On the final day of the calendar year for teachers and staff, I received a phone call just before 7 a.m. from our Chief Financial Officer.  A member of the team had come across the body of our long-time head security guard, Mauricio, or “Don Mau” as many of us referred to him, lying in the grass not far from the entrance to the school.  He had died of a heart attack on his morning walk to work.  

While the passing of any staff member might constitute a moment of crisis, Mauricio was not just any staff member.  He was undoubtedly the most respected and beloved member of the Lincoln team.  Just the previous weekend I had sat in the Senior Recognition Breakfast, where the senior class brought Mauricio to the stage to express their appreciation for his service to the school and to present him with a series of special gifts.  This scene replayed itself the following weekend when we hosted our annual Sports Banquet, and again Mauricio was called forward in acknowledgment of his contributions to the school.  How is it that a security gaurd comes to embed himself so completely and essentially in the fabric of a school community?  While I only had the opportunity to work with Don Mau during this past year – and an interrupted year at that – I quickly came to recognize just why he was such an important person to the school.  

Hay que ponerse la camiseta

Mauricio worked hard, showing up before anyone else arrived, and leaving late into the evening when the parking lots were empty.  I remember one particular Saturday morning when I had come in for a few hours for a school activity, Mauricio caught me as I was leaving.  His message was brief – “gracias por ponerse la camiseta.”  In English, that translates roughly to “thank you for putting on the jersey,” and is a soccer reference to  our willingness to go to work and sacrifice on behalf of the team.  It mattered to Mauricio that I, as the General Director, had chosen to be there that day.  He didn’t care about degrees or resumes, he was just interested that you were bringing your whole and best self to the work of the school.  Mauricio was always willing to roll up his sleeves and do whatever needed to be done, and that was his same measuring stick for determining the committment level of those around him.  

Relationships always come first

In Costa Rica, the wake, funeral services, and burial all happen within about 24 hours of death.  With COVID restrictions in place, the small Catholic church across the street from the school simply wasn’t going to be able accommodate the number of people who wanted to come pay their respects to Don Mau.  So we held an impromptu service across the street, outside in front of the school.  I’ve had a lot of unexpected experiences as a teacher and school leader on campus, but hosting a viewing was not one I had ever anticipated.  As students, staff, family, and friends thronged the parking lot, I couldn’t help smiling to myself as person after person turned to a neighbor to tell about their special relationship with Mauricio.  That was Mau’s secret power – he made everyone feel like they were important.  He had conversations with EVERYONE.  He had an insatiable curiosity for finding out about people’s lives – what was important to them, what challenges they were facing, how he could help.  He never hesitated for a moment to walk up to someone and start a conversation.  Being inclusive was in Mauricio’s DNA.  

Quiet, Direct Advice

Over time, Mauricio become somewhat of our Lincoln armchair therapist.  Of course he never postured himself that way.  Rather, he was such a good listener, that you couldn’t help but confide in him.  The combination of his good nature and universal positive regard for others made it easy to keep talking.  Plus, he kept confidences.  You never had to worry that he was going to go around making problems because you shared some delicate piece of news or because you vented about a coworker during a moment of weakness.  He politely listened, asked a few simple questions to make sure he understood, and then usually, would finish wtih some simple advice.  His counsels were never terribly complicated.  Mauricio primarily dispensed common sense, and perhaps hearing what you needed to hear in simple, clear terms is what made his advice so valuable.  It was as if he stood outside of any common organizational drama or interpersonal politics and just gave it to you straight.  

Living Your Values

As we prepared to move in procession from the front of the school across the street to our small neighborhood church, I was handed a microphone and invited to share a few words.  What came to mind then is still what strikes me now.  Mauricio was a man who seemed to have total alignment between his values and how he went about his day to day work.  He was always busily engaged in the work of the school, but never too busy for any individual person who needed his attention.  He was always concerned for the well being of the organization and the people who were a part of it.  

Just this past week, I read an article in a business journal that encouraged readers to stop referring to the workplace as home or coworkers as family as it has the tendency to blur the needed boundary between personal and professional life.  Perhaps for many of us that is good advice.  But for Mauricio, Lincoln really was family.  As students and staff walked past his coffin to pay their last respects, eyes filled with tears, saying Lincoln was family was no exaggeration.  When 6 recently graduated seniors, dressed in white, carried the coffin from the school doors to the church next door, Mauricio was certainly amongst his adopted family.  

By any measure, this school year was challenging.  Yet even in the midst of the COVID madness, none of us could have imagined we’d lose Mauricio on the very last day of the work year.  Honestly, I momentarily lost my breath when first hearing that he had died.  Not long after, I found myself standing next to Mauricio’s wife in the street, trying to find words of consolation while behind me Mauricio’s body lay in the grass as it was prepared to be taken to the funeral home.  That is a moment and memory that I will forever associate with this pandemic year.  And if this year has taught me anything, it is about how precious and fleeting life can be, to enjoy the people we love while we have them, and to strive to live our values every day.   

One of the things I love about working in schools is the annual school calendar.  It has a clear beginning and a clear finish.  You move from grade level to grade level, with predictable start and end dates.  Thanks to the education system, you might think that life always has a nice rythym and sense of progression. Young people the world over probably get the wrong idea from school about how things work, assuming real life will always provide clear progress milestones.  

