Tough and Tender

My colleague Marlene gets it. For years she was principal of a large urban school, Queens Lutheran in New York. She served so well that she was named a National Distinguished Elementary School Principal and honored for that at the White House. She knew how to be tough.

One day as the kids were being released at the end of the school day she heard that the older kids were being confronted outside the school by a drug dealer. It took her about one New York minute to get to him. “You get out of here – now! And don’t ever return!” But the dealer was not so easily rebuffed! “Lady, this is a public street. Now you let me alone or I will break your leg!” Marlene got into his face and replied “ You can break not only my legs, but every bone in my body and you will not get to my kids!

Now get your ass out of here before I call my friend Bob at the Precinct Police Office just down the street.” The dope pusher left and was not seen again around Queen’s

Lutheran School. Marlene’s toughness paid off.

Some years Later when Marlene was at her desk in Manhattan as Executive Director of The Lutheran Schools Association of New York tears were streaming down her face and she had to avert her eyes. She was looking right down Columbus Avenue all the way to where she looked in unbelief and horror as the Twin Towers crumbled on 9-11. It was then that her tenderness took over.

Marlene with great assistance from John Scibilia and others at Lutheran Disaster Response moved in to help the victims and their families. Marlene’s special concern was for kids in Lutheran schools of New York. At least 60 of them, preschoolers through high school had lost a parent or grandparent in that disaster. Marlene was at the funerals; she was there to comfort children. She was there to hug teachers. She was there to cradle in her arms those who had lost love ones. She was there to embrace the little ones who came running to put their arms around her legs whenever they heard an airplane come in for a landing. She was tender. Her tenderness moved her to action. Funds were raised so that the tuition of those kids who had lost parents or grandparents were guaranteed Lutheran school tuition up to the time of their graduation. To this day her tears flow when she goes to the Twin Towers Memorial Fountain and lets her fingers scroll over the names of those who had kids in Lutheran schools.

Tough and Tender. That’s the paradigm for what it takes to be a successful urban school principal or teacher. I see it especially in the Lutheran schools of New York and Milwaukee. Those teachers and principals are tough. They hold their kids and their parents accountable. No excuses for homework not finished. No excuses for not showing up at assigned parent-teacher conferences. No excuses for using street language on the school campus. Those teachers and principals are tough.

And they are tender. They love those kids, hug them when they are afraid, pray with them when they feel hopeless, tutor them when they have academic problems and pat them on the back when they succeed.

That’s the way Marlene does it and that is the way kids who attend Lutheran urban schools still experience it. That is how I hope to live: Tough and Tender!