Berwick Academy Head of School

This week we were so fortunate to have former NH Senator Kelly Ayotte address grades 7 – 11 in our theater about Civil Discourse in a time of Political Polarization. Senator Ayotte spoke to the need to take the high road in tough conversations and put an incredible primacy on building relationships with people who hold different opinions. She was able to speak to some of her own successes in working across the aisle to develop legislation to address the opioid crisis in New Hampshire as one powerful example of how this can be possible. Additionally, Senator Ayotte offered a strong reminder to our students of the need for more women in positions of leadership within our government, citing that she had only been the 53rd woman to serve in the US senate during her tenure. With a down-to-earth style and but an appropriately impassioned call to action, she challenged our students to become the leaders that they could be. Her call to action and example of service were powerful reminder

The Berwick events are jam packed in these final weeks of May, but a particularly special one for me has always been the amazing dance shows. Each year I am inspired to see how this program – a school within a school – comes together to put on such extravaganzas for the community to enjoy. Last weekend’s edition was one of my favorite moments to truly soak in the nature of a PK-12 school, as one can’t help but notice the progression of talent and development throughout the dance companies. Perhaps even more impressively, the dance program is one of the greatest examples we have of mentoring and role modeling across divisions. Whether that is as impressive as shared performances on stage or as mundane as managing the littlest dancers backstage, it is truly a community effort. Selfishly, this is the one program on campus that all three of the Schneider girls love equally, and as a parent it has been such a gift to see them on stage together. While they share a common bond through the

We often say in the Admissions office that it is hard to truly bottle the Berwick experience for prospective families to understand. Senior Arts Night is one of those magical Berwick moments that is difficult to fully explain. One certainly feels the power of a PK-12 community when kids announce they will be playing the song they last played in the fourth grade talent show. When I spend time with these young adults, I feel such optimism for the future. Last night I was able to sit with some senior parents, some of whom I have known for over a decade. Whether it was hearing their own child sing or a peer sing, it did not take long for the tears to roll. What I have always loved about Senior Arts night is that it never fails to offer surprises – a voice I didn’t know about or an artist that had been working in the shadows. It is a night when I often most appreciate the value of the “whole child” education that we preach on this Hilltop. Beyond the reality that being able to play guitar

There is a great deal of mythology and expectation surrounding senior spring in the world of independent schools. As someone who has worked in these schools for over 20 years, it is hard to avoid viewing senior spring without some kind of nostalgic reverie. Surely part of that is taking me back to that same time in my own life: accepted to college, mostly done with academic responsibilities, prom on the horizon, and finally having a chance to exhale after 13 years of fairly structured and demanding education. One realizes in middle age that these moments of exhale – where the routines take a pause for an extended period of time – are incredibly rare in one’s life. One also realizes just how special friends are in one’s life. While the past decade probably hasn’t left as much time for my own friends as I may have liked, my closest ones remain people with whom I shared some time on the quad during my own senior spring. We have finally been rewarded with some good weather in recent days

There is nothing quite like Grandparents Day at Berwick Academy. In recent years we have seen as many as 500 grandparents and special friends on our campus, and we are looking forward to another big crowd this week. For me, there is always something about the day that offers perspective to our work as both educators and parents. During the crazy fury of the school year’s end, this day seemingly forces all of us to reflect on the centrality of family and love in our lives. So often I am stuck by comments from grandparents who actually listen to and appreciate my speeches in unexpected ways. They ask about my family, and they comment on how lucky kids are to go to Berwick Academy. It is true that we, as a school, try to put on our best face for this day. Beds are mulched for the first time, we plant a few extra flowers, and we even ask students to dress up more formally. Some could argue that we overdo this and that we should present ourselves to our guests in more typical fashion. I m

One of Berwick’s great strengths is its arts culture, and I have always felt that there is both a public and private face of this culture. The public face includes our amazing concerts, our ambitious productions, and the various art shows we produce throughout the year. The private face tends to include things like private lessons, coffeehouses, assembly performances, murals painted on walls, and unexpected artistic expressions that emerge on campus throughout the year. One of the great traditions I will miss at Berwick will be the annual recital week in April. So many of our students hone their craft on private music lessons throughout the year in the hopes of having a public performance at this time. Simultaneously, we have a week of performances in the theater and in Chip Harding’s coffeehouse lair – the space he likes to refer to as his “smoldering ruins,” referring to the carnage left there after every Middle School electric guitar class. This year, for my second and final time, I

