One Year at Walker: Reflections from Our Head of School (3 of 3)

One year at Walker:

Reflections from our Head of School part three of three

THE WALKER SCHOOL

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. – Benjamin Franklin

Having lived in East Cobb before my tenure

at Augusta Preparatory Day School, I knew well the best-in-state reputation held by the likes of Walton, Lassiter, and Pope.

I see other high schools in our backyard, like Wheeler, Marietta High, and Campbell, adding magnet or International Baccalaureate (IB) programs to bolster their academic rigor. It’s a crowded playing field, and I haven’t even mentioned the other private schools. It seems if you didn’t buy your home in Cobb County specifically for the public education options, then chances are your neighbor did.

All of this begs the question:

Why is Walker worth the investment, particularly at the high school level, with the specter of college tuition looming on the horizon?

For starters, at Walker, our primary, core belief, shared by every adult at this school, is in the uniqueness of each individual child.

This is a school where we know each student uncommonly well–our perceptions often refined over the course of a decade or more. We unequivocally understand each student’s mind, which is possible here in part because our graduating classes generally hover around 85-95 students. You might find that number in two classrooms in some of the local public schools.

While the Cobb public schools are at the mercy of the county’s budgetary crisis–cutting 350 teachers for next year even as student populations increase–at Walker we’re adding teachers to even better deliver on our promise of teaching to the individual student. And not just any teachers, but practiced, expert educators. Teachers with advanced degrees from some of the most heralded academic institutions in the country, and teachers with impressive experience at some of the finest independent schools nationwide.

In short, we attract the finest educators from a national pool, and we surround your child with them, classroom-to-classroom, year-to-year, division-to-division. Because of that, our students develop sophisticated new ways of thinking from an early age that they carry into and through Upper School.

When it comes down to it, you’re entrusting a significant portion of your child’s life to us. Not just her safety and well-being, but her intellectual and emotional development. College preparation.

Socialization. Artistic and athletic achievement. Identity formation.

Peer groups. Think of how many hours your child spends in school every day, and with his classmates after school, at night, and on weekends. What he learns now – and how he learns now – endures.

Spring is always an exciting time at Walker because, as our seniors approach graduation and study for AP exams, they also hear back from colleges and make, together with you and our own counselors, the biggest decision of their young lives.

This fall, our valedictorian, Josh Zuckerman, will be attending Princeton University.

Brice Richardson, another 2012 graduate, has earned a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship to the University of South Carolina, a prize that amounts to $180,000 over four years.

Another recent graduate, Andrea Sikora, Class of 2007, was named an Amazing Student at the University of Georgia. One of our eighth graders, Emily Jacobson, wrote an essay for the Georgia Holocaust Commission that won first-in-state. The point is, you hold high expectations for your child. We do, too. At Walker, our students rise to the occasion of high-level scholarship while building happy, healthy, and humane relationships and outlooks. That’s not something you can find at many schools.

Not many at all, actually.

Walker students take an average of 5.6 AP exams during their time here, which is more than any other metro-Atlanta school.

Thanks for doing your part in making Walker the wonder-filled place it is. I’m glad I’ve been able to share my thoughts with you here at the culmination of my first year. And let’s keep in touch as, together, we watch your child progress through our school and shape his own wonder-filled life.

Sincerely,

Jack Hall

walkerwonders.org

700 Cobb Parkway North Marietta, GA 30062-2404

where wonders await.

THE WALKER SCHOOL