Brilliance in the Basics: A Letter to Parents from our Headmaster

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It has been a long few months waiting for the time to arrive in Plano and begin working with you all. Our staff, our students, and our families have been in my prayers daily for the last five months. I am so thankful and proud of our staff and you all for holding our school together. The loss of a Headmaster, especially one as gifted and capable as Pastor Kieser, can be detrimental to a school. Because of the hard work of our interim headmaster, Mr. Bartel, and our wonderful staff, coupled with your love for Faith Lutheran School, we did not experience any decline in the beautiful, classical Lutheran education we desire to provide for your families. 

As we begin our new relationship, I wanted to take some time to communicate with you my leadership philosophy and my priorities as I begin as Headmaster. My intent encompasses our school’s mission. We will partner with families to provide a true, good, and beautiful classical Lutheran education that is built on the foundation of God’s Word and the Lutheran Confessions in order to “present every person complete in Christ” (Col 1:28). We do this because we know that classical Lutheran education is the greatest vehicle with which to deliver the deposit of faith to our students and families, to cultivate virtue and character, and to give our students every tool to fend off the assaults of the devil, the world, and their own sinful natures. Our mission will inform all that we do.  

My sole purpose as headmaster is to support our teachers and students and ensure they have the time, training, and equipment to do their job to the best of their ability. I am here to serve you and support you as you partner with our teachers to bring up your children to become lifelong learners and lovers of our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything I do as headmaster will be done with that very purpose in mind, and if you feel that I have missed the mark in some way or could be doing something better, you are always welcome to speak with me about it so that I may improve in my calling. The foundation of our relationship must be mutual trust in order to accomplish this, and there are a couple of ways in which this trust will be built.

I believe in decentralized leadership. By that, I mean I will trust our teachers to make decisions based on their expertise and experience. Our staff as a whole has a wealth of knowledge and talent. I will use their wisdom to try to make the best decisions for our school and the families we serve. However, I am most certainly a fallible human being and will make mistakes. I always strive to own those mistakes without deflecting and learn from them to be better. I am sure there will be times when I will have to come back to you, apologize, and say that I should have handled a situation better. When we use those times of friction to grow as a school, we will become stronger and better together.

I am also a stickler for the rules and for discipline. We have policies and procedures outlined in handbooks that we have approved for use in our school, and I expect the staff and you as school families to know those policies and procedures, to follow them, and to enforce them. Your adherence to and enforcement of our agreed-upon policies will be the quickest way to earn my trust and confidence. 

While I put a premium on the rules, I also believe in finding immense joy in what we do, and I try to bring that joy into each task. Notice I didn’t say “fun.” Not everything we do will be fun. Monitoring homework, volunteering, and dealing with your personal frustrations and those of your children—these things are not fun. Yet, we have the joy of knowing that we are redeemed children of God. So are the people we may be frustrated with. The joy of knowing our sins are forgiven, the joy of bestowing on young men and women the incredible amount of knowledge that God has given us to explore, should drive our interactions and motivate us, especially in difficult times. I will laugh and joke with you and our students. I will spend time in our classrooms, at lunch, at recess, learning from our staff as expert teachers, and being refreshed by the wonder of our students. 

The above should give you a general feel for how I approach leadership within our school. I would like to now give you a few priorities that I have for us for the upcoming year. These priorities are centered on the things we are already doing well, and some areas where we can improve. For our school year, the faculty and staff will have a theme, but it is one that you, as school families, should be aware of as well. I don’t usually do this, as themes often prove quaint and ineffective. However, to set the tone for our relationship and my expectations, I have chosen as our theme this year “brilliance in the basics.” This theme will serve as the impetus for our discussion of what we do well and what we can improve on.

There are two main attributes to our theme. The first is brilliance in the basics of catechesis. By this, I don’t mean simply teaching and knowing the catechism. I think you all, parents and teachers alike, are doing a marvelous job at that, and I want you to keep it up. I want us, as a school, to be brilliant in the catechism as it applies to our lives and how we interact with each other. If we want a school filled with students who desire to live lives of virtue and become men and women of character and substance, we must have a staff and parents who, too, live lives of virtue and are men and women of character and substance. It does us no good to talk with our students of the fortitude of Sir Roland without having the courage to speak one-on-one to someone we have an issue with. It does us no good to teach Virgil’s Aeneid about the evils of rumor and then, in our own conversations, pass on rumors ourselves. We must know and live out the catechetical life, formed ourselves by the Holy Scriptures and our Confessions, supplemented by the wonderful deposit of the Western Tradition that we are privileged to teach.

The second attribute of our theme is brilliance in the basics of classical Lutheran education. We have amazing students. They have accomplished incredible things both in and out of the classroom, and I am proud of those accomplishments. Our first priority is always what happens in our classrooms. The clubs, the choirs and bands, and sports are important, but they can never distract us from the very basics of what we are here to learn. Teachers and students are encouraged to be brilliant in their learning and dedication to their classes. That means being prepared for lessons, tests, and quizzes. And, if your child is struggling, ask for help before it's too late. Monitor grades and progress via FACTS and progress reports. Our teachers have been asked to bring their best every day for our students, but the students must do this as well. For our students to be formed in the way in which we desire, both teacher and student need to pour everything they have into the learning process. Parents play a very important role in this by being involved in their children’s learning. Know their strengths and weaknesses.

This is an exciting time for our school; we have already experienced incredible growth. While a new headmaster can be a source of worry, hopefully, this letter will help you get to know me as a leader and servant in our school a bit better. I am excited for this year and feel incredibly blessed to be surrounded by a talented group of teachers and staff and have a school filled with intelligent and wonderful families. 

Thank you for the trust you have given us to partner with you in the education of your children. It is a responsibility that we take seriously and will strive to be the best at it that we can. Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns you may have. God bless your year and our school.

Your Humble Servant in Christ,

Pastor Brandon W. Koble