Dean's Blog 'Cows'

(Another one for the DOZ list this week:
‘Oh, can’t I?’ said the driver as she left the car parked on the big yellow drop off signs on the tarmac and under a yellow notice…)


It was a chill, grey, late autumn mist in mid September that spread across the field as though dawn had tried and then given up on lighting the planet this morning, or at least that bit that included Wangen (ZH). There was a group of a dozen and a half cows in the near part of the field looming out of the gloomy morning mist. The cows puzzled me. Normal cows eat grass and flick their tails at the same time. Cunning that. Except when they lie down they do this all day. This seems to be the sole point of cows. These weren’t. Instead, they were standing totally, uncannily still stiffly facing a variety of directions, as though some giant child had just taken them out of his toy cupboard and placed them in a group near the fence. The scene was like the age very young children go through when they play next to rather than play with another child. These were clearly not playing. Presumably unwittingly, they reflected all the horrors of a chill, damp, early Monday morning after a wet weekend in October, which is where I was at.

However, they did get me thinking about something that happened in the Dean’s Office the previous week. A student asked to speak with me about a pending situation that this student could clearly see was most likely to spiral out of control and then cause a very difficult situation out of which this student felt climbing was no option. Reputation would be damaged and college entry threatened. Why? Because teenage patience, dignity, reputation and respect were being threatened to destruction by another student. Since student two was in a younger grade than him, student one knew he would be blamed if there was trouble. He understood the implications and reasons. And this was happening publicly and with increasing frequency. Recent history showed this student that a satisfactory remedy was not on the peer personal menu of student two as all attempts to reason had been rejected. So it was time to seek an adult’s advice. I felt thrilled, of course. Here was the perfect model of a student maturing rapidly and sufficiently proactively to obviate a poor decision. Everything we try to instil in students had been internalised. Appropriate measures had been tried. Sensible alternatives had been considered and then prioritised. One had been decided on independently. Already half a dozen boxes on the IB Learner Profile had been checked. Whichever way I examined this particular model it seemed valid.

‘Yes,’ you are saying. ‘Well, that’s good. But where do the cows come in?’ Well, hang on in there. So the student and I devised a strategy together. (Collaboration is under Communication on the IB Learner Profile). The student examined each stage and each proposal showing wisdom beyond his calendar age. Everyone had to be winners; no one need have a dented ego. Respect must be maintained. Cooperation was the target outcome. Has it worked? Well, there’s no Hollywood ending to this anecdote as it is too early to tell and there are too many behavioural variables. But so far there has been no further incident so we are both confident the tense stage is over for this student.

And the cows? Well, I was coming to them…