Faster, Higher, Stronger

Mike Jiran: Prep has been a part of your life more or less from the start. What has that meant to you?

Chris Caulfield: It definitely started long before I was ever a student here! I can remember trips with my grandfather [Edmund Caulfield, ’37] when he would take my brother [Edmund, ’01] and me down to Exchange Place and let us walk around the pier. And then we would always stop at Prep to see where it was and how it was going. Another great memory is going to the 1994 state football championship game with my dad [Jack Caulfield, ’71]. So I think in a lot of ways Prep has just been in the fabric of my life for all of it. My grandfather and my father were so intrinsically linked to the school that it just spilled over for us. But I think the true testament was when I came back to work at Prep. As I was finishing my time at Boston College I remember thinking about staying in Boston and teaching in a public school there. But it was as if there was a tractor beam pulling me back here. I just felt this was where I should be. So Prep has been a central part of my life that has influenced all the other parts.

Thinking back 20 years to when we graduated, what are some of the ways Prep has grown in that time?

Not to say we weren’t strong back then, but academically, Prep has grown very significantly as we’ve kept pace with the evolution of education. Today, we rely strongly on formative assessment, the idea of students working through failures—not just getting a zero on a quiz and moving on, but learning from the experience, fixing it, and then when they get to that summative piece, being prepared to succeed in it. That’s a change even from when I started working here 15 years ago, but certainly from when I was a student here 20 years ago.

Obviously technology is another difference-maker. But again, I think we have adapted well as a school community to continue to do something every Jesuit school is tasked with: meeting students and caring for them where they are. We know that in this world that they’re in, students have cell phones, and students have social media accounts. So how do we respond to that in a caring, nurturing way? That’s a goal Prep had back then, but it looked very different because that context didn’t exist. Who are some people who defined Prep for you as a student?

I’ve always thought of Tony Azzarto, S.J. as one side of Prep: the person who would always pick you up and dust you off after you’d failed, and not judge you. People like Tony represent a sort of unconditional love. Another example would be Mike Burgess as a track coach. Even after a failure I always knew could lean on him. And then the other side of it was high expectations, high standards, which is just a hallmark of Prep. I think of John Irvine, ’83, P’11, both as a coach and a teacher, always pushing us. John used to take off points if you didn’t have a creative title for your essay. But even with something just as simple as the title of your essay, he pushed you to really make the effort and think outside the box, which I really appreciated. I think of Marie Curry in AP History and Jim DeAngelo, ’85 in German, always pushing us to think critically. Tom Murphy, ’85, in my World Civ class was a fun and engaging teacher, but also had really high standards. John Irvine’s infamous “Joe Average” note next to the title haunts me even now. But it does remind me to aim high.

Oh, If I saw that on my paper it was like, “Oh my God, I’ve failed!”

You mentioned succeeding Mike Burgess as track coach. What did you learn from that experience?

One of the things I wanted to focus on when I took over from Mike was to keep that tone of unconditional love, and mix that with John Irvine’s influence to create an unconditional love that would really breed high standards from my athletes, and from my students. I also admired Mike’s dedication to sticking with the program as long as he did, when he easily could have been doing it at a public school that might have been easier. I’d like to think I learned a lot from Mike in that respect.

I wanted to continually grow the program and build the program. I think we went from a roster of maybe 30 or 40 to more like 60. That gave me a lot of face time with a lot of kids, which I loved. But it also created a team environment where every day, guys were pushing each other to be the best version of themselves. The winning didn’t happen right away, and I learned from Rich Hansen and others that that might be the case. But when the winning started to happen I was just so grateful for all the lessons I had learned in those initial years to get us to where we were succeeding at a high level.

One of the key lessons, and I think I said this to the track team even this year when I talked to them: it was always about great that would guide them. Working hard and being together as a team are really important for winning, but they’re also really important for life in general.

Thinking about your time teaching English at Prep, and now as principal, who are some key influences along that road?

