what the whole requires

 a job description?

my brother was a brilliant administrator,

his care of his workers, outstanding,

when he died, they lined the streets of Cartersville

to honor his passing,

yet he asserted that he hated job descriptions,

because they easily morphed

into settling for the lesser in what one can do,

in who one is as part of the larger whole,

when I started at Carolina Friends School,

I felt a calling to the students,

to the school, to the future,

an imperative to do whatever needed doing,

whether in my own classes,

with my own students,

or in the larger whole

where a piece of trash might need

to be picked up, a colleague helped,

where an emergency might need somebody, me?

to deal with the snake,

to find a way forward

when the inevitable glitch manifested,

a snowy walkway to be cleaned,

in the last decades more of the staff

that have come to CFS

seem to have narrowed what they feel called to do

and have sought extra compensation

for any of their work beyond the minimum

their self-definition of their job details,

I am now retired

so my job description is non-existent,

the question: "What is your role at the school?"

worth a belly laugh,

yet I still feel the imperative

of helping create and maintain a school

so that the best within the students

can be seen, helped to develop,

so that the best of the potential CFS community

can be allowed and helped

to come into the fullness of what is possible,

such an open-ended charge can be a lot,

yet anything less is too little

for what the great work of a school demands.

by Henry H. Walker

July 23, ‘26