Berwick Academy Head of School

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...