Optimize You

Optimize You

by Nancy Mugele, Head of School

Last week I attended a luncheon for Heads of School hosted by the Association of Maryland and DC Schools. Peter Baily, Executive Director, shared a story about an NPR report on a futuristic bed that could detect issues with your body or mind during sleep and correct them. If you are having a bad dream, the bed would play soothing music to help calm you. You get the idea. But, what struck me was the concept for this bed – it optimizes you.

Optimize, to make the best or most effective use of a situation, opportunity, or resource, is a strong action verb, and, while it is most often used in business, I cannot help but relate it to summer in schools. 

Engineer, statistician, professor, and management consultant William Deming, said: Optimization is when everyone is working to help the company. There is no doubt that, for educators, the summer is a wonderful stretch of time for renewal and re-energizing, but I have had so many thoughtful, strategic conversations this summer that will undoubtedly advance Kent School. The gift of time allows us to optimize our minds and hearts. 

I have been away twice with my family, and leaving for a vacation two days after Graduation was truly a chance for me to relax and recover from a stressful year leading a school in COVID. Yet, it has been conversations with individual faculty members and administrators regarding facilities, academic schedules, student testing, our Library collection, and current events that has recharged me. 

While many people think that teachers leave school in the summer and do not think about their classes, that could not be further from the truth. Educators use the summer to learn, as did four of our teachers who attended the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning Elementary Academy. Summer is for trying new skills and honing old skills as new teachers are gaining Google Educator Certification. Summer is for reading to prepare for workshops in late August. Summer is for optimizing yourself so that you can actively contribute to “helping the company.” Collectively, optimizing our summer benefits all of us and, most especially,  our students come September.