Adaptation & Change--How Vianney Stays Nimble

As with many organizations, businesses, and school's it is important these days for St. John Vianney High School to be nimble. 

Just this week we were tested with winter weather, questionable road conditions, and the challenge of educating our students despite the consistency and structure a traditional five day week provides. 

The ability to adjust, adapt and grow is a key trait for success in our dynamic and complex world.  Fortunately the Society of Mary recognized that many years ago.  "Adaption & Change" is one of the 5 Characteristics we seek to educate our young men to handle when they exit our halls as Men of Character & Accomplishment.  

Just like our organizations, individuals within them fare best when they are prepared for ongoing change and provided with the skills such that they, too, can be nimble.

The fall leading in to winter is always a rewarding time for me to be the principal.  From Homecoming to Thanksgiving through Christmas we welcome back our graduates.!

We meet them at reunions, the Thanksgiving Lunch/Yearbook Party, and see them as their college semesters close and they return to enjoy a Spicy Chicken Sandwich or a Hot Ham & Cheese on a Pretzel bun for lunch!

Seeing our graduates return with smiles on their faces and stories of success is rewarding and reminds me of a quote I once read in my undergraduate studies that speaks to the importance of community belonging for relationships but also benefits. 

“True belonging is born of relationships not only to one another but to a place of shared responsibilities and benefits. We love not so much what we have acquired as what we have made and whom we have made it with.”

As the fall and winter unfold each year, we welcome back our graduates from new environments and they tell us that they feel well-prepared for their next stage of life: academically, spiritually, and personally.

We also see our current students and staff adjust to new technologies, higher expectations, more responsibilities, and even Snow Days.!

Upon reflection this week I thought again to the quote above. I thought of the benefits that St. John Vianney High School provides for our community. 

In addition, I was reminded, I “love not so much what we have acquired as what we have made and whom we have made it with.”

Thank you for entrusting your son to our care.  Thank you for being part of the Vianney Family! 

Academic Excellence and Beyond!

As principal of St. John Vianney High School it's hard to go almost anywhere in St. Louis without being recognized.  It certainly doesn't help that I wear Vianney gear 90% of  the time.  Be it restaurants, grocery stores, the movie theater, or church, it's comforting to see a friendly smile, receive a nice greeting, or catch a wave from a person who identifies me as the principal of Vianney!

As such, I am often approached and asked questions about our school by prospective families or introduced to them by current Vianney parents and students.  I always love these opportunities to speak about the magic of our school!

The mission at St. John Vianney High School is to develop young men for spiritual, academic, and personal excellence in the Catholic, Marianist tradition. 

We seek to develop Men of Character and Accomplishment who leave our institution intellectually curious, courageous and compassionate, with a strong faith formation and a personal relationship with Christ. A wonderful mission- and, yes, a tall order!

We are very much aware of our school’s reputation for academic excellence, and we are very proud of it! 

• In 2012 we were recognized as a top 50 Catholic High School for our Academic program, commitment to Catholic education, and civic awareness.  
• In 2013 the Gurian Institute recognized Vianney for our implementation of brain-based strategies and research as a Model School (1 of 12 in the country).
• In 2014 our school became a National School of Excellence (awarded to the top 5% of Catholic High School's in the country!) 

However, I do want to share another vital component that MUST, in our minds, be in place in order to ensure a successful and challenging program that achieves our mission.

Discussions with colleagues working in education as well as a wealth of research point to the necessity of an educational approach that takes far more than just the academic curriculum into consideration. At Vianney, we have made a commitment, not only to affording our young men with academic as well as extracurricular options, but also to ensuring that we are equipping our students to be authentic, to seek a fulfilling and active faith life, and to have a strong understanding of the importance of leadership and character in all that they do. 

While Vianney is blessed to possess a true family spirit in our community, the capacity building and support of our students such that they leave us as Men of Character and Accomplishment is something that does not just happen. 

