Ep.11: Randy Stevens, Educator & Head of School | Truth Without Fear

This week, Mungi is joined by Randy S. Stevens, the Head of St. Timothy's boarding school for girls, where she attended high school. Randy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Government and International Studies from the University of South Carolina and a Master’s of Public Administration from Cornell University. Previously, Randy held various administrative positions including Robert G. Engel Associate Dean of Students at Cornell and served as Dean of Student Life at Northfield Mount Hermon School. In this interview, Randy discusses how he got into education, and some difficult moments that taught him that you always have to have a plan B, plan C or sometimes, even a plan D. Randy and Mungi discuss the importance of teaching critical thinking, and how her time at St. Timothy's shaped her as a woman. Since St. Timothy's was all-white at its founding, Mungi asks how conversations around race have been handled and encouraged at the school. The two speak about girl's education and the pros of single-sex education.

---

Full Episode Transcript

Mungi Ngomane: Hi, I'm Mungi welcome to the Everyday Ubuntu podcast.

Randy Stevens: Be careful who you make your friends because they will define who you are, but don't exclude people from being your friend because of who they are.

Mungi Ngomane: Welcome to Everyday Ubuntu I'm Mungi this week. My guest is Randy Stevens, educator, and head of St. Timothy school St.

Tim's happens to be the all-girls boarding school that I attended for high school. And that I also credit with some of my sense of independence and self-confidence today, Randy or Mr. Stevens, as the girls know him shares the effect his mother's death had on him. And how her example shaped how he views gender roles today, as well as the strength he takes from difficult periods and what his students have taught him over the years.

In this episode, we also discuss how educators can nurture critical thinking in our social media age, where everything is fast, and people want to be first last but not least. He highlights the importance of girls' education, something very near and dear to my heart. Here's our conversation. Randy Stevens, welcome to the Everyday Ubuntu podcast.

I'm so excited to be speaking with you

Randy Stevens: today. I'm excited to get an opportunity to chat with you. This is what an honour and a. Privilege and

Mungi Ngomane: roles reversed because I see that you're in your office now. And I remember being in your office a few times when I was maybe in trouble. And here we are now I am the

Randy Stevens: boss.

Exactly. Although, it's one of the things I think, as an educator, sometimes you. I think students and teachers, I think those roles oftentimes are reversed, but even when you are still a student but maybe when you're the student, you don't appreciate that quite as much.

Mungi Ngomane: Yeah. Okay. So, we are going to talk about you and education, but I want to start by asking you my mom says that our resumes are not a full explanation of who we are as a person.

And so, what would you say is missing from your resume that you think people should know about? Yeah.

Randy Stevens: That's I think a wonderful question. And one that I don't think, we think about too often. I think one of the things is I work with students so often everyone's so focused on their resume.

And I often say to students or resume does not make a life. And I think particularly as I get older, I try. Reflect back on those milestones in my life of what's really made me who I am. And very often the things on my resume were important stops, but it's what happened there.

And the people there have really shaped me in many ways and really formed my thinking. I would say the thing that probably is missing from my resume that you would never see is, I was raised by a single mother. I lost my father when I was one year old. And that had a very profound impact on who I became.

I think it really impacted how I see women in general. Certainly, having a mother raising two kids by herself, and she made great sacrifices. She, oh, she made the decision not to remarry and really focus on raising my sister and me. And committed her life to that. And I think, and that was not easy, particularly being in the south.

I think being a single woman was not easy. And so, I saw the sacrifices she made. I saw the challenges, particularly as a woman that she endured. And that really in many ways shaped him very profoundly is who I became and how I see things, how I see gender roles, how I've looked at the world.

I think she really, in many ways helped me appreciate one that, you know what, no one person is self-made that, we're a compilation of our life experiences and very much of our life journey and those journeys. Who we choose to be our friends who we decide to collect with us along our journey becomes very important?

It is one of those paradoxes, I think in some ways because she would often say be careful who you make your friends because they will define who you are, but don't exclude people from being your friend because of who they are. And. And I think that was a big lesson that I learned very early on.

And I don't think that's something that, you get from a resume, but I think those are important lessons, I think when we're younger, we very often think we know so much more than our parents. And I often used to look at her and think.  What's this woman saying I used to always laugh about it.

