Midyear Message from Mark Segar

Midyear Message Mark Segar, Interim Head of School February 2016

February 1, 2016 Dear SCH Parents, Midway through the academic year seems like a good time to share some impressions and ideas with everyone in the SCH community. It is an honor to be serving as Interim Head of School through this transitional year for Springside Chestnut Hill. Everyone who is a part of the continuing life of this extraordinary place is fortunate to have both the benefit of the wonderful resources of the school, and the opportunity to engage with others—families, alumni, faculty, and staff—in sustaining and strengthening this enterprise for today’s students and for future generations. This institution’s strength, the quality of its programs, and the promise of its future are worthy of every effort each of us can make. Heartfelt thanks to each of you for your continuing engagement and support.

When I arrived in Chestnut Hill last summer, I had read and heard about a number of SCH’s cutting-edge initiatives. As school opened, it was exciting to learn a bit more about the commitment to active, project-based learning, design thinking, new media initiatives, robotics and engineering programs, the venture incubator, and related aspects of the Sands Center (CEL) and its growing influence across the entire age range and curriculum.

Over the past four months, I’ve come to understand some of the ways in which SCH is just as committed to the strength of the blade that supports the cutting edge— the core traditions of the liberal arts and sciences. To me, this is affirming evidence that SCH is taking a both/ and rather than an either/or approach, is experimenting with ways to integrate new ideas and evolving research findings into every discipline, recognizing that progressive and sustainable change involves conservation as well as innovation.

SCH is notably strong in nurturing capacity to master a new skill, to answer a new question, to extend welcome to a newcomer, to feel safe enough to fail and strong enough to try again.

Through the fall I continued to see exciting evidence of this on our campus, from the Imaginarium in Lower School for Boys to the Global Travel program in Upper School, from a full week of choral concerts to a fifth grade science fair. Students generated and tested hypotheses across a delightful range of topics and questions, from “Which stain remover works best?” to my favorite as a New Englander, “Are under-inflated footballs easier to throw?”

Scholar and former college president Nannerl Keohane, journalist and commentator Fareed Zakaria, and others have written eloquently about the continuing importance of a liberal arts

education, arguing that technical capacities, and professional skills, can be exercised most effectively when applied in the context of broader understandings of history, language, culture, art, and the natural and social sciences. More importantly, perhaps, good education fosters civic engagement, an understanding that it is through commitments beyond the self that we make meaning in our lives, and add value to the lives of others. One of the essential, and ancient, aims of education is to develop virtue. Another is to nourish students’ sense of purpose. SCH addresses these aims in many ways, through service learning and collaborative activities, and by providing opportunities for even the youngest students to gain a sense of their own efficacy. SCH is notably strong in nurturing capacity to master a new skill, to answer a new question, to extend welcome to a newcomer, to feel safe enough to fail and strong enough to try again.

Another observation is that the both/and approach applies to SCH’s fundamental structure as well. The school is unique in its aim to incorporate the best of both single-sex and coeducational settings, providing small-scale, single-sex settings and programs in the earlier years, and combined classes and activities at older levels. Doing so, while providing single-sex advising groups in Upper School, distinguishes SCH from other schools, and further illustrates the institutional commitment to offer innovation in a setting infused with tradition.

Choices SCH has made in doing this vitally important work are supported increasingly by research, and by evolving understanding of child and adolescent development. I like the ideas behind SCH’s expressed commitment to “passion-based learning.” I also know there is an important precursor to keep in mind: curiosity. Inquiry comes naturally to humankind. Our 30-month-old grandson regularly asks why, what, and when. He also spills juice intentionally just to watch it splatter and to see how adults react. Watching children of all ages explore and experiment reminds us that questions often come first, that learning based on simply inquiry serves as the foundation for passionate interests, that there is a powerful place in the learning process for simple delight, for laughter, for messy, exuberant play. And to remember that what may one day mature into passion begins with wonder.

It’s also worth reminding ourselves that not every student’s learning is propelled by a personal or specific passion. We all see evidence of this, in the different outlooks of single-sport or threeseason athletes, in the developing reader whose tastes may range widely, or another who focuses intently on one fantasy series after another. Children and adolescents “grow into the intellectual life of those around them,” the psychologist Lev Vygotsky wrote. It is impossible to overestimate how much the attitudes and actions, and the thinking and learning lives of teachers and parents matter as models for the attitudes and motivations young people are developing for themselves.

Institutional values and structures have this kind of impact as well, often through shared ritual, tradition, and ceremony—occasions for bringing a community together in reaffirming ways. SCH’s history as a single school is short, but it is fortunate to have a deep reservoir of tradition from the long histories of its two founding schools. I’ve had a number of chances to listen to small groups of seniors, these impressive and engaging students who will be the first group to graduate together from SCH. One of the questions they’ve addressed is about things they hope will never change here. Consistently, they bring up rituals and traditions, from Blue & Gold to Blue & Blue Day, and other traditions they hope successive generations of students will continue to enjoy. They have good ideas about things that could change as well. One theme in those suggestions focuses on how we apportion time at school, and whether there are ways to amend schedules and calendars to moderate pace, or to afford more time for personal connection, whether between students and

advisors or among students from different age levels. At the same time, they are excited about the dynamic range of electives, athletic options, affinity groups, and other opportunities that SCH provides. These students, so articulate about, and engaged with the life of their school, are worthy of the very best we can accomplish, for this Class of 2016 and those that follow. The thoughtful voices, inventive imaginations, and analytic skills that SCH students so clearly demonstrate will surely serve them well as they move on to college and the wider world.

SCH is in the midst of an ongoing process, bringing strong and exciting new leadership to campus this coming summer, working together to continue building a single, unifying culture, asking essential questions, generating The thoughtful voices, new initiatives, making important progress, and always learning.

Always learning, as do we all—students, teachers, parents. inventive imaginations, This exciting endeavor, fueled both by forward thinking and by wisdom, is worth all the good work and generosity of spirit this community can offer, now and always. and analytic skills that As daylight diminished and temperatures dropped through the fall, I watched one daily ritual take place right outside my office.

Each morning a group of boys builds and lights a fire in the main hearth of the Wissahickon Inn. They tend it through the day as well. It is a pure and primal tradition. Those young students, in their iconic jersey stripes, seem earnest in the certain knowledge that the responsibility for preventing frostbite in The Exchange may very well rest with them. And if the blizzards continue, perhaps indeed it will!

demonstrate will surely serve them well as they move on to college and the wider world.

With warm wishes and grateful appreciation,

Mark W. Segar, Ed.D. Interim Head of School

SCH students so clearly