“Nod your heads if you hear me.”
“All eyes on me.”
“I will not compete for your attention.”

Michael always knew how to quiet 500+ students and guide them to become better community members. As Dean of Students, he was required to play the bad cop, consistently addressing base disciplinary matters with deeper guidance by asking students to call on their better angels when navigating dilemmas that tested adolescent decision-making. Michael has a heart of gold and a palpable spiritual core that centers his interactions and work with students and adults. He is a knowledgeable and passionate historian and educator who sparks our curiosity and respect for his expertise. He speaks with joy and listens with compassion, setting a perfect tone to establish shared values and accountability in his classroom, his office, the hallways, Collection, the cafeteria, and extracurricular spaces.

Father of three beautiful children, Olivia, Benjamin, and Joshua, and faithful husband to Tara. A teacher through and through. Civil War tours on his vacations; Civil War reenactments on the front field with his classes; Civil War collections in his office bookshelf. “My man!” when he hears some good news about a troublesome student. “Goodness gracious!” when a student resorts to bad decisions. Rethinking the language of our dress code thanks to feedback from Gail Krotky’s Gender Studies class. Setting a new Upper School cell phone policy to preserve community time and receiving scores of private notes of gratitude from parents who wished they could enforce the same at home. Navigating many, many, many school dances with student “dance piles.” Attending practically all sporting events and reminding fans to cheer for our team and not against others, especially through the highly contentious games with rivaling schools. Many an Oat poke at Michael, and his generous appreciation of becoming a constant target of their jokes. These are some of the things that come to mind when I reminisce about Michael’s 20+ years at Sidwell Friends. I miss the opera music booming from his office in the early morning hours. I appreciated his Star Wars-laden humor, his kindness, and his intellect and devotion as an educator, a colleague, and parent.

Here is a note from Nurse Jasmin, a close friend and colleague who co-navigated many sticky situations with Michael during their shared time. (Michael always gave Nurse Jasmin grief at meetings every time her phone rang with an urgent student call, though it was really a nod to the important work she did for our students.)  Jasmin wrote, “I definitely want to highlight that while working with Michael, he taught me not to take myself so seriously. He was a calming force for me. I also want to share a time that I successfully embarrassed him without knowing it. I was asked to teach a class on condom use and Michael was assigned to supervise my class. If he could, Michael would have gladly rolled up in a ball, shut his eyes, and put his hands over his ears rather than witness me pulling out the wooden penises to practice putting on condoms. That was priceless.”

Michael couldn’t have done his job without the meticulous organization of friends like Susannah Parker, Crystal Matthews, Joseph Banks, and Marissa Thomas-Chan to support his ability to meet the competing demands of a very intense and sensitive position as the Dean of Students. He filled a thankless position in our school and did his best to be a beacon of our school’s values by seeking information from multiple sources to understand a disciplinary case, by pondering the options with care, by collaborating with the faculty/student Honor Committee, and by delivering decisions justly. Michael did so with the optimism that he could recalibrate outward forces toward good. Michael is a man of faith whose quiet path will illuminate the journeys of those who follow in his footsteps.