Page 18 - Priorities #43 2009-April

Schlaak
A Conversation With
Brian
Former Peace Corps Volunteer and Navy Pilot, Assistant to day community of the school. Recently, a fellow Head-of-School and Academic Dean, Brian Schlaak is one administrator was visiting our campus from San
extraordinary all-around great guy. Priory senior David Calbert said, “He [Mr. Schlaak] is always there when you need a good word...above all else, he’s always fair and he’s real.” Ask around, you’ll likely hear the same thing. Recently we had a chance to ask him a few questions. Here’s what he had to say:
From Peace Corps, to Navy pilot, to the Priory, how did that happen?
I’ve always been fascinated by teenagers, teaching and the broader realm of education. Following a stint in the Navy, I went into teaching and found a home. My role in the Peace Corps was that of Teach- er Trainer and HIV Awareness educator in Para- guay. After 13 years in a wide array of classrooms, I became attracted to school administration generally, and school reform specifically. I went to graduate school for an M.A. in Education Administration at Stanford University. For several years, I worked in the San Mateo County school district working to breakup large comprehensive public high schools into small ones. All the empirical evidence strongly suggests that smaller schools—200-400 popula- tion—are the best environments for students, and that’s where I wanted to be. It wasn’t long before this position opened up, and here I am.
What do you love about being at the Priory?
Besides the extraordinary students, families, faculty and staff; the fresh air, great food and beautiful cam- pus? Everything. No seriously, Priory is great for kids, and its a great place to work. It is a privilege to educate in an environment where I can stand in front of a few hundred parents and say with ab- solute conviction that our school will be good for their children. The teachers here are just superb, the kids are bright, tolerant and enthusiastic, and the parents are caring and deeply involved in the day
Francisco, and she said, ‘Is something special going on today?’ I said, ‘No, why?’ She told me that all the kids seemed so happy. I told her, it’s like that every- day around here. I mean, it’s real and genuine.
The Priory partnered with Stressed Out Students (S.O.S.) at Stanford a few years ago. Can you tell us a little about the program?
We do one-on-one senior exit surveys with every graduating senior as a way of monitoring what is and isn’t working for our students here at Priory. In my first year, we saw a trend in many of the seniors’ comments. A significant percentage of the kids
said that there was too much academic stress. We immediately signed on to the S.O.S. program with Dr. Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at Stanford and co-founder of S.O.S. to learn ways we could imple- ment changes to reduce student anxiety, while still allowing our kids the flexibility to take the rigorous course loads necessary for college and university requirements. Research strongly suggested that the organization of the daily schedule was a significant contributor to student stress. Now, we have a longer mid-morning break, 30-minutes, for students to ad- equately decompress and relax before moving on to their next classes. We instituted a Wednesday Late Start to allow the sleep-deprived kids one morning per week to catch up on their sleep. We replaced all the junk food on campus with healthy alternatives. We eliminated bells and now hold students and teachers accountable for managing their own time. We asked teachers to reflect upon the homework that they were assigning in relation to its educa- tional efficacy. We changed the graduation require- ments to allow the students more choice in their courses, as kids love to work hard in classes that they are passionate about. We’ve seen the number of complaints, in senior exit surveys, virtually disap-
pear. I say with confidence that this new program is working well.
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