What’s Happening at Bement
Each winter at Bement ninth grade students embark on a monologue project in a collaboration between their English and Theater teachers. Students compose, rehearse, and deliver an original monologue on a topic of their choosing with the entire upper school student body looking on as an audience. In addition to honing their skills as writers and public speakers, the monologue project provides Bement’s oldest students a chance to prepare for their ninth grade speeches, delivered at the end of the school year. This year’s ninth graders performed their monologues last week before a rapt audience, covering a range of topics from Lebron James to assimilating to a new school’s dominant culture. All of us in attendance were amazed with our ninth graders’ poise and grace – congratulations to them! We can’t wait to hear your voices again at Baccalaureate and Commencement.
What I’m Reading, and/or Watching, and/or Listening To
I just read the cover story from February’s issue of The Atlantic: “The Anti-Social Century” by Derek Thompson. As I read it, I realized that a Bement parent had shared an excerpt of Thompson’s piece with me a few weeks ago, and it was that snippet of the larger article that resonated most powerfully with me as I thought about Bement’s place in the dawning age of loneliness and self-isolation that our students inhabit. Referring to scholarship about the various circles of connection that define human society, Thompson writes, “Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance.” In the lives of our students, their families are central sources of affirmation and values, and their tribes may be their nationality, race, religion, or any other broad source of identity affiliation. One of the villages in their lives is Bement – a place where adults and children from a wide array of backgrounds gather to engage in the shared enterprise of learning and living together. Naturally, in such a gathering, there are sources of friction and disruption, but the village that is Bement teaches all in our community to value differing perspectives and foreground empathy. It is our hope at Bement that our school’s emphasis on compassion and respect will produce young leaders who can help cultivate similar villages in the communities they inherit after departing Historic Deerfield.
What Else Is on My Mind
I spent most of last week on the road, visiting Nashville, Tennessee, where the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) held its annual conference. In addition to providing me with a useful excuse to visit the Music City for the first time (and eat the best chicken sandwich I have ever experienced!), the NAIS annual conference offers independent school educators a chance to share effective practices and learn from industry leaders. I encountered plenty of new ideas and a glimpse into trends in the educational landscape, but perhaps most importantly, I found my time in Nashville to be affirming of Bement’s special place in the independent school landscape. The unity of experience our students enjoy–one defined by joy, respect for others, intellectual challenge, and the richness of frequent mixed-age activities–is something many other schools aspire to create in their communities. Preserving the core values and teaching practices that underpin that feature of Bement will be our school’s focus as we turn the page from our first century to our second, with hopes of strengthening Bement’s place as a leader among K-9 independent schools throughout the United States.