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When Skye asked if I’d speak at Bob’s ceremony, I asked her what the tone of the speech should be. She said, " I am hoping that your remarks will be touching and a little irreverent at the same time." At the expense of words already spoken . . . and my continued employment, here goes.
I'm a 'Bob Fan'.
Eighteen years ago, Bob Weintraub, then the first-ever Assistant Headmaster at BHS, applied for his current position as Headmaster. No one was sure if he was allowed to apply for the job, so a number of us staff began a 'Bob Fan Club' and circulated a clipboard to petition the School Committee to allow him to be considered for the position. The printing room in the UA building made up buttons with his then-bearded visage and the Brookline Tab ran a brief human interest story that the staff at Brookline High School were rallying around their relatively new, young assistant headmaster to become their leader. We had all come to know Bob well in his first few years as the headmaster's assistant: slavishly hard-working, witty, personal and perceptive, peripatetic, risk-taking, funny, ready to use a choice Yiddish phrase with a mostly faded but still slightly detectable Bronx accent, two kids in the grade schools, and a passionate educator who loved teaching, learning, and getting to know each student and teacher well. Bob showed up in his new role the following September having memorized over the summer the names and faces of the entire set of 1800 students from the annual Murivian yearbook, one of so many personal touches that keep his daily focus on students and teaching.
What brought this man to our school? Bob has worn many hats He has served as a prison counselor, a waiter on a ship, worked in a button factory, was the NY City Public Schools Golf Champ (like there was stiff competition?…), worked on a kibbutz, played a hippy when he met Judy, and now lives works, dines, plays, and prays in the same town where he has worked for over 25 years.
Staff joke that Bob has profound ADD/ADHD and should really get tested sometime. I'll admit that having a conversation in the cafeteria or at a staff breakfast with Bob is a trying exercise in watching his eyes dart about. I've come to understand that this is just Bob multi-tasking and always working overtime. He's never settled with business as usual or 'cruise control'. Of his many mantras, 'Ready, Fire, Aim' is his declaration to act, and remain in motion, often considering consequences later. I don’t believe this. Bob always considers consequences in his actions, like a chess player might with each move. And he’s always moving. To paraphrase astronaut Gene Krantz's character in the film documentary 'Apollo 13', in Bob’s universe, 'Status quo is not an option!' We've come to expect, tolerate, study, value, and learn from Bob's dynamic style. He has never mandated a new program or issued an edict without applying it to himself. Examples abound, including joining a summer Critical Friends study group as part of faculty professional development, rappelling from a rope down the wall of the quadrangle in support of the Rock Climbing course, dressing up and acting out as the scandalous 'Ali G' on stage as a fellow cast member of the annual faculty talent show ‘Moonlighting’, teaching English, and on and on. As our leader, Bob is in every way each one of us, and more so. There are countless other examples over the years of Bob as a profligate and prophet, prodder and pedagogue, guiding his faculty by challenging, moving, and uplifting us intellectually and professionally as educators of the school and citizens of the world.
On reaching consensus: early on in my career, Bob called me at home lat one night. It was Bob. He needed advice about an administrative hire. And he was asking me?! I was flattered, only to learn the next day that half the staff received the same call. Bob does his homework, and is famous for staying up late doing it. Raise your hands in the house if you have at some point been polled, side-bared, or taken into confidence by this man?
Bob is passionate about solving the achievement gap, and unflinchingly resolved to do so one child at a time. This expressed mission has been his Ahab’s Whale since becoming Headmaster. Tripod, African American Scholars, Day of Equity, Heart of Brookline all come to mind as Bob's brainchildren to confront the racial inequity in achievement head-on. Where other leaders might resign themselves to this complicated educational dilemma, Bob will simply not let it go. His pragmatism, creativity, and single-minded determination to take down the gap at BHS is Bob’s pragmatic ‘can’t quit’ spirit and belief in every child. I still have hanging above my desk at home a message Bob wrote to faculty in the early 90s:
“Yesterday’s model for how kids learn can no longer serve our children today. We must engage and challenge our kids as we have never done before …
Bob’s passionate writing and reflections to us about events in our daily lives as educators and citizens should be compiled in a book. It will be a whimsical, gripping, historical, moving account of the fast times at Brookline High School in the 1990s. It will be a best seller.
