Faculty Blog

It is a Thursday in late April and I am aboard an Acela Express train bound for New York City and a Fenn alumni reception in midtown Manhattan. On my left there is a cup of coffee cooling and on my right is a list of the former-but-always-will-be Fenn boys scheduled to attend the event this evening, many of whom I taught or coached in their years on Monument Street.

Davis Rosborough, class of '02: My advisee in eighth grade. Always thoughtful and upbeat. Helped me coach and referee the intramural football games in seventh grade because he was injured. Became a good quarterback at Deerfield.

Attend a conference for educators in independent schools or pick up a magazine or journal on independent school education and it won't be long before you hear or read what you can and should do to become a 21st century school or how your students can develop 21st century skills. What does it all mean? How did these particular skills emerge from the pack? How intentional do you need to be in your focus on these topics? How do you measure whether you are succeeding or not? The answers to these questions and others can be elusive but there are certain truths, including that our students are …

On March 10, students from Fenn and from all over the United States opened envelopes and emails from secondary schools and learned the outcome of their applications. The anxiety and anticipation had been building for the past few weeks and reached their apex for many students. The envelopes and emails revealed one of three outcomes: Admit, Wait List, or Deny. Gratification and relief arrived with an Admit; disappointment yet hope arrived with a Wait List; rejection and perhaps anger followed a Deny. The outcomes feel very personal. How can they not? Students have had their academic record …

In April 2012 I travelled to the Allen-Stevenson School in New York City to hear Dr. Adam Cox share the findings of his global research project for the IBSC on how school boys locate significance in their lives. Two years earlier, The Fenn School, the all-boys school in Concord, Massachusetts where I have spent the past eighteen years, was one of the twenty schools worldwide Dr. Cox visited as he conducted the research that would become central to the findings of his study. As a matter of fact, Fenn was the very first school Dr. Cox visited and one of two schools to which he verbally referred …