A DAY OF FIRE AND
FLOOD
Being head of school is a headache
of a job. Chief cook and bottle-washer,
jack-of-all-trades, a multi-tasking servant/leader all in one, the position
calls for educational/philosophical/spiritual leadership, the fiscal acumen of
a dedicated, detail-pouncing bookkeeper, the smooth tongue of a hospitality
hostess, the ear of an orchestra conductor, the management dexterity of an
octopus, the maintenance skills of Mr. Fix-it, the thick skin of a rhinoceros
and, always, the enthusiasm of a cheerleader.
My day began uneventfully. As usual, I entered the school by the side
door, hauling in three crates of milk left there around 6:00 a.m. Bringing them inside got the milk into the
cooler sooner and also removed temptation from the children of another
school who habitually walked down that same street and who had been known to
help themselves.
Once inside, I listened for the
fans. Ours was a two story brick
building originally a private high school.
We only used the ground floor, for the fire marshal had disallowed our
inhabiting the second floor without significant and costly renovations. Yet the second floor was still there, and a
pair of broad stairwells at either end of the building provided gigantic
sluiceways for any warm air to rise. Thus
the architectural configuration required a good 45 minutes of hot air pumping
before the lower level could begin heating up, while the antique furnace itself
needed its own 45 minutes before the fans would have any hot air to blow. So when I listened for, and heard, the fans,
I knew that all was well -that the furnace was hot and the blowers were at work.
Next on my morning checklist was to
determine whether the school had been cleaned the previous evening. During my tenure, we went through three teams of
custodians -one was an organized but expensive janitorial service that assigned
a different crew in each evening, one a moonlighting worker who brought the
whole family to pitch in -his wife, his resentful teenage daughters, even the
doddering grandmother; and the third was a manic war veteran, whose spit-and-polish
approach was breathtaking in its splendor until he would disappear, without
notice, on a three-day bender. On those
mornings when I discovered that something had gone wrong and the building had
not been cleaned, I would be met with the sight of overflowing wastebaskets and
the stench of yesterday's lunch. If I
then shifted into absolute top gear and raced around from room to room, I could
do a quick sweep of the two main hallways, get all the wastebaskets together
near the door to the dumpster and usually manage to fake it.
Fake it, that is, except for
Isobel. Isobel was one of my finest
teachers, though her high standards extended especially to classroom
cleanliness. Knowing that she would flatly
refuse the children entry if she deemed the room unsatisfactory, I would race
off, when I had to, to the storage area, haul out the hefty commercial vacuum
and get to work vacuuming that one classroom before any teachers or children
arrived.
On the day in question -the day of
fire and flood- the custodians had come, the milk hadn't been
stolen and the fans were properly blowing. So I did one last check of the classrooms
to make certain no animals had died overnight (that was a lesson learned from a
most unfortunate accident that I won't relate here) and, finally, at long last,
got to my office, checked there for any unknown emergencies and, satisfied, went
out to unlock the front door.
I felt a special tension that
morning, for I knew a long day lay ahead.
It was Friday, and I had been invited to address conference of teachers
that was gathering for the weekend. With
less than an hour and a half after the end of school, I would have to go home,
shower, pack, change clothes and head out to the airport, as the conference in
question was in fact some distance away.
At the end of each day, my office
was a busy beehive. Freed from being
with the children all day, teachers inevitably had requests or questions; the
school secretary would have a fistful of paperwork for me to sign (plus a host
of supposedly short questions that had been passed on to me, through her,
during the day). And then there were always a couple of parents requesting an
audience, often with a question, sometimes an issue or occasionally simply a
rant. In the midst of such tumult, my
facility for effective and friendly triage was often overwhelmed, though I did
what I could to keep everyone happy and the wheels moving.
This being Friday, there were fewer
teachers, and only a couple of parents waiting, when a younger student burst into
the office to report that Sebastian had set a tree on fire out in front of the school.
