Thoughts on how
a school stays true to its mission. A visit back – 50 years after first
arriving.
Last month I
posed several questions:
What lasts, in our
schools?
Does public
education have an abiding purpose?
Do we in education have any core beliefs, and a larger sense of purpose, that are constant? Are there a few values and goals that guide us, that do not change with the latest legislation—or with the new school board, superintendent, or principal?
When change and
innovation pervade much of the discussion about public education, it is worth
asking if there are any constants. Can a school sustain its original mission? I
concluded AV #270 saying I would visit the private school where I had my first
job: Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, MA. (A student teacher in the spring of
1971, a full-time teacher in 1975-77.)
On April 24 I spent five hours on the
campus. To avoid indulging in nostalgia and personal reminiscences, I hope to
make one simple point for education policy in Colorado.
It is my sense that
the essential purpose of Eaglebrook School, over 100 years after it was
founded, is unchanged. And over 50 years after first arriving, my time in April
– at the all-school morning assembly (same location); on a tour of the
classroom building (redesigned, much expanded) given by today’s headmaster,
Andy Chase; in a 7th grade class exploring Of Mice and Men (still
in the curriculum); and at lunch in the dining hall (same as always—ten to a table: a faculty couple and eight boys*)—I
felt I was in the same school I knew in the 1970’s.
(*With 250 students now, not all fit on the main floor. Hence—yes, among several changes in the physical plant—a new dining hall is under construction. New and refurbished dorms, a swimming pool, etc.)
Best of all, the interactions between adults and students were always friendly and warm.
How is it that a school can feel like
the same place this visitor knew over 50 years ago? To be sure, it helps when its
leadership remains in one family for most of its first hundred years.
In 1922 Howard Gibbs
fulfilled a long-time dream. He opened a boarding school for middle school boys,
set on the hillside of Mt. Pocumtuck in Deerfield, MA. Year one: all of 15
students.
After Gibbs' sudden
death six years later, a young teacher, Thurston Chase, became the school’s
headmaster (1928-1966). The school grew to 160 students. In 1966, Thurston’s
son, Stuart, became the head (1966-2002). (It was Stuart who hired me in 1971.
His son, Andy, was a 7th grader back then.) When Stuart retired in
2002, Andy became Eaglebrook’s fourth headmaster. (More on the school’s history
- https://www.eaglebrook.org/about-us/history.)
For public education
in Colorado, where is the lesson here? We do not pass schools on, father to
son. Moreover, we know how rare it is to see a smooth succession following a
long-time leader’s tenure. Eaglebrook’s advantages here are impossible to
replicate.
This is the lesson: a
good school has a clear purpose. It knows why it exists. But even with one
family carrying forward deeply held beliefs about its central goals, that is
not enough to remain constant over a long period of time. A school’s beliefs
and mission must be put in writing.
Stuart Chase passed
away in 2017, but Monie, his wife and a long-time teacher at the school, is
active and working on the history of the school. It was a great pleasure to
visit with her and discuss how the school has stayed true to Howard Gibbs’
vision. In earlier times, she told me, “everyone knew what the values and
beliefs of Eaglebrook were. In today’s world,” she added, “it’s written down.” By the 1980’s Eaglebrook had produced
a mission – in writing.
Andy
Chase told me, “People
have wanted us to change our mission, but we’ve avoided that.” This comparison shows it has been reworked and
“modernized,” as Chase puts it, but after more than 30 years, it remains
virtually the same.
|
Annual Report 1993-94 Mission Statement |
2023-24 Mission* |
|
Eaglebrook is a school for boys in the sixth, seventh,
eighth, and ninth grades. In a warm, caring atmosphere boys learn more than
they ever thought possible, discover inner resources, develop
self-confidence, and have fun along the way. Eaglebrook welcome boys of any
race, color, nation, or creed, and all share the same privileges and duties. |
A School for Boys Eaglebrook is a boarding and day school for boys
in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. In a warm, caring, structured
atmosphere boys learn more than they ever thought possible, discover
inner resources, develop self-confidence, and have fun along the way.
