Wear Your Pants

By Dr. Terry Macaluso, Head of School

One of the things I’ve always loved about working with students between the ages of 10 and 18 is the never ending list of things-it-never-occurred-to-me-to-prohibit, explicitly.  For example, I have never, directly, prohibited students from jamming erasers into their ears.  I’m talking about the erasers that are attached to the ends of pencils.  It never occurred to me that students would have to be told NOT to do that, but I’m here to report that I have met students in the past who did not understand that a priori.

I’ve never explicitly prohibited students from plugging a metal fork into an electrical outlet.  That didn’t seem to me to be something that would have to be stated.  I was wrong.  I never thought to tell students that it would NOT be a good idea to stack furniture up to a height of 9 feet, and jump off a 4-foot-high ledge with the intention of clearing the stack.  Apparently, that was something that needed to be explained.

I mention these examples in an effort to be sure that nobody is unclear about this: you have to wear clothes whether you are in the classroom or working online.  The thing about working online is that we can all see each other.  If you leave your machine on Teams, and walk around in your bedroom, you are still visible.  Please refrain from taking your computer with you into the bathroom.

Treat your computer as though it were a living thing with eyes—and a memory.  Because it is.  Wear pants—even if you think they’re unnecessary because you’re only visible from the neck up.  In fact, you are much more visible than you might imagine.  Bottom line here is this, dress and behave as though you were in school…BECAUSE YOU ARE!!!

-Taken from the April 15, 2020 Community Briefing