Berwick Academy Head of School

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...