Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in the AISGW Fall 2025 newsletter.
It is November! Too late to deny that autumn is fully upon us. This morning I looked out at the trees blazing in orange and red, catching the light of the early morning, and thought of what a glorious “season of mist and mellow fruitfulness” we enjoy at this time of year.
That line above from John Keats’ poem To Autumn also brought to mind my mother, who could quote poetry from memory all her life and often did. It was one of her many admirable attributes, which also included her warmth and hospitality, keen intellect, flair for performance, and love of her students (she taught for over 50 years). On the other hand, she was a terrible driver. She didn’t suffer the details, often sending letters and packages to my neighbors (meant for me) by transposing numbers on the address. She was a firm believer in the motto “done is better than perfect,” which can be useful as far as it goes but meant that the dinner dishes were always not quite clean if she was at the sink. None of these deficits meant I loved her any less. I just tried to accept her as a human, like the rest of us, with strengths and weaknesses — some inherited and some based on the circumstances of her life.
I have been thinking about how attributes get passed down over generations after reading Arthur Brooks’ Atlantic article How To Take Charge of Your Family Inheritance last spring. Brooks argues that whether we become like our parents — or don’t — is something over which we have control. With reflection and intention, we can adopt the positive traits we have observed in our parents and learn to let go of the parts we don’t like. One exercise he suggests is making a list of all your parents’ characteristics — positive, negative, and neutral — and then placing a plus, minus or zero next to each. This method allows you to identify which of the traits you want to make an effort to keep, and which you need to work at letting go.
How does any of this relate to our schools? Schools, like people, carry forward traits inherited from those who came before. Many, if not most of these, are incredibly positive — strong mission-based identities, curriculum refined over decades, cultures that grow stronger and more positive with each passing year. Yet the periodic examination of what we might shed can be a worthwhile exercise. Traditions may have calcified over the years and may no longer be relevant or inclusive of the current student body. The course charted by previous school leaders may need a close look. Is a course correction called for? Nostalgia clings to the vines on buildings that could use a full overhaul and modernization. What should we keep and what can we let go? What needs to change given where we are now? Can we subtract what doesn’t work without adding yet another program, tradition or celebration that crowds the school calendar?
Loyalty and love can keep us at times from examining with eyes wide open what is serving us — or our school communities — and what is better left in the past. But an honest assessment of what we want to carry forward can also be freeing. My mother’s childhood was lived out in pre-war Ireland in the 1930s; mine was spent under the Big Sky of Montana. Our shared DNA did not make for a singular life experience and our life choices reflect that.
