What Teachers Need To Hear From Administrators At The End Of The Year

The end of the school year is the right time for a speech. It’s the time for teachers to make speeches to their students and for administrators to make speeches to teachers. You don’t need to take each student or teacher aside individually because the end of the school year calls for the sort of grand sentiments that are possible to express only when speaking to a large crowd. Directing the same resplendent thoughts to just one person would either seem hollow or self-aggrandizing. Just imagine Kennedy delivering his “We choose to go to the moon” speech to the guy sitting next to him at Rosie Connolly’s Pub. I’m not saying teachers and administrators need to be quite that ambitious, but they ought to prove their chops as daring, competent public speakers every once in a while.

What kind of speech does the end of the school year call for?

Part of being a good leader is knowing what speech to make, and what tone to strike, but I tend to think the end of a school year warrants a little gratitude and encouragement to the troops. By the end of May, teachers and students alike are played out, tired, and the aggravations everyone has endured have accrued quite a bit of interest. I’m not talking about a bad year, just any year. Nonetheless, if your students have done good work, tell them so. If your teachers have done good work, tell them so—or they’ll find someone who will.

I’ve been mulling over the necessity for leaders to make moving speeches ever since I finished teaching Henry V earlier in the Spring. Any jabroni can give an informational talk or a formal thank-you, but a   compelling, generous, morale-lifting speech that breathes new life into a sluggish society is another thing—but that’s what great leaders can do.

In Shakespeare’s play, Henry is far less concerned about impressing other leaders than he is with inspiring his men. The modern image of leadership often seems quite the opposite. Jargon-spewing LinkedIn social climbers attempt to outdo one another for connections, endorsements, bullet points, and needless rhetorical excess, while the people beneath them actually get things done. But Henry knows what to say, when to say it, how to say it, and who to say it to. He’s around, he’s in the trenches with his men, he is meticulously fair in upholding the law, and he sleeps at night on the same hard earth—all the while attempting to become king of France.

On the evening before the decisive Battle of Agincourt, Henry moves through the camp speaking to his soldiers, and his individual attention and warmth bolsters their confidence, their sense of self-worth, and their desire to please him with their devotion. They feel good just being near him, perhaps in the same way that many people get better after they visit a doctor even if the doctor doesn’t really do anything. Good teachers do the same with their students, good administrators do the same with their teachers. Anyone in a position of authority who reads the play will be moved to imitate Henry.

What do teachers want to hear from administrators at the end of the year? What kind of speech will validate their work, lift morale, and send them off to summer break proud to come back in the fall?

I would like to share such a speech here. Were I the administrator of a classical school, I might say something like this to the faculty at the end of the year:

“You all have made it to the end of another school year, and I want you to know: I have seen your sacrifices.

I have not seen all of your sacrifices, but I have seen some of them.

I have not seen all of your sacrifices because you are virtuous men and women, which means you do not make a show of your good works. You have been insulted by parents and said nothing about it. You have been insulted by students and said nothing about it. You have been insulted by one another and said nothing about it. You have even been insulted by me and said nothing about it.

You have been insulted so many times that you have quit keeping count. In the beginning, you complained, but the insults kept coming, your complaints got you nowhere, and now you have humbly accepted that such insults are simply part of your job. You receive praise, too, of course, but praise doesn’t keep you up at night. But you have lost much sleep thinking about the ways you have been slighted, and you have come to work the following day tired and dejected. For all the sleep you have lost worrying about your students, praying for your students, or grinding your diamond frustrations into dust, thank you. I cannot repay you, but the Lord will recompense you with rest in Glory.

You have worked hard while at school and continued working hard when you got home. You have spent money on your students just to bless them and not asked for reimbursement. You have spent time preparing gifts, food, and needlessly extravagant lessons for your students. You have labored diligently when you could have phoned it in. For this, I thank you.

Let me speak honestly: there are many people who are necessary in order for this school to run smoothly, and a school is definitely a team, but it is you—the teachers—who actually make classical Christian education happen. You are what make it possible for this school to call itself a classical Christian school. The buck stops with you. If the building is classical, the handbook is classical, the curriculum is classical, the ads are classical, and the uniforms are classical, but the teachers aren’t, then the school isn’t giving anyone a classical education. Everything else is expendable. Plato’s Academy didn’t have any of those things. The Lord didn’t have any of those things during His earthly ministry. You, the teachers, are this school’s most precious and vital asset.

Of course, every school’s teachers are its most vital asset, but you are precious to me also because you are good at what you do. This is not simply a safe school or a prestigious school. This is a good school because you are good teachers. I have been in your classrooms, I have seen your work, I have listened to you all describe what you do and why you do it, and I am immensely proud to work beside you. Classical schools are opening up all over the country and it is by no means easy for a school like this one to acquire good teachers. You are a rarity. It is easy to acquire teachers, it is quite hard to acquire good teachers. So, knowing that you all could go elsewhere and make more money, I thank you for teaching here.

The end of the year is often attended with mixed feelings: relief, sorrow, joy, disappointment. Some of you have seen your students grow intellectually and spiritually over the last nine months. Some of you have seen the opposite. You have seen students who did well last year begin to falter. You have seen students you care about form destructive friendships and give themselves over to the world. Some of you have seen things get better, some have seen things get worse. For those of you who have seen things get worse, you sometimes feel guilt, sometimes confusion. Why did none of your lessons avail on stony hearts?

While I am grateful for your efforts this year, we all have to remember that teachers must play the long game. We do indeed want our students to be faithful to God today, but we have an even greater desire that they be faithful to God for the rest of their lives. Modern Christians often want to believe that spiritual growth is a rational process wherein quantifiable input produces quantifiable output, but St. Paul says: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that plants any thing, neither he that waters; but God that gives the increase. Now he that plants and he that waters are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor.” If it were up to us to decide when the increase was given, we would take it now. But God is patient and longsuffering and he knows better than we do. He knows when to bring things to fruition.

So keep planting. Keep watering. And wait for God to give the increase. Trust the Lord’s promise to reward you according to your labor and give thanks that God has given you such noble work to do. It is indeed noble work. What we are doing is right. Do not judge your success by numbers, but by the strength of your own zeal. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. And you have.”