Late April always brings the excitement of the BPC benefit, and I want to encourage the community to attend on April 28 at the Sheraton in Portsmouth. Certainly it is a fun way to gather and celebrate what makes BA so special, but it is also true that the funds raised through BPC help move our school forward in such compelling ways. Just this week I was reminded of this reality after I was invited to offer feedback to Krysta Ibsen’s eighth grade science project. As many of you know, Krysta has become famous for her Sugar Shack projects, which teach our kids aspects of science and entrepreneurship through the practice of making maple syrup. Clearly this is an example of student directed learning, where kids get to pursue individual interests within the broader educational construct. What I have always loved about the event is that it changes every year, and this year Krysta charged the kids to propose a real model for a permanent Sugar Shack we might build on campus someday. Kids

Yesterday marked our annual Board of Trustees retreat, where we welcomed new Head of School Jim Hamilton to have a thoughtful conversation about leadership transition and future strategy. While part of this conversation was about how our Board might best support the new Head of School moving forward, the bulk of our time was focused on the strategic direction of Berwick. Everyone in the room was committed to seeing this amazing community forge ahead. Over the course of the next 18 months, our Board will be authoring the next Berwick Academy long-range plan, and there was a great deal of focus on continuing the momentum we have created as an institution in recent years. As part of this exercise, I was asked to present some thoughts on issues that strike me as pressing as I leave the Hilltop. I distilled my thinking into the challenges of program, people, and projects that will face Berwick in its next chapter. Additionally, members of our Board helped us take a deeper dive into a l

On Monday afternoon of this week I made a trip to the Commons. I was excited because Ben Baldwin had asked me to learn an a cappella tune along with Kent Allyn. Thus, I was offered admission to the lair of African drumming. Like a human aquarium, the drumming room exists in the basement with ceiling-to-floor windows, while its inhabitants experiment with rhythm and sound. As I am sure many of you can attest, spending half an hour with Mr. Baldwin is good for anyone’s soul, and this visit was no disappointment. Within about 15 minutes I had become the baseline for “Lucky Dice” – a song that seems to be a little bit like an education in gambling, ironically. Filled with phrases like “snake eyes and boxcars,” I was temporarily transported away from hiring calls and enrollment spreadsheets. Suddenly, some Middle School musicians went walking by and peered into the Baldwin aquarium. We were invited into the choral room to give an impromptu performance. And so we did. We got those kids

Welcome back to the Hilltop, where the sun is out and the snow is melting – just not as quickly as we would like! One of the strange twists of fate this year was that winter weather ended up pushing the Lower School production back to this week. During my 11 years here, the LS production has been one of the more special yet challenging moments of the academic year. Most things that are worthwhile are complex, and this event is no exception. As always, I was amazed to see the amount of effort and collaboration needed to pull off this milestone. Beyond any music, acting, and dancing – there is also artwork, costumes, and a substantial amount of evident academic learning as well. Perhaps what struck me this year was the ways in which our students helped create everything – including the show itself. There have been times in the past decade when the LS production has elicited questions like – how big is big enough? How much pull-out time from Math and Literacy does it require? Who is in

As people are probably aware, it has been a busy hiring season at Berwick, and it has been a thrill to lock up roughly eight exceptional hires before spring break. Each year, I become energized by the quality of people that we see in this process. I often find that it is during this process we see some of the fruits of our labor with initiatives like Curriculum 2020 and the Innovation Center. It is rewarding when we see candidates who seem energized to become a part of what they perceive to be a forward thinking and collaborative culture. I would be remiss if I did not mention the exceptional work that both Ryan Feeley and Michael Buensuceso have done in helping to build our great candidate pools this year. It always requires a great deal of outreach and hard work to identify the kinds of people who can make Berwick come alive. While we will have a few more positions to fill after spring break, I can already vouch for the fact that we will bring some exceptional new talent to campu

It probably won’t surprise people to know this has been a busy time of year in the Head of School office. Clearly now is the time when we have the epic convergence of both admissions and hiring activity. There have been recent days where I have had so many meetings that I can easily forget I am at a school with children. That said, we have absolutely started to see some of these amazing spring like days start to explode with the glory of what lies ahead. Just a few days ago, I decided I had better get out of my office and take a walk outside to do a bit of centering. As I was walking down the back stairs of BD, I was poring through my calendar for the day. I wondered how I would get to every meeting and every interview on time. I was weighing the relative strengths of a few candidates I had seen recently. I pushed open the back door of BD and noticed some of our Lower School students scrambling around the mini-turf blasting the soccer ball. But I didn’t have time for that. I was he

