August 16, 2013
Dear Hathaway Brown Families,
There’s not a whole lot of chalk dust kicked up in classrooms on the first day of school anymore. These days, teachers introduce themselves by swiping magic pens across digital SMART boards to spell out their names. And you’re less likely to hear pencils scratch across fresh paper as brand new composition books are filled with notes. Instead, girls’ fingers fly up and down on shiny iPad screens as they diligently log their thoughts about the horizons of possibility they’ll soon encounter as a fresh landscape of learning unfolds.
While it has been a few years since I found my seat as a student behind a wooden classroom desk, as each summer comes to a close my blood quickens with anticipation and excitement just the same. The first day of school has always been my favorite day of the year. I fell in love with school at an early age and have been smitten ever since. (Though there was that time, my mother used to remind me, when I threw my Lone Ranger lunch box to the floor in a fit of pique because my first day of kindergarten came and went without anybody teaching me how to read. That was just the beginning of a taxing year for my saintly teacher, Mrs. Quible, who had to endure me in first grade as well.) The tools of the trade have changed, but the feelings haven’t. This is a time when anything is possible. Big important new questions are about to be asked, new friendships are about to be made, new discoveries are about to be unearthed.
Hathaway Brown is an exhilarating place to be in the fall, and all of us at School are eagerly awaiting the arrival of our girls (and the boys of the Early Childhood brotherhood) for the adventure of a brand new year, our 138th of “learning not for school but for life” at Hathaway Brown. We’re especially pleased, too, that 132 new families from all over greater Cleveland will be joining us as members of our community, and I hope you’ll help us reach out to them so they can quickly feel right at home.
As the school year is reborn, my thoughts travel back to the close of last year, when we bid farewell at a celebratory dinner to some long-time, beloved, and influential colleagues who have now retired following distinguished careers here. Collectively this honor roll of stalwarts served our School in a variety of different areas, and for a total of 242 years, nearly two and a half centuries of dedication to HB: Peggy Bacon, Early Childhood teacher; Joel Bartell, from the department of maintenance; Clyde Henry, English teacher; Marlene Leber, director of dance; Amy Longley, physical education and athletics; Brenda May, woodworking; Diane Niederst, of our dining staff; Joanne Palicka, assistant finance director; Roger Sams, Early Childhood music; Ruth Wylie, director of dining services. Although sad at the prospect of not seeing them every day, we so admire what they accomplished and know their influence will never wane. And now we’re thrilled to welcome to their first days at HB a new cadre of scholars, experts, and motivators who will no doubt make their own mark on life and learning at this special place.
“Be Well, Lead Well”
One of our first day traditions is the unveiling of a school theme that helps guide our work for the year ahead. It will focus this year on health, wellness and leadership, on building up our resources as whole and balanced people so that we can fulfill the possibilities within us and be the change we want to see in the world.
As you know, HB has been in the leadership business for a long, long while – all the way back to the first day we opened our doors in 1876, and we have graduated a remarkable procession of notable women prepared to be leaders, difference makers, and forces for good wherever they go. But leadership itself is changing – just as quickly as everything else in this world. And at HB we define leadership broadly and inclusively – it’s not just about being a CEO. Girls and women are reinventing leadership, expanding the definition beyond titles and rank, and discovering ways to include wellbeing. Their measures of success include more than power and status, but also deep concern for the welfare of the people, communities, and futures involved. Girls want to change the world for the better. Girls want to be able to lead their own lives. We want to encourage them and inform them as they navigate their own paths.
“Be Well, Lead Well” will explore the premise that doing good and doing well are connected to being well. Through a series of events, speakers, activities, and academic programs, we’ll invite not only our students but also faculty, alumnae, and parents to find ways to appropriately care for themselves physically, intellectually, and emotionally – real strategies that make sense for each of us – so that we can be our best, most creative, and most impactful selves. Leveraging the many ways in which we already address wellbeing in every division of the School, Koyen Shah, director of the Center for Leadership and Wellbeing (formerly the Center for Girls’ and Women’s Leadership) will help us pursue this groundbreaking approach to bringing together health, wellness, leadership and power. For girls and women. For good.
Let me mention several events coming up in the early part of the year that advance the cause of wellbeing for our families and community.