In what has become an increasingly fast-paced world, with a deluge of information at our fingertips, it is a challenge for staff and parents to guide high-achieving young men with high expectations as they navigate through life and its challenges. The ability to recognize how to take things as they come, to slow down and to be mindful of our approaches is a complex skill. It is one that requires a comfort with discomfort– a tension- as all of us want everything to be perfect; we want to feel positive and have everything work out, yet life has taught us that things just don’t always happen in smooth and uncomplicated ways. Thus we find ourselves, an institution of excellence, working to clarify that this means building capacity and understanding that excellence requires a journey- that it is not solely about outcomes but more importantly about understanding oneself and the development of the individual along the the way (spiritually, academically, and personally).

Five years ago I started my tenure as Vianney's principal with the hopes that our school would grow in to a community that understood the importance of engaging our students in the learning process, cared for students like they were our own children, and that challenged and inspired them to expect more of themselves while emphasizing the importance of helping others to achieve more. 

As I look up and down our halls, as the twitter feeds continue to fill with differentiated learning in our classrooms and stories of personal, team, and community success, I would suggest the evolution of our school is well on our way.   

We welcome you and all to St. John Vianney High School- a school of which we are very proud- and one that affords not only an exceptional academic experience but a commitment to learning, leading and living well.

NEW YEAR--NEW opportunities--Same "OLD" Traditions

A new year, new courses, a new baseball field, and soon for our class of 2016 graduates, new colleges, universities, and opportunities to continue on their path to be Men of Character & Accomplishment!  

We all face newness as the calendar year has turned.  Parent, students, faculty and staff, our communities and our world will soon encounter MANY NEW "things" as 2016 unfolds.

The word 'NEW' can conjure up a variety of images, thoughts and perceptions depending on the person or the situation. 

For many, ‘NEW’ means opportunities, expanded learning, excited optimism; for others, it can conjure up feelings of uncertainty, worry, and even pessimism that something NEW cannot possibly be as good as the ‘old.’ 

While both approaches are fairly common, what I have found is that change is constant and, thus, our role as we prepare our students at St. John Vianney High School is to educate our young men beyond course content, to ensure that they possess the ability to be flexible and adaptable and work with courage and curiosity as they face the ‘NEW.’

This in itself is NOT a 'NEW' concept to Vianney or our Marianist traditions.  Since our establishment in 1960 Vianney has educated our students so they can best adapt and change with the signs of the times.

I recently read an expert from a speech given to students in the late 1970's the person delivering the speech stated the following skills would be needed for the 1980s:

“Students will need to have a strong intellectual bias. They must not only tolerate complexity, but welcome it as an intellectual challenge…the preferred skills will be analytical and intellectual.”

As we enter 2016 the skills students need to be successful have not changed all that much.  At Vianney we have an important task and responsibility to educate our students so they can:

• Enhance their spiritual development and formation of faith;
• Focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration;
• Create, evaluate, and effectively utilize information, media, and technology; and to
• Pay rigorous attention to developing adequate life and career skills including:
• Initiative & Self Direction;
• Social & Cross-Cultural Skills;
• Productivity & Accountability;
• Leadership & Responsibility;
• Flexibility & Adaptability.

I am so  excited for 2016 to begin and for what the future has in store for our Vianney family! It is evident to me that we are carrying on the ‘old’ tradition of preparing our young men  for the ‘NEW.’

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Christmas, Perhaps Means a Little Bit More!

Earlier this week I began to write my blog about the complexities of dealing with ambiguity and felt it an apt post for this time of year. December at school (or in life in general) is a time when the excitement of upcoming holidays is often coupled with a feeling of exhaustion due to a number of items still requiring focus and hard work right up until the end of the semester. 

Having said that, I came into to school yesterday and I knew immediately upon arrival that I needed to change my blog topic.

As I walked in I passed a clothesline of socks being hung with care by Vianney icon and pseudo St. Nick--Charlie Walsh.  The socks were to serve as encouragement to our student-body of the good they could do for others while simultaneously doing "damage" to their rival grade levels. 

Metaphorically, the socks represent a tradition at Vianney that has existed for more than 20 years thanks to the help of the Lettermen's Club, Charlie Walsh and Paul Rhame.  They represent an important part of our culture--bringing service, justice, and peace to those MOST in need during this holiday season--kids!  The beauty of the Vianney Toys for Tots Fundraiser is both in its simplicity and reciprocity.