When I first started, Rich Peters, ’85, who had taught me as a senior, was also my department chair. That’s always an interesting dynamic, but maybe not so unusual since he was my boss at that point and that felt pretty normal. But I remember Rich really holding me to high standards as a new teacher. He challenged me to think: “What am I doing here, how do I approach the class, how do I approach assessment, how do I approach my relationship with students?” Rich did a great job of making it clear what I was doing here. I wasn’t just coming back to a place that was familiar and chatting with kids in a classroom; I needed to do so much more than that. I really took that to heart as an influence early on.

Later on when I was chair, it wasn’t necessarily one person in the department who stood out. It really was everyone. I had the privilege, and I really think it was a privilege, of observing everyone, either for full periods or even drop-ins. I constantly remember going into someone’s classroom and getting a great idea that I could use in my classroom. They say teachers are the best thieves, and I think that’s true in a lot of ways. I always found observing classes, I would get great ideas from colleagues that I could use effectively with students. I really appreciated that when I was in the chair role.

A special thing about Prep in general, as a young teacher or as a more veteran teacher, is the willingness for everyone to be a team, and to stop and have a chat and ask how it’s going in the classroom, or what a colleauge might need. Benefiting from that as a young teacher, and then giving it back when I became more established, and the relationships that helped me build—that’s something I will absolutely cherish for the rest of my career.

Where do you see Prep’s strengths right now?

As Jesuit institution, we obviously think a lot about the Grad at Grad, and the one piece that always stands out to me as our strength is

“open to growth.” I have never felt that Saint Peter’s is a school stuck in its ways in any facet. Every year, every meeting, in any role that I’ve been in, the conversation always gravitates to, “How can we do this better?” That’s a really great strength of the school, knowing that we can’t just rest on our laurels or assume that if something was successful three years ago it will be successful today. That constant evolution is a true strength of the community and everyone seems to be on board.

And then this year I’ve been reminded that our community itself is a huge strength, particularly our alumni network. Our Career Day this year is just one example. So then looking to next year with that evolution piece, how can we do this better next year, using the alumni network to help students who are currently in our building? Again and again, it’s just an excellent resource and we hardly even need to ask for support, because the alumni are so dedicated to us.

Beyond alumni, you think about parents, and how dedicated our parents are to our programming. We relied on parents recently for the incoming parent orientation. There are just so many people willing to come in and help Prep at every turn. I’m sure other schools have that, but I know we have it in such a robust way and I’m grateful for that.

What are some growth areas?

We need to continue to be open to growth, as we consistently look at how we do things and adapt constantly. The world changes so quickly. I think of how areas like enrollment are influenced by changing landscapes. Our challenge is to be cognizant of all that and make decisions in a way that both maintains our dedication to a mission we have always followed, while also adapting and responding to change. From a curricular standpoint, I also really focus on that combination of tradition and adaptation. With the differing landscapes at the collegiate level now, we’re starting to look at partnerships with outside groups that we might not have entertained before, that might help us put forth more curricular options. When students are looking for more course offerings, a school will always deal with staffing and feasibility issues. But we can get creative in finding ways to offer a more robust curriculum in a more competitive environment than it’s probably ever been. For instance, we currently offer our students computer science courses online through Arrupe Virtual Learning Institute. Could AVLI enable us to offer, say, an introduction to engineering, which we haven’t offered before? Practically speaking, it probably could. But obviously any change presents its own set of issues, so it’s something we continue to examine.

What have been some of proudest moments in the new role?