This is lecture 72, this is lecture 41, but there were all these little quotes that she always had. And I replay them now and think of them as this great wisdom, but she ended up dying of cancer, a rare form of cancer when I was 25. And her loss was this incredible loss.

And I think to be an orphan, really, in some sense, when you're 25 years of age shapes your life in and really profound way. I think that's certainly, that's something that is not on a resume but has a very profound impact on how once life comes into being and how you think about life and kind of shapes everything else that follows from it.

Mungi Ngomane: I think I'm still that quote about be careful who you make your friends. I think that's probably something I'm still working on. And then the quote about, no one being, self-made obviously connects with me very deeply because of Ubuntu. And I, when I read articles, it's like this self-made billionaire I'm like, that is just literally not possible.

I just don't understand why we keep doing this. It does, you are not self-made.

Randy Stevens: Yeah. And I think that it's one of the reasons I struggle with compliments. So even when people do give me compliments, although I've lived in a world where compliments are hard to come by lately, I think.

Very good to tell you where you feel them versus how you lift them up. But one of the things I would say, if I was listening to my mother's playbill it probably be less than number 52. One of the things she would say, you're never as good as you think you are in, you're never as bad as some may say you are.

And I always thought that was a great one too, because. At my highest highs, you always have to humble yourself to realize, a lot of people worked hard to help you get where you are and, it's your lowest lows. You have to always remember the incredible grace that God gives you and I'll help you get through it.

And you have to keep that faith and that perspective so that you don't live in this just jointed world of, going from highs and lows and always thinking. The lows are always someone else's fault in the highs are always something that you somehow created on your own. Yeah.

Mungi Ngomane: Yeah.

And you've been in education for a long time and you're, that head of school at my boarding school St Timothy's. But how did you get into education? Did you know when you were a student yourself, did you think this was the path you were going to take?

Randy Stevens: Yeah, absolutely not. Part of my challenge was, in some ways I could never really quite figure out what I wanted to do.

There were times where I thought I wanted to go into ministry. I wanted to be a psychologist. I loved history. I thought I wanted to be an architect. So, I wanted to do all these things. I probably had too many interests was part of my challenge but at the end of the day, I ended up in this job that I got to do all those things.

That's what I

Mungi Ngomane: was going to say. I was like, you do all of this now and

Randy Stevens: yeah. And it's, I think it's one of the other things I try to say to students because I think so often we get so fixated on our destination and We forget about the journey. And so, I think about my own journey that, most of what's happened to me has happened because something that I really wanted didn't work out and I was forced to, choose plan B, C and sometimes plan D.

But that other plan really has led to some new opportunities that I would have never thought about. Never seen. And I look at the totality of my life. I could not have wished for a better life, but there were some great disappointments along the way that things didn't work out the way I had hoped or had planned.

I think it's always good to have some ideas, some sense of direction of where you would like to go, but not get too focused on a plan because one, I think. Bury yourself in disappointments and lose focus, but otherwise, you miss out on opportunities and see those opportunities. It's one of the things that, I'm fortunate to be married to one of the most optimistic individuals that I know.

She always helps me see all the silver linings; I think it's. One of the good things in life is, you look for those opportunities to think about what good can come out of this moment because really suffering. And the depths of the lows, very hard day, you know when my mother died when I was 25, I had just gone to Cornell.

And the instincts for my grandparents when I really needed to move back home and give up this strain. My mother had really, she was the one who had really encouraged me to pursue this opportunity of Cornell. And I was pretty much really all my law on. And then I had been diagnosed with what was thought of at the time as a terminal illness.

Very much alone and. There, there was some great despair there. And I went through a period of great depression and really having a hard time kind of making sense out of everything. But at that time, I discovered these incredible. Friends and mentors really helped me see new possibilities.

And it really helped me get through a very challenging period in life.

Mungi Ngomane: And speaking about your mother, you said that she shaped how you see gender roles and you are, the head of an all-girls boarding school. So, I'm wondering, how do you see gender roles and why is girls’ education so important.

Randy Stevens: Yeah, I saw so often how my mother's world seem limited and restricted because nothing more than her gender and who she was as a gender really defined so much of who she was. And, the other challenge, I think, growing up in a Southern Baptist church also. Defined in different ways and, my mother had an incredible sense of humour and it's one of the things that I, really missed today.

