These days, for the umpteenth time, we are re-examining our 4x4 schedule. Some departments claim they need to run year round, others claim they need the 90 minutes. Sometime in the next two weeks, the department heads will argue about passing time, lunch time, and closing times. This argument has become an old dance, with familiar partners and a reused tune. But instead of taking our old familiar places, we should ask ourselves, honestly what we want a Nantucket High School graduate to look like.

We definitely have not been doing enough of that. Too many of our graduates stumble their way through their first jobs, or boomerang back to the island from the mainland, or drop out of their colleges. Then they come back to their parents, move into their old bedrooms, look at the door and wonder what to do now.

In the fall, I have both of my senior classes research the classes that graduated five and ten years ago. They found that over half of both classes are living on Nantucket. Less than a third of both classes graduated college, while better than two thirds had planned on attending. Very few members of both classes own homes and even fewer (6) own homes on Nantucket. Of both classes, we had one doctor, two lawyers, and one teacher. We have more graduates in prison than in graduate school.

So, I think we, as a community, have not done a good job preparing our students to live well after they graduate. Attending or graduating college is not necessary to living well, but I want the kids to have some control over their lives. I wanted them to be able to choose what they would do and where they would live. If they were a finish carpenter on Nantucket, I wanted them to be able to be a finish carpenter anywhere.

From my Quo Vadis projects, I think I know what Nantucket High School has been producing as graduates and I am ashamed of that. So, as we look to a new principal, a new schedule, and a new year, I want to suggest a new Nantucket High School graduate should look like.

First, our graduates should be comfortable being uncomfortable. Adults, if they are reasonably responsible, run into uncomfortable situations all the time, whether it be in confronting their boss, disciplining their children, or speaking in town meeting. However, very few of our graduates seem able to do that. Instead, they seem to follow a crowd, keep their heads down, and hope that noone ever asks them to stand up. This spring, as I have brought seniors out to talk with adults about marriage, kids, jobs, and the future of Nantucket, my five seniors sat in silence, sipping their chocolate milk and hiding behind the green hair, tongue studs, and baseball hats.

No, our graduates should be able to be uncomfortable. They should be to stand up in front of their peers and say things (or write things) that their peers will not agree with. They should be able to argue against underage drinking, for noise controls and the establishment of speed limits. And their peers should be able to listen and disagree civilly. Otherwise, they are only fit to follow, not to lead.

Second, our graduates should be able to perform minimum, basic skills in writing, reading, speaking, problem-solving, and computation. They should all be able to do their own taxes, they should be able to read and understand one of Oprah's books, they should be able to write and deliver a eulogy, they should be able to problem solve a rattle in their car. The MCAS covers most of these skills, but we need to re-teach and assess these in the last two years of school

Third, our students should have an enthusiasm. By the time they leave high school, they should have made a movie, or a portfolio of photographs, or collection of short stories. Our graduates should leave school with more than two slips of paper. Currently, our system helps students learn surfaces, but little depth. Very few of our students ever either are motivated or given the opportunity to make a commitment within the school day. They fritter away at Art I or Photo I, without going all the way into thoughtful portfolios of their own. They write the essays for English without writing a set of short works of their own or look for publication.

We should be able to set up a structure that demands that students get enthusiastic and commit to some activity, whether it be in the academics, arts, or vocational areas. Every graduate should be able to point to something, whether it be a shaker bench, or a statue or a novel or a rebuilt V-8 and say "I did this by myself."

Finally, our students should be physically fit. The old adage of "Sound mind, sound body" should be engraved over the doors of the gym. Every day all students should be involved in physical activity for two basic reasons. First, decades of health research shows that being in good shape physically leads to good shape emotionally. A boy who spends an hour in training is unlikely to be the same boy who will draw penises all over the bathroom. Second, athletics forces just about everyone into being uncomfortable. Nobody swings the golf club perfectly, nobody blocks every spike, nobody wins every race. If we want our students to thrive in uncomfortable situations, we have to make them uncomfortable and nothing does that better than sports.

Some of our graduates fit this ideal. But most do not. If we were to adopt this ideal as a goal for this school, then build a curriculum and schedule around the best way to do this, then rigorously assess the students and the program, we would produce graduates who could ""live well." These people would start and run businesses, speak at town meeting, write coherent letters to the editor, and raise decent children.

So many things have to happen for us to reach this ideal. We have to stabilize our faculty so that we don't have 30 -50% turnover every year. We have to re-examine our course of studies and our individual curriculums. We have to create projects that make our students uncomfortable. We have to change the climate of the school. We have to commit to a schedule that allows time for this to happen. But this is the vision that I feel that we should be working for. Not only would it help our school, but our students, their families past and present and our island.