For the first eighteen years of my children’s lives, I was their Division Head or Head of School. I didn’t use them as the filter or lens for my leadership decisions, but rather elevated the goal of ensuring they didn’t get special treatment or central roles in any decision matrices. My cherubs have now graduated and are no longer in our schools, and I am on the “other side” of the employee/parent journey. However, my I Am On The Other Side T-shirt, metaphorically and proudly worn, now certainly includes my own children as retrospective instructors for current scenario planning.

As a Head of School, my decisions are about all the children I serve, all my children. I use their experiences, along with all the other students I have known and cared for, to inform how I make decisions while keeping the endgame in mind. Confident and clear about the outcomes we seek, all tactical decisions are simply a means to an end. From requiring Athletics, whether or not to offer AP’s, start times to the academic day, and the role of technology, such decisions are made by considering the thousands of children, including my own, I have known as an educator.

Decisions at School

When in the thick of the recent “cell phone use in schools” conversation, I remembered being a Lower School Head in New Orleans, in 2008. Silicon Valley parents were moving to New Orleans, post-Katrina, as entrepreneurs. They were searching for schools where hands-on play was prioritized over iPads. Polarity management is what we were navigating, but I didn’t have the terminology to label it as such. 

I then remembered my first Headship, when the use of smartphones by our students outpaced our parent communication efforts. After assemblies, crumbs of real-time conversations were relayed to parents via texting. Half-baked reactions, with misunderstandings as the lead ingredient, waited for me on my laptop and voicemail. I couldn’t keep up with the game of “smart telephone.” The rate of miscommunication outpaced my speed walk through the halls. 

Sandwiched between then and now was a second Headship. COVID vs. mission delivery was a ping-pong match that sucked the life out of the people dedicated to our industry. Technology was our frenemy; we tipped the scale towards technology in order to stay connected. Although no one got it “exactly right,” we embraced phones, cameras, screens, outlets, chargers, and Zoom protocols. These resources enabled us to find a new normal. Technology was our BFF, and we couldn’t imagine a breakup. 

Now, in my third Headship, cellphones are not allowed during the school day. I am sure there are “burners” and workarounds; however, the response, from all constituents, has been one of gratitude. If everyone is finding the courage to look up, converse, and walk into common spaces, without the “security blanket” of a phone in hand, it is less awkward to be the one putting the phone down. If I were the parent of a current student, I am sure one would have thought I was making this decision to exert my parenting philosophy, or negating my own children’s opportunity to have any friends.

Decisions At Home

Our school’s decision to ban cell phones during the day was made at the same time my own children were deciding on their summer jobs, and I couldn’t unsee the intersection of their decisions and my school’s. My son and daughter opted for sleepaway camps, choosing to serve as counselors for young children and live in community cabins at their separate camps in phone-free wonder for months. They named a need to “detox.” 

Just a few years prior, while they were still living at home, my husband and I would remind them to put their phones in the hallway at night, take them out of their pajama pockets, and impatiently remind them that phones were not invited to meals. We tried to be “good parents.” Yes, we raised our voices, felt unsuccessful and repeated the predictable stop looking at your screens and put them outside of your bedrooms, EVERY STINKING NIGHT.

We told them how we dragged the family phone as close to our rooms as possible to have a private conversation. We delayed our purchase for their smartphones and showed our resemblance to T-Rexes at every turn. They met our parenting with great upset, as if it was not bad enough to have a Head of School and educator/coach as parents. No matter our efforts, though, they had to learn how to self-regulate and find a “detox” on their own, which ultimately, they did. 

Good-Enough Decisions 

At a recent conference for Heads and Board Chairs, we were asked to clarify our personal thoughts on cell phone use from our professional practices. Participants shared that technology, like cell phones, should not be kept out of schools according to their personal beliefs, but as professionals, they put them in pouches, lockers, and “phone jail,” as termed by my current Upper Schoolers. The professional and personal opinions were not aligned for most and thus, polarity management was at play. I still dwell on this moment and imagine we are in a current state, one that might not be an ideal state.

We are living through amazing advances and devastating regression. The ability to locate and communicate with my father during the recent hurricanes, and to connect with colleagues to see how we might help their schools and communities during such crises, is expedited thanks to my smartphone. Simultaneously, outside play and living in the moment, rather than curating and posting the moment, are less and less common. We know some of the unintended consequences of technology’s great experiment. We can no longer say, “we didn’t know” if asked. We know all too well how we feel when our technology overwhelms us and prevents our presence when in the company of the people, pets, and places who matter most in our lives. 

I learn from my ancestors and think about those who came before me as Heads of Schools. I wonder about some of their decisions. Similarly, I am sure the next generation of educators and school leaders (I hope there are many) in the pipeline will wonder what we were thinking when we put their phones in jail, or when we allowed them to be appendages all day long. I don’t claim to have the perfect answers, but offer that good-enough decisions might help us find our way to a more sustainable path of living both with and without technology. Thus, for now, student cellphones are in “jail,” and the minds, hearts, and souls in my care are liberated to explore, ideate, and connect.

Students’ phones are not the only ones set aside at my school now — I try to leave my own phone in my office when I can, allowing me to absorb the familiar chatter, interactions, and humanity in the hallways, which have returned to a kind of timeless classroom for me.

Out in the halls, eye contact is made, small talk is had, and our batteries are recharged, person to person plugging into another’s energy and humanity. There is nothing artificial about such intelligence, just good old-fashioned guidance. For this I am grateful, and for now, feeling that a good-enough decision is excellent.