Faculty Blog

By nature, the end of the school year, despite its frenetic pace, prompts reflection on raising and educating boys. In the past nine months that we’ve shared with your sons, you as parents have been witness at home to their behind-the-scenes moments of elation, fear, disappointment, and satisfaction as they’ve invested themselves in school life with its challenges, triumphs, achievements, and failures.

Your parental love, support, and encouragement balanced with your clear expectations and wise discipline have served as a firm foundation for your sons’ growth at Fenn this …

*Each year, the faculty gathers to honor those who have served for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30+ years at Fenn. Here is one exerpt from that evening written and delivered by Jerry Ward. 

Filling the shoes of a legend is close to an impossible thing to do. Derek Boonisar arrived one day at Fenn twenty years ago as a twenty-five year old teaching candidate with two years of experience. He was here to interview for a full time position that involved teaching Latin, coaching sports, and advising middle school students. The young man didn’t know that day that the faculty member he would be ……

Could it be that schools, more often than not, prove right Thoreau's lament by failing to honor Sodergran’s primary principle about the human spirit? There is indeed that danger for any school as ever-present and expanding standardized testing can restrict and diminish the vitality of curriculum, learning, and teaching. Add to that danger the common circumstance of school budget cutting of the “non-essential” arts programs and “enrichment” classes and activities that are seen as expendable when hard financial choices are made.

"What does education often do? It ………

It would be a near impossible challenge in our technology-intensive environment to find a school these days that is not integrating technology in meaningful ways (and, possibly, in some instances, not so meaningful ways) in teaching and learning. As is the case in just about all professions, the digital age has accelerated change in the profession of education. Technology has provided ever-evolving and powerful means for schools and teachers to engage students in and beyond the classroom through simulations, blogging, research, project collaboration, distance learning, and the creation and ……

Standing at the front of Fenn's meeting hall just thirty minutes into the brand-new school year last Friday morning, I looked out at the faces of our 333 Fenn boys gathered with our teachers and staff. It was our first All School Meeting of the year. The time ahead of us as a school community lay before us with such clean promise—like the dew on the Meeting Hall green on that late summer morning beckoning us to the start of an unspoiled day. A buzz of conversation ran throughout the hall, enveloping the fifty new fourth grade boys seated in the front rows, our twenty-six ninth graders in……