Just as an example from this year, the Walkathon was a great moment. I have to be honest: I was worried the carnival afterward wouldn’t be well attended. Compared to when we were students and the carnival might be the only fun thing we had to do, these kids have so much more at their fingertips. So that spirit of staying and experiencing this together was really a great community moment that I appreciated. I feel especially proud because community was part of what I guess you could call my “platform” coming in. It was really something I gathered from students. Every student group I met with told me they wanted to see the community aspect of Prep life continue to grow, to improve, to be worked on so it could be even better than it was already—especially coming out of the pandemic where it might have lost a bit of luster. So utilizing the whole team, Catie Eppler, Michael Gomez, ’91, everybody who really planned the Walkathon and then seeing it come to fruition made me very proud. Career day was another one that we had planned over the summer with Loual Puliafito, Mike Murcia, ’08, Joe Giglio, ’87 and Catie Eppler. These all-hands-on-deck sort of moments that then produce feedback from students that this was an awesome day that they really appreciated— those have been really proud moments.

And then there’s the small moments I see. On Thursdays I go into the Commons and spend lunch with the boys once a week. As I go around to the tables and chime in and talk to the guys, I always come away feeling very proud that that fabric of community among the student body is very much alive. Students sitting together, enjoying each other’s company, happy to have a break and maybe just talk with their friends. And the constant dedication to a positive environment. No one is looking to cross boundaries; they just enjoy the time and head to class when the bell rings.

After all this time, does anything at Prep still surprise you?

I would say it still surprises me how close the student body can be. There’s that area right outside my office where sometimes, during community period, I’ll walk out there and there will be 20 or 30 kids loudly talking about something or debating something. As funny as it might sound, it surprises me specifically because I remember doing that when I was a teenager, right in this same building but in a very different time. It has only been 20 years, and I suppose other alumni might say that’s not such a long time. But in the world, that is a long time, and to know so many of the same types of things are happening is often surprising to me.

One other pleasant surprise to me—and sometimes you can get goosebumps just observing it or thinking about it—is how willing the adults in the Prep community are to, at the drop of a hat, give up their time for this place. It’s just remarkable to see it and experience it. Whether it’s retreats, open houses, games, plays, musical performances, just supporting students, people give up their weekends and their free time to support our students and support each other. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise me, but nevertheless it’s awe-inspiring.

How do you see Prep changing in, say, the next ten years?

I would like to see a consistent dedication to looking at the data that we gather in the classroom, and utilizing that to improve our instruction. I’m not saying we don’t do a good job of that now, but there’s plenty of room for growth to happen there. And I think that will improve, overall, our instruction and our student learning outcomes. We’ve been moving in that direction as a team; it’s not necessarily a singular vision of mine. Our department chairs, our principal leadership team, our president leadership team—at all those levels, we are looking at how we can use our data to really improve the work we do here. So that’s something I hope to see develop further in the next 5-10 years.

And then this is something I’ve thought about recently, and that I talked about in interviewing for the principal role: Whether it’s our global programming, or things like the career day we just had, I think about this concept of experiential learning. How do we—and this is very Jesuit; it taps into the newest version of the Ignatian pedagogical paradigm—how do we get our students to experience real-world issues in the classroom or elsewhere in the academic program, to have those experiences, and learn from those experiences, that will ultimately prepare them to go out into the world?

So I’ve thought, is there a chance, when we expand on Career Day, to talk about case studies our alumni could give our students and say, “these are issues I deal with in my professional life and this is how I deal with them, or how my team deals with them.” Or even taking it a step further and presenting the boys with the issue and asking them to work through it and compare notes. I think that type of experiential learning where students are going out into a field. It might not be going to an office building, but it might be getting the field to come to them in the classroom. Students applying their knowledge to real-world situations is something I would really like to see happen more in the coming years. Any final thoughts?

I can honestly say that many people told me many things about the principal role, and I find that many of them have been true in a lot of good ways. Something I love about education, and something I love about this job, is there truly is something new to tackle every day, something where I might really have to think on my toes, and also rely on others in a lot of ways. Those are two ways I feel I’m really blessed to be in the role and experience that. It’s helping me to grow as a professional but also as a person in general. I’d like to think that every time I turn my attention to a new issue, it’s an opportunity to affect this place in a positive way.