Well, fire is one of those words,
like knife and gun that get a principal's attention. I shot out of my seat, asking, over my
shoulder and on the run, for my secretary to reschedule the remaining parents
and I was out the door. Sure enough,
there was a tree on fire, and though it wasn't a huge conflagration yet, there
were other trees nearby for the flames to feed upon, as well as wood window
frames on the building itself. Sizing
things up, I sent the gawkers away, told Sebastian to go to my office, call his
mother, and tell her that he was forbidden to leave until she came, personally,
to pick him up. I then raced off to the
boys' room where I thought there might be a bucket.
There was. Inside the boys' bathroom with its sinks and
stalls was a tiny janitor's closet, replete with shelves of paper goods, a
stinky mop and, most importantly, a deep, dirty sink with hot and cold running
water and a large bucket. Filling it, I
raced back outside discovering that the flames had, indeed, spread to the next small
tree. (These were, as I recall, spindly,
ill-nourished, un-pruned, five or six-foot high evergreens, offering dead
branches and dried needles as ready kindling.)
I decided to handle the problem myself and not involve the fire
department, knowing that the fire department would inevitably bring both police
and press. Our little school needed no
such publicity.
I returned to the well two or three
times before being satisfied that the danger had passed, and then of course had
to spend time with the perpetrator and his mother. It seems he had purchased something called
"fire paper" from a local magic store. Rip off a sheet, expose it to the oxygen,
and, lo, it bursts into flame. Cool!
While demonstrating this discovery, Sebastian had inadvertently dropped one
sheet into the nearby tree. Witnesses
-his audience- fled. These facts came
out during our twenty-minute conference, after which, finally, mother and son
left, leaving me to lock the front door and perform my final building
check.
One end of the hall checked out
fine, but as I started back down the other way, I noticed something glistening
on the floor. It turned out to be a
slowly growing puddle emanating from the boys' bathroom! Apparently all the
while I had been dealing with the burning bush and with Sebastian and his
mother, the spigots in the janitor's closet had been operating full blast,
filling the clogged sink and overflowing into the room.
Before I was ever hired, the
school's Building & Grounds Committee had made a decision to cover the
original bathroom tile with what is known as a "poured floor." This involves putting down a seamless stretch
of epoxy that covers the entire space, which in this instance meant an area of
approximately ten feet by thirty feet. Calculating its cubic measurement (there
was a drop-down from the door sill of perhaps two and one half or three inches)
and figuring the ratio of gallons of water per cubic foot, my son informs me
that this allowed somewhere between 470 and 500 gallons of water to built up before
any spillage into the hallway. Once
again, I had my work cut out for me, although at this point I was entirely
alone in the building and facing an inflexible deadline set at the airport.
Large commercial vacuums
-"shop vacs," they are called- are built to suck up virtually
anything, including perhaps four gallons of water before needing to be emptied.
The math that day was simple: Four gallons plus the weight of the machine
itself times many, many loads equals a very tired back. But I got it done, made the quickest
turnaround imaginable and got myself to the plane on time. So that's the story of one unusual day in the
life of a school head -- but there is an epilogue.
Within the hour, I was in
Michigan. The organizers met me at the
airport and spirited me off to the conference site, where two hundred teachers
awaited my words of wisdom. By a
fortunate quirk of timing, I had done some research on a subject that was attracting
national attention, so, for eighteen months or so, I had been on the lecture
circuit, with folks all over the country asking (and paying) for my supposed
expertise. I had developed a nice little
well illustrated dog-and-pony show and some considered (albeit prepackaged) phrasing.
But on this day of fire and flood, with
no dinner in my belly and exhausted beyond belief, I was not myself. For forty minutes that night, I was open, spontaneous,
focused, a welcoming earth mother whose unconditional positive regard for each
and every participant in the room rivaled that of a perfect therapist. I was
Carl Rogers and Mr. Rogers rolled up into one.
I validated their concerns, anticipated their questions, produced fresh
responses to questions I had answered so often before. In a word, I was hot, a preacher on fire! Alas, the next morning I was my former self
again -not bad, but not brilliant.
2/13
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