This week, I had the privilege of virtually sitting down with Kyle Wilkie Glass, the Chief Operating Officer and Assistant Head of School for Strategic Initiatives at Fieldston, for an interview. The main focus of our discussion was COVID-19 and how it has affected the school-year at Fieldston. To fully understand Kyle’s approach to education during a pandemic, I first wanted to put this year in perspective.
Kyle talked about his personal approach to handling issues at the beginning of the Pandemic, in early March of 2020. “When I think back to that point in time, information was emerging so quickly and we really didn’t know a lot… The international health community didn’t know very much…” about the virus. As a member of the Fieldston Administration, Kyle explained that he was concerned with understanding how the virus was transmitted and how to best ensure that everyone stayed safe and healthy.
Naturally, that was the top priority for the school last March, and health remains the number one concern for the school Administration, nearly a year later. Kyle told me about the struggles of establishing and maintaining a pandemic-modified educational system. With few instructions on how to do so, Mr. Wilkie-Glass said that he and the Administration had to act swiftly and without external help. Adaptivity became more necessary than ever before, as the school had to take in new health and safety information every day and use it to create a safe return to in person education plan, and communicate that plan to Fieldston families.
For a short while, our conversation deviated a bit from school information. Kyle and I discussed his experiences as a college-level educator during the H1N1 Outbreak of 2009. “As educators…we have dealt with something somewhat similar, the 2009 H1N1 crisis…quite different from this Pandemic, but some of the playbooks were already there.” Fascinatingly, Kyle has many years of experience in the emergency management field, serving as a volunteer on ambulances for more than twenty years. He even became a FEMA certified Emergency Manager.
Kyle expressed to me his positive attitude towards handling the pandemic. “It’s easy to feel defeated, but in reality, people are doing heroic things every day.” He noted that just by doing simple things like commuting to school, members of the Fieldston community have been brave in combating this virus. Kyle indicated his disdain for the phrase ‘new normal’ that is very often used in the context of the unusual nature of the world that we currently live in, “this is not the new normal, nobody thinks this is normal, nobody wants this to be normal, and this will eventually come to an end…things will get better.”
From a student perspective, it seems that every last detail was considered in preparing for on-campus learning this past Fall: masks in the hallways, new sanitizing stations, desk shields, and new capacity policies for the Cafeteria and Library. During our interview, I asked Kyle how the Administration kept track of all these individual details. He expressed gratitude towards everyone else that helped. The division of responsibilities is the only reason that we can go on campus at all this year. The Nursing Team was placed in charge of all health-related policies for on-campus learning, such as coordinating the Magnus COVID-screening. The amount of work that the nursing team put into this process is “remarkable,” he said. Kyle specifically noted the incredible “leadership of Joe Piselli,” the Director of Facilities here at Fieldston.
For example, he told me that in early February of 2020, when the Coronavirus reached the United States, Joe Piselli suggested the use of Virex, a new disinfectant that has since been placed on the EPA’s list of approved products to fight COVID-19. Additionally, Kyle told me about the extraordinary work of Fieldston’s Evening Custodial Team, whose cleaning of the school has taken on heightened importance this year. Effectively, the entire process of education and “school” had to be reshaped in a matter of weeks last Spring, and Kyle thanked all of Fieldston’s teachers and the Division Leaders in particular for their work towards creating a new model for the curriculum. Lastly, he highlighted the work of the Director of Campus Services, Teddy O’Rourke, “Teddy O’Rourke is a phenomenal person who digests new information and quickly turns it into action.”
When I asked Kyle for specific changes that had to be made at Fieldston this year, he responded: “literally everything.” This year, “there have been so many challenges in making this work.” But for Kyle Wilkie-Glass, “the greatest challenge is the greatest opportunity.” As hard as Kyle’s job has been over the past nine or ten months, he has enjoyed the chance to rethink communication and transparency from the school. In this, Kyle has also found his greatest challenge. Dozens of questions from students, alums, administration and faculty come to his office every day. This means that Kyle has had to divide his time between many different lines of communication.
Many in the Upper School, especially those in the Class of 2021, are nervous as to how the rest of this year will unfold. Sadly, this year’s Seniors have missed out on many quintessential aspects of a typical Senior year. During our interview, however, Kyle shared some good news with me: “as long as we are permitted by New York State, we will deliver an in-person graduation for the Class of 2021…nothing will stand in the way of us celebrating their remarkable accomplishments.” Like everything else this year, the school expects that this ceremony will have to be physically distanced and will require masks. Kyle added that “last year, no one thought graduation was possible,” but graduation did happen. If we could have a graduation ceremony last year, we can have it this year, he told me.
As with every school year, it is the responsibility of the administration to calculate the success of an academic year using any number of metrics. Most notably this year, the success will largely depend on COVID-19 statistics. As of right now, the school seems to be doing very well when it comes to the virus, as we have seen little on-campus spread, and contact-tracing protocols have been effective at containing outbreaks. As we near the halfway point of the 2020-2021 school year, Kyle told me that he hopes to keep COVID-19 numbers low in school.
Exciting news came out on January 10th, 2021: New York State has proceeded in its vaccination program, and vaccines are now available for all educators. Kyle was kind enough to share his greatest hope for the Spring, saying that his “most realistic wish is for a successful vaccination program.” At the end of our interview, he asked me to pass along a short message to all Fieldston students on behalf of the Administration, “we are here for you all and we want to support you.” Mr. Wilkie-Glass was incredibly generous with his time and I am so grateful to have had the chance to speak with him.
