BRUNSWICK SCHOOL
FEBRUARY 2013
MONTHLY MAILING An Early Spring Tale Perfect for Mid-Winter Even though it is now mid-winter, I have thought for many years that one of the defining moments of the Brunswick Experience occurs annually in the weeks of early spring/late winter, immediately prior to Spring Break. This is the time of year when we hold the performance of the annual Upper School Musical (directed by Seth Potter and Alexander Constantine), regularly involving a cast of what seems to be thousands. This time is special not because of what the musical is (this year, it’s Sweeney Todd), but rather it is special because of who the musical involves. You see, for a host of complicated reasons, the time of year when we hold both the rehearsals as well as the production of the Winter Musical coincides with the final weeks of the Third Marking Period and the closing weeks of the winter athletic season. To say that it is an enormously busy time of year for our Upper School students is an understatement. As academic classes always occupy their rightful place as a priority at our institution, the close of a marking period inevitably means a seemingly endless stream of tests, quizzes, projects and reports, all of which must be successfully completed before Spring Break. At the same time, our winter athletic teams, more often than not, find themselves invited to the annual New England Prep School Tournaments. In fact, with great pride, I can say that several of our winter teams, squash, wrestling, basketball and hockey, have either won the tournament in recent years or have reached very advanced rounds of competition. Furthermore, as we are obviously located in the southernmost reaches of New England, these tournaments invariably occur closer to Boston than they do to New York City and many of our varsity athletes find themselves on long road trips to far away tournament sites. At this point, I expect some readers must be saying “all that might be interesting, but what has this all to do with the Winter Musical?” The answer is simple. Because of the host of involvements made available to each of our students, few boys at Brunswick accurately define themselves by just one area of school life. Most Brunswick students see themselves as a mix of “students,” “athletes,” “artists,” and “actors.” So, on an annual basis, when the curtain rises on the first night of the musical, on stage, I thrill to see not only our talented actors and singers, but also a host of Honor Roll students, varsity athletes, and leaders of Student Government and Community Service, all in significant roles. Brunswick is a community that believes entirely in the comprehensive nature of the learning experience. In sum, we want our students to graduate having been exposed to a host of experiences. We want all our boys to be students first and then also to be involved in the arts, in community service and in athletics. What is truly wonderful about this ideal is that, as a school, we still manage to achieve it for so many. Using even this incredible end-of-winter/early spring crunch as an example, great and laudable pains are taken by teachers, coaches and play directors to try to accommodate each other’s expectations for their shared students in the hope that no student has to decide to forgo any worthwhile experience that we offer because of a conflicting commitment. As all adults know, life will inevitably provide ample time to fine tune each of our sons’ interests. In the meantime, as a school community, we are overjoyed that so many of even our oldest students still manage to expose themselves to so much of the wide range of experience that our school has to offer. The words carved on the entryway of both our Upper and Middle School campuses say, “with all thy getting, get understanding.” At Brunswick, because so many experiences are made available for the “getting,” we fervently believe, in turn, much “understanding” of learning and of life will surely follow.