Berwick Academy Head of School

            The arrival of spring coincides with lots of people in our community making decisions about schools. For Berwick, we are currently doing our best to convince our first choice applicants to choose the Hilltop over their other educational options. For our seniors, many are finally starting to have choices to make about where they might head for college next year. All of it makes me reflect on how one makes a good choice about schooling in these kinds of exciting, but inevitably ambiguous, situations. I can’t help but remember the story of one of my teammates in college, who chose to go to Amherst over another school in the league purely based on the fact that he could bring a car to campus in his first year. He had a high school girlfriend. While the girlfriend was no longer in the picture by Thanksgiving, Josh went on to be the leading rusher in Amherst College history, was a fine campus leader, and is now one of the most successful financial professionals I know. Good th

This past Wednesday, our Girls Varsity Hockey team hosted its first ever NEPSAC playoff game at home and beat a talented Proctor team 3-1. I was overwhelmed by the intensity and pace of play. Our student body turned out in droves, and the energy was outstanding in the Dover Ice Arena. Within the first two minutes of the game, our girls let in the first goal. We seemed a bit slow coming out of the gates, and I worried if the momentum would quickly unwind for the Bulldogs. Just the opposite occurred. Immediately, our team was flying around the ice with a renewed sense of focus and urgency. We answered with two remarkable goals just before the first period ended. I was watching as resiliency and grit, the favorite topics of academic researchers these days, were unfolding before our eyes. Now we move on to Boston on Saturday to face the number one seed in the tournament. It is amazing how a community can hop on the shoulders of a successful team and create benefits far beyond thei

As Berwick parents know, we made a decision to use our professional day for 2015 to attend the National Association of Independent Schools conference, which happened to be in Boston this year. Given that this event usually comes to Boston once per decade, it was a unique opportunity to expose our entire faculty to the national conversation at independent schools. When we scheduled it a year ago, the decision to close school on February 27 and bus our teachers to Boston seemed like a no-brainer. After four snow days this winter, I must admit that it seemed a bit more audacious as the actual day approached. Most of all, I want to thank our families for allowing this to happen. The experience turned out to be remarkable on a number of levels. I was honored to be a part of the “Think Tank” planning group in Boston, which landed on a theme of Designing the Revolution for Independent Schools. This theme spoke to a combination of innovation, design thinking, and new leadership required f