And that kind of what I saw is an uncomfortable situation. She always found ways of making jokes out of it. But I think for me, I was thought there has to be a better way, different way. And I think Because of that, it's always, I wanted to figure out a way of trying to help make it be a better way.

At 25, I think mature enough to think, God, this is going to be my life work to make a commitment, to try and have an impact here. But I think that those seeds, I think with all of us, I think our younger development shapes us in ways that. Eventually, it comes through and hopefully it's the good pieces that come through.

But I think it's always had a profound sense for me of why education is very important and why trying to create equity. And fairness is very important and I getting into working in an all-girls school really happened in a very, somewhat different way. And that happened because of an opportunity to come to an all-girls school.

I hadn't fully appreciated it. I will say that I took a group of students to South Africa and an all-in co-ed school. And we have an opportunity to meet Walter Sisulu and, this was this incredible moment. And there was such, I felt immaturity of, there was so much bickering and, who was in a relationship with who it, I think it was indicative of my sense of one of the limitations.

I think sometimes at this age, Of, how do you fit in, how do you navigate those peer pressures of social pressures of how do I fit in, into this environment and how do I become accepted? And I think, when I took girls back to South Africa, three, four times later, all of that seems to dissipate in a single-sex environment and they don't see their education as a competition that if one does well, the other somehow does less well.

But they support each other in very unique ways. And I think there's something very unique and rich about that. And I always say to parents, are always worried about, girls’ schools not being the real world. I think this time in one's life is a very formative period. And I think that if you are given the opportunity to really get comfortable in your own skin at this age, you will be able to be successful no matter where you go, what kind of environment you are in.

But I think if you have all this self-doubt, so during this age, it goes with you for a very long time and that really, I think determines the difference between success and failure in so many ways. So, I think that's why to me, girls school education so important, particularly at this age and why I've been such a proponent of it and why every year, I believe in it more and more.

Yeah.

Mungi Ngomane: I may not have been like a huge fan of it at the time. When I was like a 15-year-old, that was with girls all the time, but. Clearly, it has shaped who I am today and made I think about all the difference. I wonder how you think, educators can do their best to educate, but also nurture critical thinking, which I know is important at St.

Tim's and in the IB in today's world, because there's so much misinformation and disinformation, just like everywhere.

Randy Stevens: I think that as you well know, we have a course called the theory of knowledge, which I teach. And it's something that I think is so critical. I think really encouraging students to look at other perspectives is so important.

One of the. Key tenants of the theory of knowledge are to force you to look at counter-arguments, to any argument you make, and to appreciate different perspectives. So, one of the things that I really tried to work on with our students in the last two years, because I think things have only gotten worse is one, trying to force them to look at different places where they get their news sources and.

I had the students watched social dilemmas in class, and we really talked about the challenges of logarithms and how, just by reading an article, it means you're going to get more articles from that source. And so, it really restricts your access to even information. And how do you force yourself to not go down rabbit holes?

And really believe everything you read. We live in a time where people are very instant in their outrage. And they're looking for justification to be outraged

Mungi Ngomane: and everyone wants to be the first one to talk to and get it out and have the first thing to say on a matter.

So, you don't have time to read the whole article all of a sudden, because you need to be

Randy Stevens: out there. Yeah. Yeah. They've already got their hashtag form before they even finish reading the article. I think that piece is challenging, but I think it's made us as a society as a world, much less empathetic in many ways.

It's undermined the things that we claim we believe in, and we value, and we appreciate, and I think that is probably more challenging than anything. So, part of what we try to do at St Timothy's, for example, was through the theory of knowledge is really trying to work with students and getting them to find alternative sources, to really force them, to look at counterarguments, to any argument they're making.

So how do you look at those perspectives and learn from them and what kind of data are they using and how do you validate that? And even some of the people that make arguments that you make, where does their funding come from? And maybe some of their arguments aren't as strong or as valid.

