For a head of school, April and May are generally the time when the ideas and projects that have been dreamed up and conceived during the long winter evenings have to face reality. A battle then commences so that plans devised can be put in place even without—it must be said—taking into account the numerous constraints that a school has to deal with. The first of those is the enormous task of finding the time and then organizing it.
This is called scheduling. And these schedules are crucial. They set the tone, structure the day, and help to create the culture of the school as well as the synergies that we would like to see develop here. Schedules have a massive influence on the efficiency and quality of our work and simply put, on our moods. Confronted, thus, with these challenges, it is so important to really reflect on how scheduling will help us to reach our goals.
Our major themes for planning the logistics of 2021-2022 are balance, calm, and encouragement. A balanced schedule respects the rhythm of the children. It gives them the best conditions in which to learn, and it allows teachers to maximize the time that they spend with the students. Seeking calm is about looking for transitions that can happen without scrambling or stress. It is about limiting as much as possible the stressful and noisy moments. Limiting moments like, for example, one hundred and twenty students shouting in a cafeteria, a recess in the préau while a different class is working next door, or breaks that are too short and that make everyone move on the double. Encouraging students is about using at least part of their free time—because it’s also important to do nothing sometimes—for spaces where they can discover and be enriched. It’s about getting them to read, play chess or simply take some time to chat with a friend.
It is said that you can recognize a good leader by the fact that they surround themselves with people who are more competent than they are. Therefore, I am a really great leader because I have in my Deputy Head, Bolek Poniatowski, a Mozart of scheduling. A virtuoso of time slots. In a word: a master of time. That’s Bolek. For the past few weeks, as the French poet Boileau advised, Bolek has brought his work back to the workshop 20 times. It is a tedious job, but you will understand, so much of the success of the next school year depends on it.
For the past several weeks, Bolek has patiently drafted and re-drafted schedule propositions—now rife with strikethroughs and an unending string of comments. We must be on the 37th draft at this point, and each time, as we consider it, we say to ourselves, well, actually… and we are off thinking of other possibilities. Even as recently as yesterday morning, I asked him yet again to change everything. FYI, he took it well and is still talking to me. In the end, creating a schedule is indeed an underestimated art. When they are well-planned, and the days and weeks flow by without a hitch, we might almost forget that, at one time, we had to track almost every minute in an Excel file.