Dear Uxbridge High School Community:
When I got to UHS, I made a commitment to provide a weekly update of events, happenings, and important news from the school, to provide a level of communication to the community on a consistent basis. That coincided with a more in-depth monthly newsletter, and that has evolved into podcasts, videos, and other forms of media as times have changed. We have discussed topics ranging from improving our schedule to shifting academic programs to bullying and discrimination to the shifting guidance model to athletic and extracurricular achievements. We have shared safety plans in the event of an emergency, we have discussed changes to graduation requirements, and we have shared what we will do if there is snow. But one thing I never could have imagined is writing a letter to you all indicating that our school - and our home away from home for many of our students and staff - will be closed for the better part of three months.
There are a great many details right now that we know, but, as you may anticipate, even more that we do not. This is simply unprecedented for our times.
I share this because, while I have often been proud of my ability to write the right words, find the right phrases, and share a particular insight, I found myself struggling this week to do just that. The only certainty, at the onset, that I felt I had was that school had been closed through the end of the year. The spring sports season was cancelled. Our senior events, things for which our students and families look forward to for a lifetime, are hanging in abeyance, as uncertain as the times around us. Indeed, I went to a dark place, as I shared with our faculty on Tuesday, where I was sad, and I urged everyone to process their emotions - fear, anguish, compassion, sadness, whatever - before turning their attention back to the work at hand. We mourned, we grieved, we accepted (sort of), and we supported.
On Wednesday, teachers were back in virtual classes, offering comfort, instruction, support, counsel, an empathetic ear, sympathy. They came to a faculty meeting and smiled together, joked a little, and helped each other from afar - just as they had for the students. They committed to looking ahead to next year, educators from across the district reached out with ideas for celebrating and supporting the Class of 2020, and we had honest conversations with some parents about some plans. To use a cliche, we turned the page to action very quickly.
It’s in this last cliche that I realized something about UHS and our community. We are dealing with something invisible, insidious, and disruptive. We did not ask for this, we did not plan for this, and we did not anticipate this in our wildest dreams. Yet we have had people answer, adjust, and respond. And so, as we pen a weekly update that has little news beyond a closure, that does not offer many answers for what our curriculum, or reopening, or even graduation this year will look like, it does offer something for you, as it did me: the complete dedication of a district to stay connected to your kids, a willingness to listen and support students and families, regardless of these new conditions, and the understanding that the faculty and staff of Uxbridge High School have owned a “stronger together mentality” where we are committed, unconditionally, to getting past this.
As one important detail: based on feedback from our students, we are extending the deadline for weekly work submission to Monday. Students will now be able to hand things in anytime after Wednesday. If they want to have the weekend free, they can turn work in on Friday. If they need time, Monday is acceptable, as is over the weekend.
In the coming weeks, we will plan to adjust our curricular gaps, to meet with students and classes, to continue meetings with parents, to share our thinking around different events and transitions. We will focus on not only what we teach, but how we teach, when it comes time for supporting students, through the end of this year and into 2020-21. We will smile, we will joke, and we may even cry and sigh every now and then. It’s all okay. In fact, it’s more than okay - it’s who we are. If we weren’t a little bit sad about missing UHS, then we would have squandered far too many minutes, and meetings, and class periods, and tax dollars building a place that we know is such a source of home, life, and great experiences for our 600 students. Because in the end, even when these weekly messages lack any updates to events, or athletics, or clubs, when we are confined to our homes and not at our fabulous campus on Quaker Highway, and when we are staying connected through unique, frustrating, and sometimes impersonal ways - we all are stronger together, and we still shine through with our #SpartanPride.
Be safe, everyone.
Mr. Rubin
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