We have all been moved by the events at the most recent tragic school shooting in Florida. A week later, we find ourselves still struggling to comprehend the suffering of the affected families and wondering what action should take hold in the future. Upper School Director Ted Smith reminded us the day after in assembly that we could never let such an event “become normalized,” and it does not feel like that has happened – in our community or in our country. At least, not yet. Whether you have followed the news, watched the televised town hall meeting with the affected students, or generally followed the student-led reaction to this tragedy, this feels different for some reason. Whatever opinion one holds on the complex issue of gun control, it is a powerful sound byte when a high school student looks at a lawmaker and says: “We are the children. You are supposed to be the adults.” While one might argue that this surge of student action is emotional, if not react

Last Friday, Berwick celebrated its third annual winter carnival – where we stop everything, get the PK-12 community outside in the snow, and have some fun. At the opening ceremony, I told the kids that these are moments when we know we are part of something bigger than ourselves at Berwick. Soon all three divisions were off to broomball, acaderod races, and snow sculptures. We watched as faculty and student alike dove in to have a good time together. I was struck that our opening ceremony took place on the same day as the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. For the first time, my children are old enough to be interested in this international competition. They are drawn to the names of the countries and trying to figure out where everyone must train based on geography. They think sports like skeleton and luge are beyond cool. And they don’t understand why their Dad seems to tear up at every other event. “You cry at everything,” one of them said recently. Well, as a Hea

Recently I finished a book called A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger. A speaker at a conference this year recommended it, and the title intrigued me. As the name suggests, the focus is on how quality questions generally drive the best businesses to true success. Asking the right questions is an essential aspect to strong leadership. Beyond thinking about leadership in the business world, the notion of quality questioning can be applied to one’s personal life but also about schools and education. In fact, the book makes a case that our education system generally rewards answers from students, even though the evidence suggests that being able to ask the right question is an essential skill in the workplace. Not unlike Ken Robinson, who maintains that our educational system intentionally educates creativity out of children, Berger maintains we do the same for curiosity and questioning. He highlights that human questioning hits its peak at about four years old, where research sh

It is hard to avoid the energy that is building towards the Patriots next attempt at a Super Bowl on Sunday around here. As of Wednesday this week, I was swimming in a full on assault to see if Mr. Schneider might call another Sunday night Super Bowl snow day with a pending storm on the way during his final year. And while it is hard to deny that the media coverage is a bit much at the moment (how much more can we hear about mysterious “tensions” in the locker room), watching this epic run by the Patriots reminds me of a few things about football I feel compelled to mention. I actually have thought extensively about speaking too much about the role football has played in my life, as I worry I might suddenly be labeled as an anti-intellectual jock…or people will say that I place too much emphasis on sports. But I must say that this particular sport shaped and formed me in some fundamental ways. The first shaping was undoubtedly in my role as a player. It was there that I learned th

My former Head of School was fond of saying that late January, in the context of all enrollment and employment contracts being sent out, was the time when he suddenly found himself with no students and no employees. There is no denying the challenge that exists in sending out all kinds of offers to be a part of Berwick’s next journey and having to wait for seven or eight hundred different contracts to emerge in various ways. Some of those eight hundred stories will be straightforward, and some will take lots of follow up and persistence. There will be happy surprises and surprise disappointments along the way; there are every year. It is hard as a leader, and harder as a parent, to acknowledge that certain things are out of our control. I heard recently from a Berwick parent that their freshman in college was back in the house for the past month and how hard it was to figure out the proper parenting role. Mostly this person just hoped and prayed that good decisions would be made. W

We often lament in the Admission Office that we wish we could bottle up the Berwick spirit in our marketing efforts. Bringing clarity and data to all that makes Berwick unique is a difficult task. To some degree, one has to experience it to believe it.  In fact we just celebrated one of those nights last week at our Trustee/Faculty/Staff dinner. At that event, our guests from the Taktse School in Sikkim, India were in attendance as were their Berwick host families. One of the added bonuses of this arrangement was that a few of our Berwick parents caught a glimpse of this special event that is generally not open to our parent community. I hope my musings today might offer some of you a glimpse as well. It is a rare and special tradition that after our January Board meeting, our employee community sits down with trustees to share a meal and celebrate the school. January strikes me as a good time to do this, when we are in the thick of the year rather than the excitement of the begin

As we have all returned to the busy pace of Berwick life once again this week, I have been struck deeply by the rather insidious expectation and unquenchable thirst we seem to have for communication of all types. This is not to dismiss the need at schools for great communication. To the contrary, I would offer that most of my toughest and most important moments as a leader have revolved around challenges associated with communication – whether to our internal or external audiences. The need for transparency and informed expectations are essential component to running a solid school these days. I certainly know that I have plenty of room for growth in this area. But it is also true that I spent the majority of my time last week with my cell phone off, my computer gone, and in the presence of a roaring fire. Music, backgammon, cribbage, and conversations were ubiquitous. Without such immediate access to email or CNN, a rather cliché epiphany emerged: I had everything I needed right