As we zoom in and out of thoughts, ideas, projects, causes, there is a risk that we too quickly forget. That the speed with which we read, act, answer an email, Tweet or post on Facebook—even donate to a cause—creates such a cursory interaction with the issue at hand that we move on before there is any kind of resolution, or real learning.

At our December professional day we read and discussed “The Power of Patience,” a thought-provoking article by Harvard professor of the Humanities, Jennifer L. Roberts. She expanded on a theme very close to my heart, the idea that school sometimes needs to be “counter-cultural” in order to instill some important values in students that they may not be getting from the mainstream media. Here Roberts argues for “deceleration, patience and immersive attention.” She describes part of a course she teaches where her students need to consider a painting, in this case by John Singleton Copley of “A Boy With a Flying Squirrel” for three hours.

Our discussion was rich; many of us confessed how hard it is to slow down ourselves and how we convey a need for speed in our work. We acknowledged that our own lives are full of “multi-tasking,” rushing from one thing to another, desperately trying to achieve the elusive balance of family, work and personal life. In the small group discussion I participated in, it was rather powerful to see how we each seemed desperate to take on some of that patience. We also realized that it is a value, and a skill or approach, that we would like our students to learn and we considered ways in which the mod system, and just three academic classes a day created the opportunity for a slower speed and perhaps a little bit of the virtue, patience.

Why Tacloban? It is the town in the Philippines that bore the brunt of the typhoon “Haiyan” on November 8, just about two months ago. Have we forgotten it? Did we take that news in from our preferred media source and then move on? According to The Economist (12-21-13), “Much of the land around Tacloban…resembles old photographs of a first-world war battlefield….Although most of the bodies have now been cleared away, corpses are still being discovered. The death toll in Tacloban is thought to be 2,000.”

Let’s be patient; let us not forget Tacloban. 
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Pocket Change is a web diary written by Jane Moulding, head of school.