8 | Our Process & Progress
It also became clear to us during the process that we needed to revisit and update our Core Values and Statement of Philosophy, based on where the School is today and copious research into the future our children will inherit. Furthermore, we developed for the first time a Core Purpose statement, one that reflects the feedback we heard, harkens back to our previous Strategic Plan, and articulates what is at “Twenty years from now you will be more the heart of the St. Anne’s-Belfield experience. disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than
by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Nurturing these Core Values in every Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade student is at once the great promise winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” of education as well as its challenge. - Mark Twain Values only take root over many years, requiring patience, support, and encouragement from teachers and parents alike. The journey from child to adult is a slow, unpredictable one, characterized by ups and downs, unexpected twists and turns, successes and failures, all the while filled with the doubts and fears of both child and parent. And it is often these doubts and setbacks that can cause us to lose sight of this long-term horizon. As Mark Twain warns, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Throwing off the bowlines is a noble goal, yet also one that is often seen as incompatible with a top-of-mind issue: college admissions. To be sure, college placement is an important part of what we do and a significant leg on the educational journey. That is why we provide college counseling that is second-to-none, through which every student receives individual guidance on finding the college of his or her choice. We are proud of our graduates’ success in discovering the best match for themselves, as nearly 90 percent of our seniors in the past three years have earned admission to their first, second, or third choice college. While college placement is important, it is also incumbent upon us to provide much-needed perspective when it comes to what the college placement list purports to reveal about the School and our students. Even during this period of hyper-selectivity in college admissions, when decisions often rest on unpredictable and subjective factors out of any student’s or high school’s control, where a child gets into college nevertheless persists as the proxy for his or her success during high school and as the primary measure of the value of a school. We feel strongly that there are far better measures for both.