I, I think you have to continue to leave yourself open to the possibility of changing your mind. And I think those things are all important. Maybe

Mungi Ngomane: there should be TOK for adults, just to refresh everyone on how to read. Cause I think when I was in it, I had to, I think I had to argue the opposite of climate change and that was

just very confusing for me. Cause I was like what it was so hard to find things that I was like, okay, I'm going to use this. Like I just was like, this is not, I don't know how to read in this way because I don't actually believe it. It's tough to do it. Yeah.

Randy Stevens: And I, I think the challenge too sometimes, and I think, we live in a world where we're so flooded with information that we live in a binary world where everything is yes or no, true or false.

Everything primarily, I think is to degrees. And I think in most cases it's not really about climate change. It's really about what you do about it. And it, it's even things like with recycling sometimes, people who want to lecture me at times about recycling. You look at things that they do in their own practices and yet how in-congruent they are, they'll read an article and they have lots of data that they want to give you of what you should do, how reflective are they of their own lives?

And I think that's some of the work we all need to do is. Help other people see where they can improve their lives, but also be reflective of where we can improve our own lives. I think we live in a world where we all have opinions of how other people could make our lives better. I'm not sure. We're always as good about reflecting on how we ourselves can.

Improve ourselves as well, improve other people's lives.

Mungi Ngomane: Yeah, it's like people arguing about, I should be recycling the same way that they do, but then maybe they leave the tap on when they're brushing their teeth. And it's okay, so you just wasted water for two minutes or someone telling me that I need to have kids.

And it's actually our earth doesn't need more kids. So, like, why would you make me someone who doesn't want to have kids when like my recycling, isn't going to actually help reverse the effects of climate change. If I also have a child, like it's yeah. It's the extra thought process of just, I know best for you instead of just, thinking what you should be doing in your individual life.

Randy Stevens: And if I really want to save the climate, I, there are lots of things that I could do to do things differently. And I tried to do those things, I try as an educator also try to model those things here at school and try to influence things. But it's even things simple.

Like meatless Mondays. We tried here at school and, there was outrage that people thought that they were being starved to death. Every Monday. These are the same types of individuals that are very concerned about, why aren't we recycling this piece of paper or that piece of paper.

But yet there are outraged over meatless, Mondays. Yeah, we are, but no question. So

Mungi Ngomane: how I think something that's important and that we should definitely discuss is race. And I wonder how St Timothy's has navigated from the all-white school that it was at its founding to where it is today and how to have conversations around race been,

I don't know if the word is like encourage handled, cultivated.

Randy Stevens: Yeah, So I think that is an excellent question to raise, St Tim's is St. Timothy schools probably. In terms of a school, the environment is probably one of the most diverse independent schools today. And it's not something that we backed into.

I think it's something we intentionally went about doing. And some of this was really formed during my time at Cornell. Cornell was one of the most diverse communities I had ever been in. And I came to really value and appreciate how much we can learn from other people that have different life experiences.

I think it's important and I think sometimes it gets missed because I think you can look at someone and think, because no certain things about them, all there is to know about them. And I think we all have; we all carry an individual's story and I think we have to learn how to honour each person's story and not try to make things always based on certain characteristics.

And I think that's a very careful thing. To do in a community. And I think it's something we're trying to figure out how to do. We started a group on campus called narrative four of where we're trying to learn how to build trust, to start having people share stories. And part of the process is you tell your story.

I tell my story and it starts with a prompt what is a time where you had, and it could be something around race, where your race has been an obstacle or a benefit. But it could be something like when is one time that another person has inspired you. So, it's prompt, but you spend about two minutes where you tell your story.

I tell my story and then when you get back in a smaller group, but it's six people in the smaller group, I will tell your story in the first person. And you tell my story in the first person. And it, it's very empowering to hear someone else tell your story. And then when you get in the larger group, you talk about what your group learned together, but it also gets to how you trust people and how much of your story you're willing to share.

And., I think that becomes very important because as you talk about race at St. Timothy school, for example, when you have a truly diverse community like ours you have, for example, students who are first-generation from say, the Caribbean Island whose parents do not want them talking about race, they feel I have made an incredible sacrifice for you to get.

To get an education. So, the last thing I want you to do is to get up to the top talking about racial issues. Then you have students who come from very affluent areas who oftentimes talk about race as if they grew up in the inner-city areas of communities. You've got kids who actually grew up in the inner-city areas whose parents really.

