The Color of Monday: Reflection by the Headmaster of Academics

Monday suffers an undeserved reputation. It surely cannot compete with Friday’s coffee-mug taglines, full of weekend anticipation. And if you are as old as I am, that far-too-catchy tune may remain a berating echo in your head, even 40 years later: “Just another manic Monday, I wish it was Sunday/’Cause that’s my fun day, My ‘I don’t have to run’ day.” I wish everyone knew The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock as well as they know those lyrics, but in any event I confess that I, too, used to wake up to find the Bangles - not Eliot -  invading my brain. Monday morning dread is an experience shared the world round.

So you might be surprised to learn that, by and large, there’s no such thing as Monday blues at OLMC and LGA. On the contrary, we start the week as we end it: living in full, vibrant color. 

I speak not just from observation, but from experience as well. A few Mondays ago, for example, I arose with eagerness, knowing this was the day I would show my students why 19th century intellectual history matters: how the ideas of Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky compose the water in which we swim. I was determined that they should really see and understand that water, so that they will not drown when it turns rough. In naming the shark, we arm young people to face the predator.  I was excited to show the next class the significance of syntax - also water they tend to occupy without realization - by taking them out of their usual pool of English and plunging them into Latin. After all, the subjunctive can make a pretty big difference in your life: when visiting the barber for a trim, “you’re cutting my hair short!” and “you should cut my hair short!” are similar statements that will likely yield opposite results.

Monday is the day I am reunited with my young friends, the too comfortable solitude of the weekend broken. It is a day both as difficult to enter and refreshing as a backyard pool in June. I enter the school to the music of young voices jesting. The eighth grade boys are already bouncing - as they have been for a year now - in the upstairs hall. Suddenly, a small second grader eagerly informs me that something is wrong in the bathroom, confident that I can and will perform any necessary heroics to get things back in working order. A little later, I watch first graders fold a paper circle and learn the properties of a fraction, and then the kindergarteners learn that 8 can be made of many numbers. Stealing a few quiet moments in the Pre-K office, I am discovered by a small, curious face who is supposed to be listening to stories on the rug.

Mondays remind me about the Mexican jumping beans my father used to bring me from Texas. These “beans” are actually seeds that have been invaded by grub. When placed in the sun, they jump as the bug moves in response to the light. Without taking the comparison to grub too far, I think a good school is like that patch of sunlight: it triggers convulsions of joy. They are happy to see each other and their teachers (and -  I hope - me too), and they find joy in learning.

Finally, Monday inevitably brings me to the communal table of the faculty lounge: where adults eagerly discuss the young people they’ve been called to help shepherd into full flourishing. There is far more laughter than tears in this place, far more amusing anecdotes than complaints. This is the place where often a teacher discovers that he loves his job. That coming in that first day of the week is a worthy endeavor, both despite and because it is Monday. Monday, in all its messy, wonderful, jump-for-joy, resplendent color.

Dan Finnegan is the Headmaster of Academics for Our Lady of Mount Carmel School and Lumen Gentium Academy.