing medical news, and a pandemic that has some in our Atrium community working diligently on the front lines in hospitals and care facilities. Others are quietly mourning lost friends and family members. Optimism has also been tested by a lack of confidence in our nation’s leadership to minimize losses and pull us through this. And, optimism has been tested by the worrisome economic situation we now face – some of us very quickly, and all of us eventually in some way.
We have been tested each day to rebalance our lives, rebalance our families, our schedules, our beliefs about technology and children. We’ve faced the frustrations of not knowing what tomorrow, or next week, or next month may bring. And perhaps most of all, my optimism has been tested sorely by not seeing so many of my friends and loved ones up close. At Atrium School we have a particular bond, achieved through living in a community with shared values. We cherish face-to-face contact, and deep relationships cultivated with love, compassion, empathy, kindness and service every day. All this optimism has been disrupted.
The Power of Disruption
I’ve been fascinated in recent years by the use of the term “disruptive." That word typically throws off negative connotations – disruption distracts. It interferes. And yet disruption has positive power too. New business models and technologies disrupt old ways and create new opportunities. Bold artists and musicians fracture and reassemble their art and through their work, we see the world in new ways. Biased ways of thinking and behaving are disrupted so that greater equity is established. We are all disrupted right now, in both senses of the word. And while we wouldn’t ever choose to be in this situation, we are thriving in new ways. We are learning and cherishing new things.
Last week’s Spring Mini-Performances illustrate the positive power of disruption beautifully. We experienced things that would never have been possible had we merely gathered together in the Atrium Space as usual. Because of positive disruption, we witnessed a parent passing an important family folk music tradition to his daughter on their back porch, incredibly complex Rube Goldberg contraptions that literally have taken over the house, and a hilarious faculty sketch, stitched from many smaller bits and pieces.
Simply put, Mini-Performances were everything that we have always loved about them, but more so. We couldn’t feed off of each other’s laughter and joy in the same room, but all the ingenuity of our families was there. All the creativity and confidence of our children were there. We applauded as one. And so, I remain a hopeful optimist through all this disruption.
Moving Forward
It’s also true that there are new realities to face, to which we respond as a community. In the early days of the COVID-19 situation, a fellow school leader shared with me a list of ten qualities for “Good Leadership in Challenging Times." I’d like to highlight a few for you regarding Atrium’s future. We must:
Plan for the short term and the long term
Focus on core values
Exude realistic optimism
Demonstrate grit
Let’s focus on planning, values and realism. Because we all are having different experiences of this, and we vary in our thoughts about what is going to happen next, I want to share with you what the school is thinking, to help shape your planning and vision for what’s to come. Here are the facts and core working assumptions that guide the Atrium Leadership team, faculty and Board.
First, we confirm that by state directive, distance teaching and learning will continue at Atrium through to June, and that there will be no face-to-face school this year. And, let’s envision and creatively plan for selected year-end events as face-to-face if possible, and plan for virtual culminations.
Let’s actively prepare for some form of focused summer academic support as needed, and a re-calibration of our curriculum upon re-entry next fall.
Let’s anticipate that the fall start of school may be affected as well, and we may still be acting in accordance with state or federal directive. What schooling looks like moving forward may need to be reimagined. If called for, we will do this boldly as a fresh manifestation of Excellence with Joy.
Let’s commit to strong effort to recreate/create anew regular virtual community events.
Let’s be confident that Atrium is a thriving community under any circumstances, and we are inspired by a vision of being all together again, in person.
As we absorb this reality, let’s acknowledge that we’re all drawing on our deepest resilience and creativity through this – our grit – and never have we been in such an engaged partnership between home and school. Your kids see this, they see your strength, and it will make a lasting and powerfully positive impact on them.
Sustaining and Strengthening Atrium
With these assumptions in mind, let’s talk about some further planning. With confirmation that the pandemic, economic impact and “Atrium from Afar” are prolonged, Atrium must plan for that flexibly, assertively and proactively. This, in turn, offers you more predictability, stability, and a sense of control. None of us can predict the future – but we can anticipate and plan.
