Dear Academy Families, Our All School Meetings (ASM) are usually fabulous, and this week’s presentation of scenes from Romeo and Juliet by the drama upper-class elective hit that high mark. Unfortunately, however, I also had to share with our students a more serious concern as well. We just learned that early in April one of our [...]
Category: Head of School Letters
Marathon Tragedy
April 18, 2013 at 9:53 pm
Dear Academy Families, In the aftermath of the marathon tragedy, the Academy is moving forward – as the city — in a thoughtful and healing way. At a special All School Meeting (ASM), we sat as a whole community in reflective silence, followed by almost 20 students and faculty sharing some of their thoughts – [...]
Real-World Ramifications of Academic Work
April 12, 2013 at 2:47 pm
Dear Academy Families, This week at All School Meeting (ASM), history and current events collided. We hosted a panel of BU undergraduates representing “BU LiNK” (Liberty in North Korea). Rather than focus the Academy on what the news is highlighting (nuclear threats, the celebrity distractions of North Korea’s young leader), these BU students directed our [...]
Spring Is Finally Here
April 5, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Dear Academy Families, Spring is finally here! Well, despite the cold winds, it has started to feel like spring. O.K., forget the weather, but spring activities have definitely arrived! We are hosting our admitted students in several ways: neighborhood parties, revisit days to the Academy, and our annual Admitted Student Reception this coming Sunday at [...]
Smooth Yet Deeply Complex
March 29, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Dear Academy Families, This week in my section of 9th grade English, I have had the distinct pleasure of talking with my students about two Greek tragedies: Orestes by Euripides and The Eumenides by Aeschylus. Both plays are the third in a trilogy by each playwright called The Oresteia, which covers the story of Clytemnestra killing her husband [...]
Consistent and Modestly Ambitious
March 8, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Dear Academy Families, Last week I had the pleasure of attending the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) annual conference, held this year in Philadelphia, with 5,000 of my closest friends and colleagues…! The keynote speakers included Jim Collins (Good to Great, Great by Choice), who stressed that his research pointed to a couple key differences [...]
One Final Week until Spring Break
March 1, 2013 at 4:08 pm
Head’s Weekly Letter – February 28, 2013 ______________________________________________________________ Dear Academy Families, As we approach spring break next week, the energy in the Academy is marked. People are feeling both the depths of the February doldrums as well as the mounting excitement (just one more week!) till we all get a breather. Our return later in [...]
We as Citizens in a Corrupt System
February 22, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Dear Academy Families, Yesterday’s ASM was one of the best I’ve heard in my seven years at the Academy, and I hope your student brings excited echoes of it home to you as well. If not, be sure to ask about it. Professor Lawrence Lessig, currently Furman Professor at Harvard Law School as well as [...]
No Hybrid Program Quite Like Ours
February 15, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Dear Academy Families, With a “Head of School Holiday” (HOSH) unfortunately transformed into a pedestrian snow day last week – and, yes, it really was meant to be a day off for no good reason other than to give relief to the February doldrums when it was originally planned weeks in advance – and now [...]
The Slog toward Spring
February 1, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Dear Academy Families, First it’s over 60 degrees, then it’s down to 4 degrees, then it’s over 60 again, then back to 20…all in a two-week block of January…! In addition to fostering viral contagion (and there is a lot of sickness still circulating), it’s also thrown my biological clock out of whack to have [...]