Students compete by grade level, trying to raise more money then the other classes by donating change, often pockets and pockets, of change, in to empty snack barrels.

Coins counts against your class, paper money adds to your team total. The prize at the end....Bragging Rights! And a lesson that "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." 

Traditionally this Annual Vianney display of service for others has raised between $5k-$10k with all funds going to purchase toys for children who otherwise might not have as spirited a Christmas as most of our families. Children who our students never get to meet, faces they never get to see--our students' only solace is the satisfaction of helping those who could not help themselves this Christmas season.

The extra joy also comes from the Saturday morning shopping spree!  Teenage boys frequently become consumed with societal perceptions of what it means to "Be a Man" or at least an adolescent, high school boy.  Egos, attitudes, and selfish wants can become part of any teenage boys' persona, but not on that one Saturday morning.  For a couple of hours our Lettermen's Club will shop till they drop, racing up and down aisles, grabbing toys ranging from Monster Trucks and Tractors to Barbie Dolls, teddy bears, bicycles, and Play-Dough!  

Nearby shoppers will frequently remark how respectful our students are and how much joy and laughter they exude while shopping for other children. Stories of Christmases past and reminiscing about their favorite childhood toy usually occurs. Smiles will extend on their faces as they purchase make-up sets and princess play-sets, board games and basketballs.  So much fun will occur that at least for a few small moments our students almost forget they are shopping for others and the spirit of Christmas slowly fills their hearts!  As our students head to the checkout counters with cart after cart of Christmas toys it's in that moment when I often realize just as the Grinch once did that, "Christmas perhaps doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps... means a little bit more!"

All of this hit me hard this week and I am very thankful it did. It forced me to realize that I had let the busyness and complexities of work cloud the things that mean the most: the importance of assisting and supporting those who are less fortunate than us, the unique spirit of community in which we exist, and a genuine appreciation for the people with whom I am surrounded.

Suffice to say, this post is an opportunity for me to say thank you: to our staff, our students, our alumni, and families for believing in and supporting Vianney in so many ways.

I hope that everyone has a joyful Christmas Season. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Thank you for the many gifts you bring to our school, to our Vianney family, and to me on a daily basis!

Vulnerability--the key to connection, learning, and development

Strength, Determination, Reliability, Integrity, Courage, those characteristics, the biblical connection to the gospels of St. John and St. Mark, and the existing statues in Tower Grove Park inspired Vianney's 1st principal, Bro. Ken Nesbit to select the mythical creature as the school's mascot back in 1960.

It would be difficult to debate the selection or the merits of the Griffin. After all, upon walking across the stage at commencement and receiving their diploma, we hope all of our students have developed in to Men of Character and Accomplishment that can PROUDLY exhibit the Characteristics of the Griffin throughout their adult lives.

These characteristics identify the qualities that define the best version of the men our students strive to become. And while all honorable, and necessary, and valid, I cannot help but think sometimes about what NEW characteristic I would add to the existing traits.  

What word can encompass what we hope our students will eventually become?

The quality that I would suggest is as important as any other a Vianney Griffin could display: vulnerability.

I frequently hear parents say, “He’s a teenage boy, so he doesn’t tell me anything.” I’ll allow that, for many boys, this unwillingness to share details with adults – and parents in particular -- is an appropriate step in their burgeoning independence. They want to manage their own affairs, and high school  offers them an opportunity to begin to test their self-reliance. 

Too often, though, boys confuse communication with dependence. They want to solve their own anxieties and disappointments, and they clutch victories in private, lest they appear in need of external validation. They fear being judged as weak by asking for assistance from teachers or judged as inadequate by verbalizing their emotions to peers.

What some boys fail to see is that vulnerability underpins so many of those attributes they aspire to develop and that we hope the Griffin, and ultimately, they will possess. 

A recent report by Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley titled “For Whom the Boy Toils: The Primacy of Relationship in Learning” (2013) affirms the long-held view that a young man's learning is enhanced when he enjoys strong bonds with his instructors, coaches, and mentors. 

Our own anecdotal data tells us that those students most ready to achieve scholastic success at the high school and college level view their teachers as allies rather than as adversaries, but that perspective comes from trust, and that trust comes from one’s willingness to be vulnerable. 