This past weekend, I participated in my first graduation ceremony with Lincoln School.  We actually had to divide the graduating class into 3 smaller groups to meet all of the COVID related restrictions and protocols that have been mandated across Costa Rica.  Given the madness of the past 2 months with the spike in COVID cases in the country, I was just grateful to be able to celebrate our students with an in-person ceremony.  It was absolutely beautiful.

As I told parents in the audience, graduation is one of those few times as a parent when you can actually see and measure the impact of years of sacrifice, hard work, and encouragement.  For the student, graduation similarly marks a discreet moment in time with a clear and potentially dramatic difference in day-to-day life before and after.  It’s a true milestone.  You even get a diploma, which serves as tangible evidence and formal documentation of your growth and achievement.  For many families, high school graduation is the rite of passage that officially moves a person from childhood to adulthood.  

For the school and the faculty, graduation is no less exciting.  In some ways, the entire institution is aligned to this final moment of student promotion.  In addition to the quantifiable element of graduation – how many and what percentage of our students met the requirements and are moving on – we ask lots of questions about the qualitative outcomes.  Do our graduates possess the skills and abilities that we say they do as a result of their time with us?  Do our graduates’ college choices and next steps in life reflect their true potential as developing and maturing young adults.  Perhaps most importantly, are our graduates the type of people we hoped they would become? 

I was struck during the senior video to see the pictures of our graduating seniors back when they were in preschool.  Many of them spent 15 years at Lincoln.  That’s a long time and a lot of interaction with our school and faculty.  It’s humbling to think of how much of an impact we can have in shaping each students’ childhood and trajectory into adulthood.  

Eventually, we all find ourselves sitting together in an auditorium to watch students as they walk across a stage, and then, ultimately, out the exit.  When the auditorium empties out, we still find ourselves there as educators.  Yes, we feel a sense of accomplishment and a certain degree of closure.  But we know that our work is as much at a beginning as it is at an end.  We have a fresh group of students, excited to take on the mantle of the senior year.  We welcome a new class of preschool students coming to school for the very first time.  For our students, the finish line is clear.  For us as educators, our work is again just beginning.  

For many years, I was a Google Suite for Education acolyte.  As a high school principal, we went “all-in” with Google – Gmail accounts for all students and staff, Google calendar for all official school activities and meetings, and we were heavy Google docs and sheets users.  We built an entire discipline referral and data system in Google sheets that logged tardies, referrals, interventions, and just about every other activity a student participated in.  If we needed to log and track data or share planning documents, Google was the tool of choice.  

When I moved from a school to the district office, I found that office life was much more entrenched with Microsoft.  Anyone who worked with numbers was on a PC using Excel, and you couldn’t schedule a meeting without Outlook.  I wasn’t very good at hiding my frustration with what felt like clunky sharing and access permissions on OneDrive when the business office shared documents.  

Perhaps the most perplexing was that the district was paying for both Google suite and Microsoft suite at the same time.  I had to regularly check both a Gmail and an Outlook account.  It seemed like an unnecessary use of limited resources to pay for both, and I not-so-secretly wished for a way to finally do away with our district office reliance on Microsoft.  Most of the tech saavy educational staff were heavily invested with Google products.  We systemtatically encouraged teachers and administrators to pursue Google Certification, and we encouraged staff to integrate Google classroom into their classroom repetoire.  

And then the pandemic hit.  All of a sudden our tech software package was our primary platform for student learning.  Overnight, our in-person classrooms and meetings were moved into teleconference mode.  Some of us who were more seasoned Google users shifted into Google’s teleconference service, Google Meet.  Many of our teachers found the administrative controls bulky and confusing, and intuitively opted for free Zoom licenses.  Of course in those early days of the pandemic there was a lot of concern about the weak safety and security features in Zoom, but it was easily the more manageable option for our staff members.  I too, admittedly, was frustrated with the quality and usability of Google Meet, and wondered why it was that Google seemed to be struggling to roll out features for group learning that other services were adopting more quickly.  We developed elaborate work arounds to communicate the right meeting codes, including setting up Googlesites where we housed pages with group meeting codes.  We struggled to embed links into Outlook invites with the appropriate sharing features.  

Then, in July, I moved to a new job, where Google was entirely absent.  The school was 100% committed to Microsoft.  I was already familiar with most of the Microsoft tools.  I’d learned to use Outlook and appreciate it’s utility – even if I still felt like it was not very fun and was hard to look at.  For the first time, I experienced Microsoft’s teleconferencing software, Teams, and that is where my mind was being changed.  Within just a few weeks, I had fallen in love with Teams and the integration of tools across the suite of Microsoft tools.  I watched teachers who seemlessly integrated student notebooks in OneNote with their Teams classes.  Our students had embedded chat features, that allowed them to stay connected with each other in a monitored school environment.  Contacts, email, chat, videoconferencing – everything seems to be talking to each other, and I felt my Microsoft resistence softening quickly.

Now, a year later, I’m a highly satisfied Microsoft suite customer.  While I still don’t think OneDrive and SharePoint are quite as easy to use as Google Drive, Microsoft has greatly improved their cloud based services.  In the case of teleconferencing software, I think Teams has been consistently ahead of Google’s products.  Outlook is, well, Outlook, and I will likely be a Gmail user until I die, but Outlook does get the job done, and their iOS app has made it easy to access and use across platforms.  In other words, it’s no longer so clear to me that schools should opt for Google over Microsoft.  At the very least, Microsoft has closed the gap, and perhaps in the pandemic, has in some ways been able to inch ahead.