We will persevere and we will prevail. Take Heart.

March 17, 2020

Dear Colleague,

Like some of you, I travel frequently for work. I relish the opportunity to visit schools, to see firsthand what is happening on campuses, and otherwise to carry the boarding flag throughout the continent. When I’m on the road, however, I miss my wife and kids. If boarding schools orient my work, they orient my life. Family relationships guard and guide me.

When we were dating, my wife, Stef, and I instituted a small ritual we have held to now for many years: we speak every day. Across strange hours, bad weather, and unexpected dramas, we chat, even if only for a few minutes. Symbolically and practically, the conversation sustains, and in a sense, recreates, the deeper connection we share in person at home.

COVID-19 has delivered a once-in-a-generation shock to our schools and to our society. Most of our schools have extended their breaks and committed to periods of online instruction. Some have announced definitively that they are suspending on-campus learning for the balance of the school year. As the virus spreads to every corner of the world, I expect more will do so—of their own volition or by government edict. Schools are addressing abrupt and unprecedented changes to their programs and their operations, while all of us confront a social and economic landscape far different from what we may have accepted as routine and unassailable just weeks ago.

We will persevere and we will prevail. Many boarding schools have endured two World Wars. Some have names engraved in chapel vestibules of students who lost their lives in the U.S. Civil War. Our communities persisted. The Great Depression, various recessions, inflation, deflation, stagflation: all may have dimmed, but none extinguished, the flame of light at the center of the boarding school project: the relationships our schools germinate, cultivate, and grow. Take heart.

This is not to minimize the scale, scope, or novelty of the challenges you are facing. As many of you transition to a largely online method of instructional delivery, I encourage you to keep relationships at the center of your design and your culture. Like the ritual of the daily call with my wife, you’ll need to find creative ways to sustain and recreate the deeper connections which you have with your students, your parents, and with one another. This may be a protracted trip away from home, and it involves a genuine sacrifice, but it will end. When it does, your campus community, now perhaps in a sort of intense repose, will spring back to a reunion and a fullness I suspect you’ll never treasure more.

At TABS, I have focused our team, all of whom are now themselves working remotely, around one question: how can we help support our members through this crisis and throughout the days and months beyond.

Over the past few weeks, TABS has conducted two data surveys—one traditional and one real-time. We have organized and hosted several Zoom roundtables for Heads and their designates to discuss specific dimensions of the crisis. TABS has also partnered with NAIS, EMA, NBOA, SAIS, and other sister associations to share resources and to conduct a joint webinar. We’ve assembled a staff-based Working Group, as well as an industry-based Task Force, the latter of which now meets twice weekly to identify emerging questions within schools and to provide guidance to TABS about the best ways for the association to serve you. As a result of these consultations, we are organizing around two immediate core priorities:

1. Agile collection and dissemination of brief survey data to enable schools to quickly determine the range and central tendencies of rapidly emerging decisions and practices in TABS membership.
    
2. Regular opportunities for boarding school leaders and practitioners—in domains including student and residential life, admission and marketing, academic management, health and wellness, and operations—to gather online with professional peers in relatively manageable numbers to hear the latest trends and to have plenty of time for conversation and sharing.

As such, in the coming weeks, you can expect additional opportunities to respond to very brief survey questions (in some case, just 1-2 on a key issue). We will pledge to return results as quickly as possible. In some cases, we may use instant polling technology so you can observe results as you provide your own data. We’ll also be hosting an increased number of Zoom roundtables for various audiences and/or topics. Please gather with us as you’re able but we'll also record the meetings and post, where appropriate.

We hope this emphasis on speed, data, and connection speaks to the reality you’re currently navigating. We may be pivoting again in the coming weeks as reality evolves. Adaptability and resourcefulness—for all of us—are at a premium. I am deeply grateful to the members of the Task Force—educators who are breaking from their often extraordinary responsibilities for their own schools and families to assist the wider community of boarding schools. 

I also want to share a few housekeeping announcements about TABS’s own programs:

• As of this writing, we have not cancelled any of TABS summer professional development offerings, the first of which is scheduled for mid-June. For now, our upcoming programs—Heads Retreat, Marketing Retreat, and TABS Summer Session—remain on the schedule. While our current plan is to move forward with these three programs, that could change in the coming weeks. We are exploring virtual options as a fallback. However, if we must cancel one or more, for safety or other reasons, we will do so.
   
• Notwithstanding the myriad uncertainties, our fall 2020 Worldwide Tours to Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe also are a “go” at this juncture. Frankly, I can envision one scenario in which we’re forced to cancel all three—and another scenario in which we hold all three tours and attract a record-breaking number of schools. Our work, like yours, has become astonishingly unpredictable.
   
• In the meantime, if you have already registered for a program, or intend to sign up, we’re relaxing our usual policies. Should you want or need to make a change, you’ll have the opportunity to transfer your registration to a future event or to cancel and receive a full refund.

During this period of discombobulation and suffering, I send along my sincerest best wishes, full of hope and confidence that our schools, now more than ever, will discover anew the most profound wells of learning and humanity. They always have.

In solidarity,

Pete Upham
Executive Director