Here Comes Babypants
A fantastic family-friendly performer, Caspar Babypants will be releasing his seventh album of catchy tunes for kids and parents this fall – and he’s coming to perform at HB on Monday, September 9, at 6:00 p.m. The concert will be held, weather permitting, in our back courtyard and in the gym if it rains. Caspar’s concert is free and open to the public but please make reservations as space is limited. Come at 5:00 p.m., if you like, bring your own picnic, and seize the moment for some family fun time.
Helping Parents Cope With Technology
October 8 will bring the first presentation in our Learning for Life Speaker Series, sponsored by HB’s Center for Family Support. It will feature Catherine Steiner-Adair, an internationally renowned psychologist from Boston who has become a great HB friend and advocate over the years. She returns to campus to speak about the findings of her hugely important new book, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age. Her presentation is free and open to the public and begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Ahuja Auditorium. Catherine was interviewed earlier this week on the Diane Rehm Show and was most impressive, as always. She is a thoughtful and compassionate guide to making the best of family life in our times.
In Other School News
Look out Starbucks! Later this year a group of Upper School students will be opening up Cleveland’s coolest coffee shop in the Upper School Library, part of a schoolwide push to promote entrepreneurialism and business savvy among students of all ages. We thank the HB Parents’ Association for the venture capital they provided for this savory initiative . . . HB has received a $3,800 grant from Dominion Energy to set up a solar charging station in the Atrium this year, to be built and maintained by students from our Campus Sustainability class. It will be a terrific on-going educational resource for all and a good introduction to the benefits of solar energy . . . With our Global Studies program, the Midwest’s best and one of the best in the U.S., HB students are gaining a tremendous advantage in worldly wisdom. Over 90% of the Class of 2013 traveled abroad on an HB trip prior to graduation, and more than 80% completed a senior thesis to earn a designation as a Global Scholar. The Class of 2014 is on track toward similar levels of international engagement. This year our Center for Global Citizenship will offer trips to or student exchanges involving: Australia, the Bahamas/Island School, the British Virgin Islands, France, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, India, Italy, Panama, Senegal, and Turkey . . . At Commencement last June, we launched the Class of 2013 with flags flying toward some of the most fortunate colleges and universities in the United States. The girls all had terrific choices and will be attending schools that fit their personal visions of who they’d like to become and what they hope to make happen in the world. 85% were accepted by their first choice schools, and more than half are attending US News and World Report Top 30 National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges. While we shall miss their presence on campus, we are blessed to have the Class of 2014 as the new student leaders of the School. The young women of ’14 are intellectually curious, hardworking, inventive, irresistibly engaging, and endearingly quirky. They are going to be great role models for their HB sisters across the grades.
With Gratitude for All Your Support
HB thrives in no small measure because of the extraordinary investment and profound commitment that you continue to make not only toward the successful educational journeys of your daughters and sons, but also to the success of the School as a whole. This manifests itself in so many different ways, through your gifts of time, energy, ideas, enthusiasm, hard work – and of course through your financial commitment and generosity. I am very pleased to share with you the exciting news that in 2012-13, parent giving to our Annual Fund rose significantly and played a vital role in enabling us to raise over $1.8 million – a new record for the Annual Fund! As you know, the Fund isn’t for “extras,” it is an essential ingredient of the magic of the whole HB experience, touching the life of every single student and teacher. Please know how deeply grateful we are for all of your contributions and support, and for the vital difference they make to our ability to live our mission.
Powered by Love
Awaiting the voices that will ring throughout the School on opening day, I still hear words that have echoed since the final day of last year, words of Zoe Harvan, chosen by her classmates to deliver the senior address at Commencement:
“From the moment each of us first pushed open those front doors of HB, we were among those fortunate few who live life with a safety net. This school has raised us to believe in ourselves because it has unwaveringly believed in us. And in doing so, it’s forever protected us from self-doubt, banished it, really. It’s protected us from ever thinking that there is something, anything, we can’t achieve and from ever wondering if we are smart enough or good enough. Because of it, we can make mistakes and we can fail. Because of it, we can and will, ultimately, succeed. We are powerful with the love of this community. “
We know that the real measure of our mission is to help our girls find and shape their most authentic selves. Each girl, each year, in each way that fits her. That work starts again this Wednesday, and I can’t wait.
Here’s to a new school year that fulfills our highest hopes from the first day to the last.
With warmest wishes to you all,
William Christ
Head of School