On June 4, 1944 Dwight D. Eisenhower told 150,000 troops, who were loaded onto ships and planes and prepared to storm the Normandy beaches…to wait. The weather was brutal, so the planned attack could not proceed, sending waves of dread through men who’d already said their goodbyes and steeled their nerves. Every voice screamed urgent concerns – the Germans might discover the delay, the troops’ morale was cracking, the tides wouldn’t be right again for weeks. One voice offered a sliver of possibility – a brief window of clearer weather on June 6. Eisenhower silenced them all to focus on a single important question: Do we go tomorrow, or do we wait?
Years later, he started thinking systematically about the difference between urgent and important, eventually creating a 2×2 decision matrix that bears his name and ultimately asks, “Are you spending your life on what matters, or just on what’s loud?”
Jonathan Strecker, Head of School at The Valley School of Ligonier, doesn’t need the matrix quite like the rest of us do. Life has imprinted on him what is important. He is not bothered by what’s loud.
Strecker
I have a unique perspective because I’ve battled health issues my entire life. Stage four cancer, cardiac arrest, and a lot of different events.Liz
Oh, my goodness.Jonathan
…and people normally respond like that. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” To which I respond, ‘No, it changed my life for the better.’Liz
For the better?Jonathan
Yeah. It’s that song, Live Like You are Dying. That’s exactly how I live my life.
This gentle giant of a man, who stands 6’7, embodies an equanimity and grace that immediately put me at ease. It helped that our conversation began just after he lit a fire in his office. He had greeted me at the front door to the school. His silhouette took up the entire frame of the doorway with a smile to match. He told me that I could find him there at the front door every morning, greeting the children in this K-8 school … except when it snows… then you will find him with the kindergarteners sitting in front of his fire.
Jonathan
I don’t want to go into the whole story of the cardiac arrest incident, but what I will say is what I gleaned from that. Because the heart stopped, they had to shock me to bring me back. There was such a peace and tranquility that I had never felt before, that it really downshifted my perspective and gave me clarity on all decisions I needed to make. Life is now so much more about taking care of people and myself, and everything else comes along. The appreciation and the clarity you live with. If I’m pondering over an email I’m not like, ‘On my deathbed, will I really worry about which word I use? No, it’s fine. Let’s go. What is the purpose of the email? And let’s get that out.’Liz
And the other person might not hear it the way you meant it, but that’s not the end of the world either.Jonathan
It just opens up another conversation. I am truly blessed to be at this school, and this is a fantastic school.
And this school, tucked into the foot of the Laurel Highlands with Linn Run streaming through campus, is building a new playground. Not just any playground. A natural playground. In the woods. Actually elevated in the trees in the woods. I’ll let Jon tell you.
Jonathan
One of the most important aspects is that the children are outside playing, but in a way that is more like what we probably grew up with. We didn’t have all the distractions of technology and computers. And so as a result, we were outside all the time, climbing and jumping and having a good time. I’ve been playing with this idea that I think will be fantastic for the kids. And what I would love to do is create a nature playground where not only are they in the woods, but they’re elevated in the woods. They’re in the trees. They’re overlooking the pond.
Not pond. Ponds. Ponds with trout.
Jonathan
We’re outside all the time studying our fish. We raise our own trout from eggs in the classroom all the way until the children see them as these monsters. And of course, that’d be a great place to see those.
A treehouse playground so the children can better see the trout they raised. I want to be nine again. So did the architect.
Jonathan
We showed our original design to a bunch of tree house builders, and he was the first one to say, ‘If you guys want to build what’s on this piece of paper here, that’s fine. I’m just not the right person.’ He goes, ‘I want to dream. I want to envision.’ I’m like, ‘This is the guy.’ He is a child at heart. He’s going to create something that children love, not what we as adults love.
Children are at the heart of everything at Valley School of Ligonier. As they are at all of the schools within the PAIS independent school ecosystem. Jon worries about children today.
Jonathan
Over the course of the modern convenience taking root in our society, five different attributes that independent schools find vital to child development, are in decline.
- Our IQs are going down for the first time in human history.
- We are more antisocial than ever, even though we are able to communicate.
- Emotionally, there is a greater amount of anxiety and depression than we’ve ever had before.
- Ethically, we have created less trust by creating a me-first society, what’s in it for me rather than what’s in it for us.
- And then finally, one in five children has obesity in this country.
So all of our intelligences, intellectual, social, emotional, ethical, and physical intelligence, are all in decline. And we are only on the precipice of AI technology. So what are we going to do about it?
What is Jon going to do? He is writing a book. He samples the ideas on his YouTube channel. He wants to share with others what independent schools live every day.
Jonathan
In some schools, if there’s a child who’s experienced a math problem… they’ll say, math problem in, math solution out. Let’s give them more math. Let’s take away their recess. Let’s take away their social time.
There is an alternative.
Jonathan
We see there’s a math problem. Let’s figure out, based on these five intelligences, what is the actual cause. If a child doesn’t have friends or they’re emotionally stressed out by math, giving them more math is not going to solve that. It’s just a different way of looking at child development.Liz
You’re right. It’s embedded in independent education. Because we know the child so well, and we care about all the different aspects you just talked about.Jonathan
Independent educators, they understand that they’re responsible for all five of these attributes. It’s not just, ‘Well, I came here to teach history, and that’s all I’m doing.’ That never works in an independent school. We’re like, ‘No, you’re part of this family, and we expect you to help these children get to where they need to be.’ And as administrators, our job is to make sure the faculty and staff are taken care of along these five attributes as well.Liz
Exactly. And that we’re taking care of ourselves.
Taking care of our faculty and ourselves. That hits the urgent and important quadrant in Eisenhower’s matrix.
Eisenhower forced himself past the noise to focus on one important question: is this weather window real enough to bet everything on? At 4:00 AM, he made the call: “OK, we’ll go.” It was, historians say, one of the gutsiest decisions of the war. The rest is history.
The urgent voices are loud: they need more math worksheets; they have too much recess; the school needs faster solutions, stronger gates, higher budgets, and tightened spending. The list goes on. Can we quietly turn from the noise to focus on what’s important? What does this child actually need? What do our teachers need? What do I need as a leader in education?
Jon Strecker knows a leader’s responsibilities are about taking care of people and oneself, “and everything else comes along.”