Perhaps it’s my background in wilderness expedition leadership, but from the start of this situation, I have committed myself and Atrium to the principle of “keeping everyone in the boat.” We are a community, and we must work to stay together, intact and growing. We are so fortunate: there is an exceptional partnership with the Board of Trustees, who have worked tirelessly and with foresight through this situation. And we have our faculty and staff. Quite simply, they have been astonishing in their creativity, grit, expertise and dedication. I am inspired over and over again when I see what’s happening between Atrium teachers and students.
Atrium’s people are vital to meeting the climb we face together; our capacity to thrive as a school for teaching, learning and community is challenged. To meet these challenges, we have developed a flexible and evolving multi-point framework, an integrated roadmap for Atrium’s response and recovery.
One challenge is the potential for discontinuity in Atrium’s program of academic, social and emotional learning. Our response? A flexible and robust hybrid model for teaching and learning. We improve and extend this every week. A related challenge: faculty and staff, like you, are being tested and stretched; Atrium responds with a focused plan to sustain, retain and grow faculty to meet the demands placed upon them through this time. The April 27 professional day is just one visible element of our planning. Your signs, sidewalk chalk, and notes of support to faculty and staff all help measurably. We all thrive with encouragement and praise!
Indeed, a third challenge is that distance threatens the ability of Atrium School to sustain and build the strength and unity of our community. Our response is a renewed plan to sustain and unify our community. Mini-Performances help. Look soon in the mail for a special gift, too. We’ll celebrate acts of service in May, and often come together on Friday afternoons with special programming. End-of-year events are being re-thought. Atrium’s leadership team is nearing completion of a thoroughly re-scripted calendar of events for April to June. This will be communicated as we return from April vacation.
Another challenge we can anticipate: Atrium School’s finances may experience some short-term stresses from enrollment challenges, the decline in philanthropy that’s common in times like this, and some increased costs related to distance teaching and learning. And so, the Board and Atrium’s leadership team respond by formulating a broad and comprehensive financial plan that folds short-term recovery into our longer range Strategic Plan for Atrium’s sustainability. Relatedly, I recognize that some Atrium families may experience short- to mid-term financial losses themselves. Our commitment to you, and your commitment to us, is a long-term relationship and can endure the tough moment we are in. Our response: if some flexibility will help, please reach out to me to talk.
At Atrium, we are focused: everything we do these days is part of a comprehensive response to the challenges we are all facing. At a personal level, I encourage you to reach out to me with your questions, wonderings, concerns, worries, and ideas. I’ll also reach out to you. In the next few weeks, I will be connecting with each family again, by phone this time. I want to hear what’s on your minds and in your hearts. I want to hear your ideas and your worries, and I want to listen and understand your needs. All these help shape Atrium’s nimble response to COVID-19.
There Is Always Good News
Let us not forget that there is recent good news. There is always good news.
Our re-enrollment and new admissions are in very good shape right now. We had one of our highest yields on admissions offers in many years. New families see how very special this place is.
Our eighth graders have completed their high school selection and they hit it out of the park. Secondary schools were literally clamoring to matriculate our soon-to-be graduates.
My family is well – many of you have asked me that. From sidewalk to porch and fully-masked, we see my extended family regularly. Louisa’s creativity has blossomed anew with big art projects. My partner Lori’s new job (begun just before this all began) is going well, and Bernadette the wondermutt is eternally optimistic that her food bowl will be full every time she comes in from a walk! We are all relishing old records, 1000 piece puzzles, and a lot of cooking.
The PTA has created a fantastic resource base for you for April Vacation that many of you are enjoying – live opportunities, as well as dozens of “pick-’em anytime” opportunities.
I want to thank you as parents. You have made an extraordinary commitment to your families and to your children's schooling through all this, and I am deeply grateful. You have inspired me, and freshly reminded me what we value at Atrium. To that point, you’ll recall earlier this year, our Strategic Plan freshly articulated what we want Atrium students to be, in the form of four interconnected capacities. These are:
A drive to solve problems and innovate
Confidence in identity and voice
Leadership through empathy and inclusivity
Commitment to citizenship, sustainability and impact
Right now, we are all called to strengthen and model these capacities ourselves. Our kids see that. They see your response, and are made stronger and safer by your efforts. And, you are displaying great trust in the school. I do not take your trust in Atrium for granted. We stand by you through this time. Atrium strives to be part of what is right and good about the world, amidst great uncertainty.
Please let me know how we can keep doing that for your family.
Warmly,
Marshall