Bob as Headcheerleader: Bob is genuinely upset when 'US News & World Report' ranks Brookline anything less than #1, when Newton wins at Thanksgiving, when the papers write anything unflattering about BHS, when fewer than a dozen kids get into top schools, when one student from somewhere in the middle does not have at least one adult in the building with whom s/he can connect, and when a student in some way violates another of Bob’s core beliefs: “Freedom with responsibility, liberty and duty, that's the deal!” Another of Bob's mantras, that ninth graders hear from their first day in the building and repeatedly over their four years at BHS, Bob is righteous about being a good citizen of our community and the world. If Bob had to go to the mountaintop, it is this phrase that would be carved into his tablets and on display in the Atrium. Instead, the phrase hangs prominently above his office desk, alongside a print of Picasso’s “Guernica”, family photos, monsters from Maurice Sendak’s “Where The Wild Things Are”, and a picture of his beloved Jackie Robinson. And like reciting the Hebrew Shema, his single “Freedom and responsibility” prayer sums up Bob’s entire unyielding belief in public education -- that weighing individual freedom with responsibility is fundamental to building each and every student’s moral, ethical, and political core. As the building’s guiding philosophy, he lives by it daily and demands that all others in our school community do the same.
Spring 1993. The mood in the auditorium was hushed. A recent racial incident had divided members of the staff and exploded in the media. Bob called everyone to the auditorium for a challenging conversation and understanding about race relations at BHS. There were accusations, misunderstandings, and division amongst many. It was tense and prickly. And there was Bob at the podium, the least enviable place to be, yet there was Bob - at his finest, not shirking from the difficult conversation or hard feelings, but confronting them head-on and forcing others around him to see, hear, and process others’ points of view, while pushing everyone to see the bigger picture – a harmony and shared mission to learn from our differences and come to a consensus in understanding. This moment underscored Bob’s philosophy, strength, and determination to push us as a faculty and community into risky areas with his unwavering stance at the podium. There are countless examples over the years of Bob as leader and prophet, guiding his faculty by challenging, prodding, moving, and uplifting us intellectually and pedagogically as educators of the school and citizens of the world.
Summer 1998. Bob had a mission for the upcoming year to get the High School to address ‘middle kids’, students who slip through the cracks and should be doing better. To solve this educational dilemma, we’re meeting at 8 a.m. on a beautiful mid-August morning at Mary Burchenal’s house in Dedham. I'm a fast biker but have trouble keeping up with Bob – 15 years my senior - speeding ahead of me along Brookline’s back roads in his biker Lycra®, not so mindful of the pot-holes and opening car doors. We spent the afternoon discussing the problem, tinkering with programs and designing new ones to address this issue. I left the meeting energized for the new year and idealistically ready to tackle a seemingly intractable problem in schools. In Bob’s school, no educational concern at BHS can be left unaddressed and every problem in our school – big and small – must be examined and acted upon. Bob as Headvisionary has this effect on us all as educators.
Fall 2007. Talking to Bob about the possible town override is like speaking with a general about to bring his troops to battle. He’s almost giddy about the possibilities a successful override will bring to the high school: A new schedule, financing for new programs, increased teacher pay. The work he’s already done to align the major players, politics, and media are part of his artful, creative, assured determination to simply do what’s best for his staff and students. The caché that Bob has built in the community is powerful, allowing him to constantly articulate the need within and beyond the schoolhouse for funding and resources to provide the most for Brookline students. However the vote goes, we know that Bob was riding his white horse in front of the charge.
Bob develops personal connections and meaningful relationships with every adult in the building. In our time together, I've come to learn from, live with, value, respect, question, treasure, abide by, seek guidance from, and ultimately love my relationship with him. To so many of us teachers and students, Bob is at once mentor, a teacher's teacher, fatherly, avuncular (more in recent years), Headcoach and helmsman, principal and principled, longtime part-time professor of pedagogy, politico and politician, sports fan and everyman, moralist and mensch. He is determined, equitable, expressive, an intellectual, nuanced, positive, philosophical, pragmatic, questioning, righteous, an urbane cowboy (those boots . . . ), valued, witty, zealous, zanily optimistic, and just extraordinary.
I know that I speak for over 250 current colleagues and many, many more over the years, thousands of students and their families, and the larger Brookline community in saying:
“We're all Bob Fans.”
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