PRINICPAL'S CORNER

A Message from Mr. Linkens as we approach the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

What does it mean to be an American in your community, in your school? Click here to read the full message from the Principal of WVHS.

Welcome to the 2011-12 School Year!

Dear Members of the Warwick Valley High School Community:

This letter is directed to all members of the High School community, particularly the students. As you begin to think about the upcoming school year, I ask you to consider this: Schools hold the power to shape who we are as people, and in turn, we have the power to shape our schools. This unique, reciprocal relationship existing between the student and the school works to create what is generally thought to be the school’s culture.

However, cultures do not arise out of a void, but rather, emerge when a well defined starting point is supported, transformed, or rejected. I suggest we begin with the idea that for the coming year Warwick Valley High School shall be a place inhabited by “men and women for others.” This simple concept has played a significant role in my life, and I believe can be useful to us as we work to create a high school like no other.

A story. I graduated from Brooklyn’s Abraham Lincoln High School in January of 1979 and headed off to study English at Fordham University in the Bronx. The promise of a Jesuit education characterized by the idea “men and women for others” was enough to motivate me to make the long trip each day. You see from January of 1979 to January of 1983, I commuted from my three story apartment house in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn to the Rose Hill Campus of Fordham way up in the Bronx. The trip took two hours each way and included two miles of walking and well over two dozen stops on the “dynamite D train.” I boarded the train at the Kings Highway station (yes, there is also a Kings Highway in Brooklyn), along with mostly white, Italian-, Jewish- and Irish-American members of the middle class as they made their way to their jobs in Manhattan. The next stops, Newkirk Avenue and Prospect Park, brought the entrance of predominately Hispanic and African-American riders, and the next, Atlantic and Dekalb Avenues, brought an array of riders whose backgrounds included India, Pakistan, and Korea. By the time the “D as in dog” train emerged from the dark tunnels that ran underneath the pulsing neighborhoods of Brooklyn into the daylight and across the Manhattan Bridge, it’s inhabitants truly reflected the city’s cultural, ethnic, and socio-economic diversity. The train slowed to a methodical crawl, and I could make out graffiti on a rooftop that read, “Dope is for Dopes”. Everyone saw it.

The train that had grown full as it rolled through Brooklyn, now began to empty as it entered Manhattan. There was a distinct pattern to how this happened. Asian-Americans exited at Grand Street, followed by young professionals, artists, and students at West 4th Street. Then came bankers and briefcase types at the 34th, 42nd, and 50th Street stops. The 59th Street stop was the most interesting. Just about all of the morning commuters were now off of the train, and a handful of passengers, mostly male Hispanic and African-American, most likely coming off of a nightshift and heading home to sleep, entered the train and took the seats just surrendered by those starting the day. The distance between the 59th and 125th Street stops was extremely long, and many of these new riders didn’t take long to drift into sleep. Their heads fell forward or to a side, and jerked upright every now and then only to settle back into sleep as the train rolled on in the early morning hour.

The Yankee Stadium stop, 161st Street, was eerily quiet, as were the next few stops. One by one the “nightshift” people exited, leaving only a handful of riders on board as the train pulled in to the Fordham Road stop. I exited to the street and started my walk down Fordham Road and to the Rose Hill Campus. There, as a Fordham University student, I listened intently to my professors as they shared their knowledge. Somehow they always returned to the idea that what they shared with us should in some way be used for the benefit of someone else. They seemed to want their students to see themselves not as apart from the crowd, but rather, as a part of the crowd. I took their lessons back on the train to Brooklyn each day, and these lessons began to change the way I saw my commute to and from school. The commute soon became a journey of discovery, and I no longer saw the other passengers on the train as people in my world. Instead, I began to see myself as a person in their world. I witnessed how everyone looked cold when it was cold out, and how everyone tilted their head up ever so slightly to read the advertisements posted high on the train walls. I saw how everyone laughed when the conductor announced that we were on the “D as in dog” train, and how no one sat near the man who looked like he had no home to go home to each night. People went to work to pay their bills, looked tired at the end of the day, carried packages home at the holidays, and got wet when it rained. I even came to the realization that whoever graffitied “Dope is for Dopes” high on a rooftop offered his or her message to every man and woman, no matter what race or ethnicity or occupation or religion or social class. Certain things may be a part of everyone’s experience, and the “D” train was a good place to see that, once my professors at Fordham taught me how to see the world through eyes other than my own.

That is what I make of the idea of being “men and women for others.” It is not simply a call for us to participate in charity work or to engage in acts of giving. In fact, those practices often result in us receiving much more than we give. I believe that when we are for “others” we are willing to see the world through the eyes of these others. We come to see the hurt our words can do in those who hear them. We come to realize how someone sees the paper that we throw on the floor, particularly the person who has to pick it up. We come to learn what cannot be purchased because money has been spent to fix what we have vandalized. We come to know the joy someone has when we tell them we believe in them, as well as the pain someone experiences when we fail to notice things are really not good for them right now.

The coming years will bring great changes to our High School. It is with this in mind that I now challenge each member of the Warwick Valley High School community to try to see things using perspectives other than your own. This will not always be easy, and there will be times when each of us will return to thinking that our view is the only view. I have made this mistake often in my life; as a husband, as a parent, as a brother, as a son, as a teacher, as a coach, and as a principal. It is with these failures in mind that I now pledge to work hard to lead the creation of a high school where all views are valued, and where weaknesses and failures are given the same care and consideration as are strengths and achievements.

For we are all passengers on the same train, traveling the same route. We are all warmed by the same sun, subject to the same delays, celebrate the same milestones, mourn the same losses. I ask you to remain mindful of this as we begin our journey of discovery. I challenge you to be “men and women for others."