H o n o r | Tr u t h | D u t y
5Pictured l-r: Steve Hearn '74,, Kenny Sholl, Rev. Sandy Willson, Rev. Russ Ingersoll, Elliott Davenport '78, Lee Burns '87, Spencer J. McCallie '55, Kemmer Anderson, Jon Meacham '87, Hal Daughdrill '73 and Chet LeSourd '72
to design, create, tinker, ideate, and prototype. They need to be innovative and entrepreneurial. They need to be fluid and flexible learners, able to learn, unlearn and relearn on the fly. They need to become lifelong learners with an intellectual curiosity and with the propensity to ask powerful and penetrating questions. They need to be excellent collaborators, and not just collaborators with their like-minded classmates, but with individuals from around the world, individuals from different countries and cultures, with different faith traditions and worldviews. Our boys need to be students of the world, global citizens who respect and learn from both their similarities and differences with others. McCallie students and graduates need to reason like a scientist, engineer, mathematician and coder. They need to design and build apps, not just consume them. It may be as important for them to be as fluent in digital literacy as it is any other world language. They need to communicate clearly, concisely and creatively in various media -- both traditional ones and
emerging ones. They need to nourish their minds and stir their souls, through great literature and art and music. And they need to craft poetry and paint and compose music. They need to study history from multiple viewpoints, to learn from it, to see how our past and place shape our present. And they need to understand who they are in relation to God their creator and redeemer, whose design and plans to grow, guide and prosper them call them to a life of faith, service and love. Unfortunately, schools, for the most part, are not designed and accustomed to doing many of these types of things. Schools are generally slowmoving and cautious, focusing on a narrow range of proscribed, shortsighted and often uninspiring content and skills, and in a rapidly-changing world, misalignments between what students need and what schools provide can emerge in ways both subtle and sudden. In the upcoming months and years, McCallie will continue to have stimulating conversations about the nature of learning and what knowledge, skills, mindsets and habits an
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individual should possess not only to be well-educated in today’s world, but to make a positive difference in it. Fortunately, we have a talented and intellectually curious faculty who have growth mindsets, and we as a school understand the importance of professional development. It’s not just that the dynamic and diverse nature of the world is demanding new skills, but young people are, in important ways, different than in prior generations. They are distracted and distractible, like many of us. They read less and game more. They connect and communicate in different ways. Their expectations and timeframes are immediate. They are less inclined to work hard and persevere. They have less of an idea of what wholesome and godly manhood entails and how to get there. How do we reach and teach them, especially our American boys who are disengaging from and underperforming in schools at alarming rates? At their cores, great schools hinge on relationships, especially those between students and their teachers, and fortunately for McCallie, that has been and remains our greatest strength. A passionate and talented teacher, who
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