The Dean: on Duty

An Experience in Education

The Dean: On Duty

What is a Dean of Students? What does he do when he is "on duty?" What do teenagers do when the adults are not looking? How important are education and parenting? This book offers some insights and perhaps even some answers.

The Dean: On Duty explores a number of important issues that students, parents and schools confront on a regular basis. The anecdotes reflect real people and real issues, and though each person or incident is unique the broader implications for society in general bubble to the surface throughout the book. This is not an in depth study of homophobia, ethnicity, politics or philosophy, but those are among the broad issues that emerge throughout the book, often with their own chapter headings but not exclusive to those chapters. This is a personal story, not the result of research or planning.

"I live on campus at a boarding/day school of teenagers in grades 9-12, with an additional day population in the 7th and 8th grades that has a separate administrator. Even though only a small portion of the American population has contact with or knowledge of these institutions, what I have to say has broad enough implications that there will be useful nuggets for many people: parents, students, school personnel, former students. Much of what I do say is anecdotal, personal. I am not a social scientist. I do not have the broad data to make solid conclusions about education or parenting.

I am a student of history, a teacher of history; however, I am not an historian. I have no PH.D. I have taught US History, including the Advanced Placement class, European History, Ancient History, Geography, American Government, electives on Hitler and Nazi Germany for nearly 30 years, Russian History, and, more recently Western Philosophy. I have taught 7th through 12th graders, although only juniors and seniors with a smattering of sophomores for the last ten years. I have coached soccer, basketball, golf and baseball. I have lived in boys dorms, a girls dorm, in my own mortgaged house, and in school housing. I have taken school trips to Outward Bound programs, Germany and the USSR.

In short, I have some experience and some experiences. After 33 years as a teacher, 9 as a Dean of Students, I am on a bit of a break. I have a sabbatical during the 2nd half of the 2001-02 year, and it is the first year after 32 consecutive years in the classroom that I am not teaching. I decided that I would discipline myself to try to write enough for a book during my sabbatical."

"I have been in schools for more than 50 consecutive years. Most of what I have to say is about the last ten and where all of us are right now."

While the job of being a Dean of Students is indeed a serious one, the ability to remain personally stable and successful requires empathy, patience and certainly a sense of humor. While there are no rollicking escapades described in the book, there are indeed some amusing, although sometimes, poignant moments as well. The author attempts to demonstrate his personal style as a Dean with that hint of humor as he goes along.

"Dean is a four-letter word. While it is not always clear what the term means, my title at the school is Dean of Students. We also have a Dean of Faculty and an Academic Dean.

One of the earliest definitions of Dean was a senior member of a monastery overseeing ten monks. Fortunately, that does not apply to me.

It is also a definition of a senior member of a male group (female version: doyen), It is in my case a side effect of constancy with one employer.

As Dean of Students, I am essentially in charge of discipline, another of those elements of the definition of Dean. Dean of Discipline. Dean of Dress. Dean of Issues Other People Want to Avoid. That sounds too much like a march to martyrdom, and martyrdom is not