In her 2010 TED talk on vulnerability, Dr. Brené Brown describes her own process of wanting to throttle all manner of weakness within herself, analyze it, figure it out, and then cast it aside. In essence, she conveys an adolescent boy’s approach to vulnerability: resist it and conquer it by force and sheer will.  She later acknowledges, though, the futility of such an approach: “In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.”

We know that our young men benefit greatly from the relationships they build while at Vianney; the friends they make during their four years here will be their friends for the next 40 years and help them celebrate birthdays, marriages, babies, and career and personal milestones! 

Yet our task is to convince them to make the most of these relationships by showing their teachers and their peers who they really are, even if that identity is continually evolving. Vulnerability enhances connection, connection enhances learning, and learning enhances development.

Young men most readily see the power of vulnerability in the athletic arena, as sacrifice and faith in one’s teammates are cornerstones of a team’s success. Yet they need to embrace this vulnerability just as much, if not more, outside of the lines of play. 

Students must remember that those moments when a fellow student stands in Mass to share a personal reflection, at Kairos to discuss a struggle he has overcome, or in the offering of intentions during a class prayer are the ones that ennoble us as a community. 

Those brave young men allow themselves to be seen – in ways large and small – and they deserve not just our support but our courage to do the same as we develop them into 

Traveling to Rome with my smartphone & faith

In a few short days I will begin my exciting pilgrimage to Rome to participate in the Vatican’s  World Education Congress to discuss some of the more critical concerns in Catholic education. As part of these discussions, the Congregation aims to re-energize the Church’s commitment to education, by means of this World Congress.

The goals of the Congress are as follows:

• To offer schools and universities a place where they can dialogue and debate about the challenges that the “educational emergency” unavoidably provokes for our societies, educational systems and the Church;

• In light of ethical and religious principles, to draft a written analysis of the above-mentioned challenges and their repercussions for every field of education. 

• In light of the Magisterium, to examine in greater depth the ideas that education is proposing and developing about humanity and society;

• To formulate useful suggestions and guidelines;

• To draft a message that is meaningful, descriptive and challenging.

The Vatican has informed us that Pope Francis will be in attendance on the last day of the Congress and will offer his own words on education.
As I prepare for this journey there are a million thoughts and emotions that are running through my head and my heart. As a life-long (cradle Catholic) this is an adventure of a life-time! One that brings me great joy and one that I hope in many ways makes my family proud. 

I've struggle for weeks to try to articulate what this journey means to me and honestly, I've fallen short in finding the words. I'm hopeful that long airplane rides and time spent inside the walls of the Vatican will provide me words at a later time.

So instead, I'll use this blog as I often do, to share my thoughts in hopes that someone will read them....

With Open House recently concluding I remain so proud of all of our faculty, staff and students. The outpouring of emails, text messages, and tweets about our school and the character of our young men has been the prevailing theme this week! It has made me reflect more on our school community, the Vianney family, and what a gift Catholic education is for all of us!

I can't help but think of how fortunate our current, past and present students are to have been blessed with a tremendous gift: the gift of faith through Catholic education. But like any gift, it must be cared for and tended to.

I pray our students don’t put it on a shelf and treat it like an antique; something to be admired and appreciated but never used. My hope is that they don’t treat it like an old favorite toy; outgrown, forgotten and neglected in the bottom of the toy box. Hopefully they will treat this gift like most people treat their smartphones. 

You may have noticed most people take every spare moment to check out their smartphone(I know I do). They take it with them everywhere. When they need an answer to a question they look it up on their phone. When they need encouragement from their friend, they call or text on their phone. It is their constant source of comfort and assurance that they are connected to others and can access help.

Our faith should be like that too. We should take it with us everywhere. When we have a question about what to do with our life, we should turn to our faith and the Church. When we need comfort or assurance, we should turn to prayer. Our faith and trust in Jesus should be our constant source of comfort and connectedness.

As we all know too well, our smartphones will get outdated and we will have to replace it. 

We never have to replace our faith. Our faith comes with free upgrades (sacraments) and free weekly updates (Sunday Mass). Yes, we are committed to a lifetime contract, but there is no iPhone that continues service after you die.

