Never Done: I became Facebook friends with my high school Vice Principal

Never Done: I became Facebook friends with Mr. Stanley (my high school Vice Principal)

I have written before about the wonderful school I went to all the way from kindergarten through 12th grade. Well, I guess it was the school system I went to that whole time -- the Harvard public school system. What made it great? For starters, it was small; my class had just 72 people, and there were only 900 students in all of K-12. Also, the teachers cared about us. A lot. I imagine that teachers all over care about their students a lot, but our teachers were given certain liberties to show us. Maybe part of that is that it was the 1970s (plus one year in the 60s and one year in the 80s) and in some circles, inter-generational relationships were generally encouraged. My second grade class was an experimental class -- mixed grade, second and third -- and we called our teacher by her first name (Debbie.)

By the time I got to middle school, the opposition to the Vietnam War was in full force, and the high school kids who had their lockers right above mine were among the hippie protesters. They were also my babysitters and neighbors, and instead of feeling alienated from them or scared of them, I was filled with admiration and aspiration. In fact, I did eventually become like them, but it took leaving high school and entering college to get my hippie on. But let's go back to that little thing I passed over: I was in 5th grade -- 10 years old -- and my locker was under the lockers of the 17 and 18-year-olds. That is a cool decision that some school administrator made. The big kids looked out for us; we looked up to them, and we had continuity. Recently I've reconnected with a lot of these "big kids" on Facebook, and it's been great to notice that for the most part, age difference is almost no barrier when put in context of our common experiences of coming from Harvard, MA.

Recently one of these "big kids" recommended that I become friends with Tom Stanley, who was the vice principal when I was in school. Tom and I (except then I called him Mr. Stanley) had a special relationship. He was my math teacher, and he had my back as I went through that awful math transition that so many girls go through -- thriving to struggling. He believed in my innate math talent, and told me, and my parents, so. It was such a simple thing -- to say something positive and affirming to a young person (and particularly in my family, which had its share of math geniuses, and I wasn't considered to be among them) -- and it still encourages me today, 35 years later, when I encounter a tough calculation.

But there's a certain story that characterizes my relationship with Mr. Stanley, and the kind of leaders that he and Mr. Horgan (the Principal) were. I was a big college basketball fan, and in particular I was a Notre Dame fan, back when Kelly Tripucka and Orlando Woolridge were college stars. Mr. Stanley and Mr. Horgan were Notre Dame fans too. (I grew up around a lot of Irish people.) In 1980, Notre Dame made it into the NCAA finals, and some of the games were played in Providence, RI. The only way to get tickets (remember, this was way before the internet) was to go to the Providence Civic Center, and the only time to go was in the middle of the school day. So Claire and I went into Mr. Stanley's office, and I asked him for permission to skip school to go get tickets. (Yes, that's the kind of kids we were. We asked permission to skip.) And what did he say? He said yes we could go, but only if we got him and Mr. Horgan tickets as well. Because after all, it was more important that the Principal and Vice Principal to be in school than a couple of seniors.

I haven't been in touch with Mr. Stanley for probably 25 years, but I think of him often, and when I was prompted to send him a Facebook friend request, I did it right away. He in turn wrote back to me right away, calling my high school years "magical times in a magical place." They were. They truly were. Maybe that's why, as I am on the cusp of bringing a teenager into my life, I have such high standards about the home and school environment I want to provide.