Eaglebrook welcomes boys of any race, nationality, sexual orientation, or
religion, and all share the same privileges and duties. |
|
The School’s Role Eaglebrook’s
role is simple: to help each boy come into full and confident possession of
his innate talents, to improve the skills needed for the challenges of
secondary school, and to establish values that will allow him to be a person
who acts with thoughtfulness and humanity. |
Teaching Boys the Skills They Need Eaglebrook’s
role is to help each boy come into full and confident possession of
his innate talents, to improve the skills needed for the challenges of
secondary school, and to establish values that will allow him to be a person who
respects individual differences and acts with thoughtfulness and
humanity. |
|
An Adventure At the heart of the school is the shared life of the
teachers and boys working together.
Teachers make learning an adventure and watch over each boy’s personal
growth. They set the academic tone, coach the teams, serve as dormitory
parents, and are available for a boy when he needs a friend. They motivate
boys to reach beyond the easily attained and help them realize that mistakes
can lead to progress. |
The shared life At the heart of the school is the shared life of
teachers, their families, and boys working together. Teachers make
learning an adventure and watch over each boy’s personal growth. They set the
academic tone, coach the teams, serve as dormitory parents, and are available
for a boy when he needs a friend. They
endeavor to motivate boys to reach beyond the easily
attained and help them realize that mistakes can lead to progress. |
This is the language of good schools. “Learn, discover, develop, reach - personal growth - self-confidence - to be a person who …” It speaks to the kind of people its graduates will be.
Of course to be a good school requires much more
than a clear mission. But I believe it is an essential component. I do not see our
larger districts allowing for this. They insist on “system alignment.” They do
not believe that each school should have its own purpose. That would grant schools
too much power. Dependence on—not independence from—the central office is key.
Inside our larger districts, granting schools the freedom to articulate
and pursue their own convictions would disrupt efforts to effect “system
alignment.” The district would lose control.
I have not lost hope that we can rethink these structures? Not long ago, we tried. Denver Public
Schools debated the role of the central office during the Bennet/Boasberg
years. How much authority should a school have over its operations (and I would
add, in determining its very purpose)? Books like Reinventing America’s
Schools (2017)[i] and Challenging the One Best System – The Portfolio Management Model
and Urban School Governance (2020)[ii] featured Denver’s restructuring efforts—and its academic improvement. Hopes
were raised, then dashed. Can we try again?
I hope this much is clear: when schools are forever looking over their shoulder, fearful of what the district and the state will do to push them off course, they cannot operate—as an Eaglebrook School has done—with confidence and in control of their destiny. If clarity of mission is essential, so is school autonomy.
Finally, a word—not about a school’s mission, but about the larger mission of public education. As I show in my ongoing series: “The Business of Education – is Education,” the purpose of K-12 education today is unclear—and under threat (egregious example, see “the Blur”; let’s NOT see clearly!). I know educators lack the influence of the business world, but why do we tolerate its effort to revise our mission? Why don’t we challenge this?
Educators show a lack of spine if we allow “training students for the workplace” to be our guide.
We show a lack of commitment to the state academic standards. Today high school graduation has little to do with academic achievement. I have raised the alarm about how well our soon-to-graduate juniors read and write,[iii] but who cares? Today’s mantra: graduate “career ready.”
Most troubling, we show little faith in the idea that we educate to prepare students for life.
Good schools will keep
the faith. Eaglebrook’s headmaster Andy Chase puts it nicely, in words
consistent with the school’s mission. We are here, he says, to support the boys
during these formative years in ways “that are going to last a lifetime….” He
adds: “When they’re 25 or 30 I want them to look back and feel we are a very
important part of who they are.”
[i] David
Osborne, Reinventing America’s Schools – Creating a 21st Century
Education System (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017).
[ii]
Katrica E. Bulkley, Julie A. Marsh, Katharine O. Strunk, Douglas N. Harris, and
Ayesha K. Hashim, Challenging the One Best System – The Portfolio Management
Model and Urban School Governance (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard Education Press,
2020).
[iii]
Report – “After the READ Act – Beyond third grade, how well do our students
read?” Executive Summary (February 2024). https://anotherviewphj.blogspot.com/2024/02/
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