Skip to main content

A full tank

As we all head off into one last long weekend of true summer, I want everyone to know in the Berwick-sphere that my tank is full. More importantly, our community's tank is full. For me, summer is such an essential time to restore physically and emotionally from the school year, but it is also a chance to reflect on how lucky I am to work with young people and live in the Seacoast. As more challenges and problems continue to emerge on the geo-political landscape, I remain more convinced than ever that our work - alongside you, our Berwick families - will have transformational impact on our world over time. It is also really nice that we live near the beach.

This past week, our faculty and staff gathered together to hear multiple speakers and presentations on all we have to be excited about this coming year. Much focus was placed on continued progress towards the goals of Curriculum 2020, including the upcoming launch of our new Inspirations Commons by the end of September. Teachers travelled to the Port City Maker space to explore more deeply how we can connect various aspects of "making" into our curriculum. Our faculty heard a panel of Berwick students speak to their hopes for this new space....and then they provided professional development to all of us. I was so proud to see this paradigm shift, as I sat in on a session led by a senior about the ins and outs of 3D printing....something I plan to implement in my Ethics teaching this year. As we continue to work at being a student-driven school, we know how powerful it can be to learn from, and alongside with, our students. We also reflected together on the inclusive nature of our community. Certainly it was a week when I felt incredibly proud of our faculty and staff. Their teaching prowess and work ethic inspire me but their attention to empathy and the healthy development of young people is why my children go to school here.

While it has been an amazing week, I enter this tenth year at the helm more ready than ever to see your children. For while the Berwick tank is full, we still await the essential spark that gives our energy meaning and direction: the students. Perhaps what is most exciting at this time of year, as we lay out all of our shiny goals and plans for the future, is the knowledge that the students will steer the Berwick ship in directions we cannot fully anticipate. New ideas, achievements, failures, and relationships will emerge, and I am confident that I will once again find myself a changed (and tired) person next June. It is a truly healthy cycle of rebirth for me.


I hope that your family's tank is also brimming and that you are ready to hit the starting line next week. This is going to be a phenomenal year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Piercing the Bubble

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

The wonders of nature at Berwick

I started my day in the Admin meeting on Thursday hearing about the newest iteration of Earth Day this year. Thanks to senior Quinn Santos and his Innovation Pursuit, we learned about the ways in which Earth Day will be a bit more hands on and active than it has in the past. Quinn has been a passionate environmentalist on campus and this year his IP project has focused on building out our Earth Day programming. As Head of School, it is pretty compelling to see one student mobilize an entire PK-12 school into action to clean up beaches and come to know our local wildlife. While we can sometimes worry about the amount of disruption and special schedules that these events create, it’s amazing that we have kids who care as much as Quinn does. His passion is authentic, and it goes well beyond any kind of grade motivation. He is off to Unity College next year to take this passion to the next level. I finished my day by enjoying the miracle that Lower School parents know as the Lower S...
Post a Comment
Read more

Arts Underground

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...
Post a Comment
Read more