Skip to main content

A Grateful First Week

As the first week of school draws to a close, it is exciting to have the HOS blog up and running once again. Today we formally kick off the school year with Convocation, Community Circles, and our PK-12 opening assembly. I plan to focus my comments a bit on gratitude, as this is certainly a year when the Schneiders are feeling grateful for all that Berwick Academy has done for our family. But I must say thinking about gratitude immediately whisks me into the national news and the wreckage generated by Hurricane Harvey - with Irma close behind. It is always a challenge for us to find the proper PK-12 response to these kinds of national events, but I know that Berwick will do so in the days ahead.

Just yesterday, I heard from beloved 40 year Berwick teacher and old friend Jim Sullivan, who has relocated to Florida upon retiring from BA. In his email, he expressed his annual good wishes on the start of school while sharing sadness in knowing this would be my final year. Jim has always been someone who could appreciate the complexity and responsibility of the Head of School role. More importantly, his family was packing up and bracing for the oncoming devastation of Irma – in his own words: “I would take a good ole Nor’easter over this any day.”

In following these mighty storms, one can’t help but be drawn back to Katrina and the devastation in New Orleans. Ironically, I will be traveling to New Orleans next week to offer a talk on leadership and financial aid to admissions and financial aid professionals – weather permitting. What always strikes me in these moments is the kind of temporary equalization these regions experience in the shared human need for survival. Many political, financial, and religious divisions melt away in the face of Mother Nature. Yet in the weeks and months of recovery that ensue, we often see the divisions of socio economic class more brightly than ever as regions attempt to bounce back. I hope that Berwick can make a small dent in assisting this recovery in the days ahead.


Most of all, the scary news feeds remind me to be grateful for the time we have to share and learn on this Hilltop. September brings with it the energy, hope, and optimism of young people in our lives once again. And when I exit the inner circle of Fogg field today, hopefully with a daughter or two holding my hand as we exit the ceremony in silence for a final time, I will be reminded once again of all we have to be grateful for at Berwick Academy.

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

Designing the Revolution

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...
1 comment
Read more

Behind the scenes

I often like to use the word authenticity when talking about Berwick Academy. I have said that I feel more able to be myself at Berwick than any place I have worked to date; it truly is a gift to feel that way. For parents, we usually focus on the teachers and coaches who make our kids’ lives so dynamic, and we forget the people behind the scenes who make the Berwick experience possible: maintenance, custodial, food, transportation, and support staff, etc. Berwick could not deliver the program it delivers without such high quality yet largely unheralded work. The same could be said of the Head of School. I am quick to point out that being a father is far more humbling than being a Head of School. There is no way on earth that I could have possibly moved this school forward without the unquestioned support of my wife, Amy. I often marvel that, in addition to dealing with a husband who can be tired and grumpy at the end of long days, she somehow has managed to catalyze the amazing...
1 comment
Read more