Do not want them talking about race. So even within racial communities, you have these kinds of challenging opportunities to talk about race. Our first student here that, within the federal guidelines of living below the poverty line was actually a Caucasian student and that in itself, Caught people by surprise.

Yeah. And so, I think those kinds of conversations turn, race on its head at times of what people's assumptions are. And how people think and talk about race and how you allow communities to segregate out. Certainly, we have about a third, which is Asian, Asian American, a third, which is Black/Brown

and the third, which is Caucasian. And within that context, each of those communities was a very different type of community. So, a student who is say Asian American here at the school, really thinks of themselves very differently than a student who is from China, but equally a student from Taiwan, a student from Hong Kong.

And a student from mainland China is going to think of themselves very differently as well. Following, George Floyd needless to say we were out of school because of COVID. So, it was a little bit more of a challenge to have conversations here at school, but we did, and it had not been by design.

In February, we had decided the book that we were going to read for all school read was a stamp. And so, we had a conversation around the stamp, and I think that was a really good opportunity for us to look at and think about what it means to be anti-racist. And it was a very different lens to look through the race. I think within our school community.

And the opportunity to think about that. We had some conversations with alumni and with our trustees and with some students I think our trustees and some of our alumni were blown away. With how thoughtful our students were and the ease with which they were able to talk about race.

It's always amazing to me in the world we live in again, I think it's one of the damages of social media, of how people spend more time debating the theories and the process versus how we could use certain things as lenses to think of things differently. And what good could come out of those?

A conversation about the lens and not necessarily whether the lens was a good lens or not. Or like

Mungi Ngomane: nitpicking someone's individual. Yeah. Allow them to have that experience and that can stand next side-by-side yours, even if they're not exactly the same.

Randy Stevens: Yeah, exactly. There's no history that is all good and all bad.

And. Looking at it in its contextualized existence through varied perspectives, I think is a healthy thing to do. I think it's a sign of maturity to be able to look at, your warts as well as your strengths and to come to some common understanding of this is how we got where we are.

And an unwillingness to do that, to want to paint over all of that. It's probably a terrible analogy, it's like a house is falling down and all you want to do is just keep painting the walls to cover up the fact that the house is falling down.

Taking the plaster down and repairing the walls I'm looking at well, why is the concrete sinking and why is this happening? It doesn't mean that the builders, 200 years ago need to be totally condemned for how it was built, but acknowledging that, some of the foundation was not a solid foundation and acknowledging that and giving proper recognition to how the house was built and then restoring it.

It seems to me a healthy way to go. And I think that having different perspectives on that and I think that's what education is really about and, going back to TOK I think having different people, looking at those things become very valuable. And if you're unwilling to do that, I think it's dangerous.

Yeah.

Mungi Ngomane: And what would you say your students have taught you? You've had a lot of students over the years.

Randy Stevens: Yeah, I, I think I'm so humbled by the students I've had the privilege to work with. I think they've really taught me that anything is possible, and they give me great hope in my lowest moments in great despair.

I always think about our students. I look at all you've accomplished and what you're doing. I, I think about we had Aisha Ibrahim come back to speak about what it means to be Muslim in America. And it was such a touching moment to hear her perspective and to really learn from her of what her life had been, and yet the incredible grace that she has I think about a machine, for example, who was one of the first students we brought from Afghanistan to St.

Timothy's school and having this young woman with incredible potential, but who had. Kind of endure this incredible war-torn area to come to us and really trying to be given an opportunity. And she ended up graduating from Lafayette College. She went to the London School of economics and got her master's.

She and her parents had just immigrated to New Zealand and just to see what education can do. It can truly transform lives. It gives me great hope to see how students take advantage of that, how it changes their lives in incredible ways. I had the great fortune a couple of months ago to talk with Sarah Coleman who was at St.

Timothy's School. I don't know if you remember Sarah or not, but She only spent a year here with us and she's now become this incredible designer. And she repurposes or a guest. She calls it up for purposes. We're running an article in our alumni magazine about her, but, she went, she, she was sharing with me, what.

At a time when her life was very chaotic, she really felt that she had stability here and it gave her a sense of creativity and encouragement that she was missing. And I think she talks about, the sense of at her previous school, in a coed environment of the sense of

trying to fit in and what the cost of her mental health of what was required to fit in and then being here and not having those pressures and being able to be who she was, and then going off to college and having those old demons come back and now being in a much healthier place and, she's taking recycled.

