Circiter | Featured on Campus in the song, rushing down the mighty stream, there came a vivid memory…of a soccer game. It was a playoff game a couple of years ago, and the other Groton teams were finished with their games and practices, so one sideline was filled with a couple hundred students wearing Groton colors, chanting Groton cheers, urging on the Groton team. Suddenly, the entire throng fell quiet under the direction of a Sixth Former in body paint, and then they broke into song: “Let justice roll, roll down like water…” I’m not kidding. The Groton sideline sang the hymn all the way through, multiple times. The opposing team was totally flummoxed. I do not remember what happened in the game, because something far more memorable was taking place. You know the saying, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?” The implication is that you go to Vegas, you behave badly, and you leave the bad behavior there. Well, we have the opposite mission. We want students to come to Groton, behave quite well, and then take their excellent behavior out into the world. To put it another way, what happens in Chapel should absolutely NOT stay in Chapel. And so I love the memory of a rowdy sideline at a soccer game belting out the hymn that we sang in Chapel that morning. Sure, the students were partly amused at the juxtaposition they had created, but they were also aware that this is not something that happens at other schools. And they were clearly quite proud of that. I am proud of it too, and I believe that great teaching around the Groton Circle should not only wow our students; it should echo broadly in their lives, and it should do so in ways that will often be completely out of context, completely contrary to what popular culture would predict.
There is another important source of inspiration at Groton, another means of cutting back against the grain of popular culture that is as important as great teaching and sometimes even more powerful. The other source is student leadership, and Groton relies on it more heavily than any other school I know. When I began my tenure at Groton, Bill Polk, Form of ’58 and Headmaster for twenty-five years, gave me a piece of advice that I did not quite believe. “As the Sixth Form goes,” he said, “so the School goes.”
Felipe and Marta Urrutia P ’09 speak with Rick Commons.
6 | Quarterly Winter 2009
Mari Tabata ’09 performs a jazz solo at Saturday night concert.
And so I love the memory of a rowdy sideline at a soccer game belting out the hymn that we sang in Chapel that morning. Sure, the students were partly amused at the juxtaposition they had created, but they were also aware that this is not something that happens at other schools. I remember thinking that was quaint—an old-fashioned idea that might have been true fifty years ago. But I did not really believe that the collective personality and character of one grade could determine the tone and tenor of the entire school. I am now in my sixth year at Groton, a five-year school, so in a way I am beginning my second run through. And I have come to believe Bill’s advice. Most everyone on the Circle feels that the tone of the School this fall has been terrific—lots of hard work but lots of fun too, with a sense that students and faculty are very much on the same page, pursuing the same goals in concert. Ask your children about it, about what makes Groton a good place these days, and I bet they will not get far in their answers without talking about this Sixth Form. They care deeply about the School, and they are doing things every day to lead it—from their Chapel talks to their check-ins, from classroom discussions to in-house debates, from athletic contests to lip-synch contests. Some of you have heard me refer to the first student Chapel Talk of the year, given by Senior Prefect Henry Mumford. He