If people (including myself--specifically myself) spent as much time in prayer as we do on our smartphone, imagine how much it could change the way we live and change the world!

Remember this each time you reach into your pocket and pull out your phone.

So as I head to Rome I will take my smartphone and my faith and hope that my connectedness is strong during my travels.

Life has MANY ways of testing a person's will

This has been a difficult week for all of us at St. John Vianney High School. One that has required a lot of personal reflection. One where our faith has been tested and needed.

I find that inspiration for my writing comes at different times and through a variety of channels, and this week was certainly no different.

As I reflected this week I have received many heartfelt and thoughtful emails, texts, and calls from the Vianney community and other area administrators and schools, offering words of encouragement and prayers. Please know your sympathy for our community this week has not only been appreciated, but helpful to us all.

I also came across a quote on Twitter that immediately spoke to me in a time when I needed something to speak to me the most. It read:

“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once.”
I quickly copied the quotation, as I knew I had found my inspiration for this week.

This week we lost one of our Vianney Griffins far too soon. As principal this required many

messages to families, faculty, and students. It required many answers, most of which I

learned I was ill-equipped to deliver.

Perhaps that's been the most frustrating. As a school leader we are often looked to "have the answers" or "fix the problem." Yet, the moment I learned on Saturday night that our student had passed, I knew I wouldn't have answers or a solution to the problem.

“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will”. This week has certainly done just that.

We had to do so many things this week that I had wished we’d never have to do in our school. Our principal’s council went to work throughout the night on Saturday and into Sunday evening to try to prepare to care for our kids who would, just like us adults, struggle and grieve and have a million questions we could not answer.

We began preparing prayer services, communion service, prayer cards, communication plans, counseling strategies and handling the many issues that I now understand come from a student’s passing. Expectations of work have never been an issue for me, but doing so with a heavy heart seems abstruse.

Yet in the darkness, I saw again what makes our community so amazing. I saw that even with heavyhearts and their own struggles and questions, our team would not let the passing of our student damper their compassion or their attention to detail, so I would like to record here my profound appreciation of Scott Brown, Michelle Steeg, Linda Sodemann, Rob Staggenborg, Kim Mohr, Father Tim Kenney, Mike Loyet, Terry Cochran and those who in your own small ways have been there every second of every day balancing the needs of our students when they needed us most.

I realized this week that it isn’t death in itself, however, that is tragic, even if it is always sad. As adults we are accustomed to announcing deaths, as we say goodbye to long-serving faculty or staff members or alums who have gone on before us to God’s heavily kingdom, mostly after full lives, and typically marked by as much joyous remembrance of their achievements and contributions to the world and their families as about regret at their passing. The Vianney Book of Remembrance similarly records the ending of lives, shorter or longer, among our family members and loved ones who we lift up in prayer.


We also have the pleasure of announcing happier events like births and marriages.

But it is a different and much sharper sadness when it is our young who are being mourned. While we can and should focus on the positive aspects of our brief interactions with a young soul now prematurely departed from this world, we are also deeply aware of the promise unfulfilled, of all the good that they might have done in the world. There is no getting around it: there is little more melancholic at a school, a place that normally glows with the incandescent energy of youth, than the early extinguishing of one of its candles.

So as we prepare to lay our student to rest and say our final good-byes on this earth, until we meet again, I’ve also thought about what I want for all of our students.

My prayer is that our young men leave Vianney for their next stage of life with a passion for all that they do, a curiosity that inspires learning, and the courage to step outside their comfort zones.

By courage I mean that I know that life never presents us with a straight path; that each one of us is faced with times when we find ourselves without an answer, without a direction or, alternatively, with too much coming at us at once and no clear sense of what to do next.

While being able to problem solve is a fundamental key to success, it is even more important to work to ensure confidence and courage during the uncomfortable stages prior to solving a problem or dealing with a dilemma.

“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will.

And I also hope and pray that our students and community will continue to watch out for each other, and if you yourself are having difficulties, don’t hesitate to talk to someone.

Vianney does love you; our faculty and staff, as well as your friends, are here to listen and help.

And though the road in life is never straight, by choosing our path, we choose our destination.