Looking Toward the Future of BrowningConnect

At our Community@BrowningConnect meeting on May 4, there were a great many questions—patient, fair, friendly questions—about Browning’s plans for the next academic year.  Would our school building be open for face-to-face learning in September? If we were still socially distanced, might we begin the school year early, or later? What does the next iteration of BrowningConnect look like? These have certainly been the subject of strategizing by Browning administrators.

Our knowledge of what the world will bring is necessarily limited, and this lesson seems especially apt today, with the uncertainty and chaos caused by the enduring coronavirus crisis. The directions we want—the directions we may need—are often stubbornly hidden away from our efforts to find them by a tangle of concepts, contexts, and contingencies that are forever in flux. 

While we all hope to attend a fully-open school building in September, we have to be ready for the possibility of persistent social-distancing measures. This would require some significant guidance from state and city public health and medical authorities, but we can imagine some of the steps we might take to have viable in-person schooling while still keeping everyone safe. If schools in Europe and Asia are any guide, such steps could include extended and accentuated health and hygiene measures; reduced class sizes; staggered or alternating daily and weekly schedules; and flexible attendance policies.  

We are also evaluating what our learning program might look like in the fall if we were not permitted to return to the Red Doors. One option could be starting our year online and then beginning face-to-face instruction for the full school when there is a vaccine or better testing available. Another approach would have us limit the density in our building by holding “core” or “signature” classes in person, with the remainder of classes being taught online. Still another option would have boys continue with BrowningConnect, but return to our school building for co-curricular activities that could be completed under social distancing guidelines. Or we could potentially pursue an approach that allowed faculty to teach both in-person and online simultaneously. These and other instructional options are under consideration, though the viability and desirability of all possibilities will remain uncertain until our public health context becomes clearer.

The only certainty I have about the future is that the faculty, staff, and administration of Browning will continue in their relentless commitment to giving our boys the best intellectual, ethical, and social experiences that they can. Even today, my colleagues are tinkering with BrowningConnect, imagining second and third iterations of the program, and projecting what it could and should look like if we are still using it in the fall. They are collaborating with professionals within and outside of Browning. It is, for them, not just a learning platform, but a research project—an effort to understand how best to connect, challenge, and empower boys, even if we cannot be in the same space together. BrowningConnect is not perfect, but I am so proud of what it has accomplished, and I am so excited to think about what it can be if my talented colleagues are given not two weeks, but two months to build it into the finest learning experience we can. We cannot foresee the future, but that is exactly how we will enable it. 

All of our plans risk the possibility of failure, but they are also, by definition, expressions of hope. As our weather improves, as natural life returns, as spring comes to full bloom, perhaps we can all hold fast to that hope—not naively, but in the knowledge that our talented boys, supportive families, and caring professional, compose a community that will surpass the uncertainty of the present moment and find new ways to make sure that every boy is known, loved, and challenged.