Convocation Address, 2020

After five long months away from on-campus learning, I want to welcome everyone back to school. It will truly be great to see you tomorrow and the next day. Also I especially want to welcome our new students and ask all of you GDS veterans to welcome them. We all know what it is like to come into a new setting where you don’t know lots of people. Our job is to make our new students feel at home here. So welcome, newcomers--you belong at Gaston Day School.

I have a friend who retired as president of a large bank here in Gaston County, and one his most important management principles--one of the guiding rules that helped him run his bank so successfully--was this: “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.”

He believed that being smart really doesn’t matter if you don’t care--first and most important, you must be committed to a cause--in his case the bank. Being smart helps, but only if you already care. The more deeply you care, the better. The knowing actually grows out of the caring. 

“I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” 

I want to suggest to you that “how much we care about each other” will make all the difference this year, and I am asking all of us to do our best “to care for each other” more than we ever have before. It is a strange and difficult time we are living in and through. To return to in-person learning at Gaston Day has involved an extraordinary effort. All the changes you see and all the health and safety features and protocols you will experience are part of an amazing campaign to keep us safe and allow on-campus learning. All these changes represent the school’s best effort “to care for each other.” If the changes seem irritating or hard, remember they come from a place of deep caring.

We need each and every one of us to keep caring for each other if we are going to keep the campus safe. Seniors we need you to be our leaders in caring. We need everyone to do all the things that are both simple, yet annoying, and hard, at least until we get used to them. Wear our masks, wash our hands, stay six feet apart from each other. If we do that, then we minimize the likelihood that Covid-19 will make us sick or force us to have to shift to virtual learning again.

We know how to do virtual learning. Some of us are choosing to do that as our primary way of learning. That is a good choice for those individuals. All of us may have to switch to virtual learning if safety dictates it. But won’t it be great if we can stay safe and healthy here, and learn together in person.

And, yes, I do care how much you know. That’s why we go to school. To learn. To be curious. To solve equations. To write poems. To formulate hypotheses. To hit a perfect note. To choose the right colors. But the learning grows out of the caring. We are going to learn a lot because we care so much.

Especially this year, the learning starts with the caring, and whether we learn on campus or virtually from home really does depend a lot on how much we care for each other through observing the safety practices and protocols that we have put in place. And I want you to hear me say this: I care about each of you, and I want the best for you. When you see me wearing my mask, I hope you can see my eyes get real narrow, because that means behind my mask I am smiling at you. And I am going to do everything I can reasonably do and personally practice those things that keep all of us safe and healthy. I am asking you to join me and all the other Gaston Day people who care. We want to become a community or a school of caring people.

I believe that if we create a school full of caring people then we will all be part of one of the greatest years ever. And we will see with our own eyes, wide open right above our masks, that caring for each other really is the most important thing in life. 

It is going to be a great year. And the greatest lesson will be how we all pulled together and cared for each other in all sorts of ways that we never have before. Thanks, everyone. I’ll see some of you at school tomorrow and most of the rest of you the next day.  

Keeping Gaston Day Safe During the Pandemic

Over the last several months, Gaston Day has worked hard to create an environment that will be safe for the opening of school. I want to share with you the major changes that we have made toward that goal, and how we have been able to either meet or exceed CDC guidelines.

While all our improvements are important, there are three features that I especially want to highlight. The first is that we have met the CDC guideline of having every student at least six feet apart in all classrooms. To do so we have had to convert space not traditionally used for teaching into new classrooms. The upper dining hall, the George F. Henry Library, the PKW lobby, and the Henry Center Gym have all become teaching spaces. The result is every Gaston Day student can be on this campus at the same time and still be safely spaced.

If you wonder why so many other schools are going to a hybrid model in which part of their student body is on campus while the rest are learning from home virtually, the reason is those schools have been unable to find enough space to have all their students on campus at the same time. We have done it. As a result, parents do not have to figure out what to do with their children learning virtually from home part of the time. If all goes as planned, and Gaston Day does not have to switch to a virtual platform because public health officials recommend such a move, we can all fit on this campus safely.

The second crucial feature of our plan--and one that may be unique to Gaston Day School--is that we have separated all our grades into cells or cohorts that do not mix with each other during the school day. This has required extraordinary planning and scheduling but the benefits are enormous. Each grade at Gaston Day (except the 11th and 12th grades which are combined into a single unit) is self-contained and does not interact with the rest of the school during and between classes. This limits the possibility of COVID-19 spread and--and this is really important--isolates any COVID-19 cases to a single area without contaminating the rest of the school. So if we do have COVID-19 infections at Gaston Day, we should be able to contain spread, isolate cases, disinfect the affected areas, and return to normal as soon as possible. COVID-19 infections in one grade should not spread easily to other grades.

Even meals will occur by grade as food service delivers boxed-lunches outside each classrooms. In a certain sense, Gaston Day has created fourteen separate schools (or grades) that are meeting on our campus simultaneously, but not interacting. Even where exceptions have to be made to strict separation, as is the case with bus transportation and after-school care, the school has taken great precautions to limit the possibility of spread.

The third safety practice is that everyone at Gaston Day, except our youngest Spartans and their teachers during class, will be wearing masks all day to prevent spread. Lower school teachers will be wearing face shields when teaching so that our younger students can see their faces and understand better. Everyone else will be wearing their masks, and so will Lower School teachers when outside their classroom settings.

And there are other important precautions. We have created several larger classrooms on the Circle to accommodate our biggest classes safely. We have purchased thermometer scanners that take temperatures of everyone as they enter the buildings. We have installed signage that keeps everyone six feet apart in the halls and other common areas. We have placed hand sanitizing dispensers throughout the campus. We have created the new position of Wellness Coordinator (Melissa Fayssoux) to monitor temperature taking and handle anyone who becomes ill. We have enlarged our cleaning staff and developed a strict and frequent cleaning regimen. In all, Gaston Day School has invested almost $200,000 in safety and health improvements to prepare for the reopening of school.

So we go into the new school year well prepared. And, we know from last year, that we are able to move swiftly and effectively to a virtual learning platform if we have to. Public health officials will guide those decisions. We have done our best to be ready for anything.

I know that everyone has mixed feeling as we anticipate a return to school: fear, excitement, eagerness to see friends, curiosity, and so much more. So wash your hands often, practice wearing your masks, and buy your thermometers to begin checking your temperature each morning before you come to school. This is what I am doing every day. And, guess what, it really isn't all that bad. In the afternoon, often I find that I have driven over half way home before I realize that I am still wearing my mask. Pretty soon, things become new habits. The same will be true for you. 

The start of school is just around the corner, and we want everyone to stay healthy and get ready to learn. I hope you know how much I care about you! Remember we are all in this together! We really are!!

Dr. Rankin