What is a Dean of Students? What does he do when he is on duty? What do teenagers do when the adults are not looking? How important are education and parenting? This book offers some insights and perhaps even some answers.

The Dean: On Duty explores a number of important issues that students, parents and schools confront on a regular basis. The anecdotes reflect real people and real issues, and though each person or incident is unique the broader implications for society in general bubble to the surface throughout the book. This is not an in depth study of homophobia, ethnicity, politics or philosophy, but those are among the broad issues that emerge throughout the book, often with their own chapter headings but not exclusive to those chapters. This is a personal story, not the result of research or planning.

I live on campus at a boarding/day school of teenagers in grades 9-12, with an additional day population in the 7th and 8th grades that has a separate administrator. Even though only a small portion of the American population has contact with or knowledge of these institutions, what I have to say has broad enough implications that there will be useful nuggets for many people: parents, students, school personnel, former students. Much of what I do say is anecdotal, personal. I am not a social scientist. I do not have the broad data to make solid conclusions about education or parenting.