Current Letter

Biography

Head of School

Dear Friends,

The exciting evolution of teaching and learning continues this year at Friends as our faculty works to align classroom practice with the goals and outcomes we’ve set for our students in our Teaching and Learning at Friends School paradigm. (See diagram pg. 4.) This issue of Collection highlights some of the many ways in which we are progressing toward these objectives.

The work of designing innovative student learning experiences demands, above all else, a fine sense of balance. Throughout this effort, our intention has always been to retain the methods and practices that have proven effective and valuable for our work with students, while adapting to meet the changing needs and imperatives of our times.

As I think back to my own education — which did not, unfortunately, take place at Friends School — it’s obvious to me now that the focus was overwhelmingly slanted toward knowledge accumulation, with success and achievement determined largely by the ability to recall facts we had read or heard from textbooks or teachers.

While that model was the norm for the late 20th century, it won’t suffice today. The unprecedented pace and scope of change in every field demands that we nurture in our students the ability to create, search for and apply newly emerging knowledge. They must be able to thrive in a time of innovation and uncertainty, while developing such habits of mind as reflection, creativity and empathy in order to successfully navigate a future that neither they nor we — their teachers, mentors and parents — can fully foresee.

As the authors Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum write in the recently published That Used to Be Us, “a better education today is one that prepares a student to understand a book that has not yet been written, to master a job that has not yet been created, or to conceive a product that does not yet exist. This is what students in their working lives will have to do, repeatedly.”

As is true of all that we do as a School community, the quest for a well-balanced education is driven by our belief that the world — perhaps now more than ever — truly does need what our children can do. In embracing this conviction, we acknowledge that the experience we provide for our students must always reflect, and evolve with, the demands of that wider world. Committing ourselves to meet this challenge, with full awareness that the goal line will be forever in motion, is a prospect both daunting and thrilling — and I have no doubt we will prove equal to the task.

Best wishes,

Matt