Louis Vuitton and Fenti like that. I'll have to send you the article because it's just fascinating to see what she's done and how, a place like this, teachers and in a community like this can transform individual lives. And you see those individuals and it makes you proud.

I think to see what an institution. This can do. And it's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Mungi Ngomane: I think it's a great institution as well, but I obviously am biased. So, I want to close up by asking you, what is your greatest fear for humanity?

Randy Stevens: We've touched on some of those things already.

I, personally, worry about climate change. I think that having just been in California and seeing what was going on north of us, seeing just the devastation of constant fire, I think that our planet is in crisis, and I worry that the people who have the ability to do something about it really seem almost incapable of doing something about it.

I feel that a lot of activists spend a lot of time protesting. But I'm not sure those protests translate into actual items of changing things. I think how politicized the press has become. And I think how we become reduced to data. And I think because of logarithms, I think it underrepresents reality.

And yet it shaped so much of how we see humanity. I, I very worried about our democracy. As I would say, in the theory of knowledge, democracies are not the only form of government and it's certainly one option. But I'm a big believer in democracies. I think as a form of government, I find people spend more time trying to make institutions, which are really not democratic institutions more democratic, but yet

they spend very little energy, trying to make their governments and institutions are supposed to be democratic. Engaging in the political process to make them democratic. So as frustrating as politics is I think that the Senate's want you to give up on the politics because that's how they control the process.

I'm not opposed to protest, but I do think maybe we need to engage a lot more in protests a little less to bring about real change. And then the last thing you shouldn't have asked me my concerns because I probably sound a little bit more concerned than hopeful, but the other is I think just the overall xenophobia and racism and tribalism that I think we see in our own country today is really frightening.

And it's not to suggest. It hasn't existed. Cause I think, all my life, I particularly growing up in the environments, I've been in have been very mindful of it always, but I think it's more grounded in hatred today than I've ever seen in recent times. And so that scares me the most. I think our total disregard for the dignity of human life is frightening to me.

And I, even when people make comments, like all of this is not a third world country, I find very offensive. Because I, I don't think we, as a world are divided up in worlds. I think we're all part of humanity. And I think this is a lot of what Ubuntu gets at. I think we're all.

Linked together in humanity. And if we all don't look after each other then we all suffer. And I think we all collectively have a responsibility to each other as human beings. And I think nationalities are important. We have cultures that are important. I think we need to preserve our cultures, our identity.

But we also have a larger culture, larger responsibility in that is for greater humanity. And I think that we can't ever lose sight of that.

Mungi Ngomane: Yeah. Okay. You have to give us some help then.

Randy Stevens: I increasingly read more, and I think reading gives you hope and real possibilities. I think that it gives you a vision of where we can go.

And I think there's a lot out there that shows opportunities for new possibilities, and I think in our darkest moments is when we've been able to find new possibilities. And I think the students I work with give me hope every day. I don't think I would be able to have any belief in the future if I couldn't believe in our students.

And I see the incredible, good work that they're doing. How inspiring they all are. And that gives me hope. And I'm a faithful person I might think is very important to me as part of probably the hardest thing about COVID is not being able to go to church. It certainly restores my soul every week.

Being able to go there's always these incredible ministers and speakers. It's really a good cross-sectional politics and religion at the national cathedral. And I value that because it always helps me think differently. And I always think about all week what they've said and in my own faith, I think God has incredible grace.

And I think that grace gives me hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

Mungi Ngomane: Yeah, it will be. It has to. Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on the Everyday Ubuntu podcast. It was lovely to speak

Randy Stevens: with you. It was an honour and privilege. I am so impressed with what you're doing and loved Everyday Ubuntu.

And keep up your great work.

Mungi Ngomane: I will try.

Randy Stevens: Thank you. Thank you.

Mungi Ngomane: I hope you enjoyed this conversation today and don't forget to hit subscribe and give the show a rating and review wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Follow me at Mungi.Ngomane on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you and get your feedback on the show. I'll be back in a week with a new episode.

Thank you for listening to Everyday Ubuntu.