What’s Happening at Bement
Every Bement alum will tell you, ours is a school that skis! For as long as anyone can remember, Bement students have spent time every winter skiing together. Long ago, students would travel together to Eaglebrook or the now-defunct Mohawk ski hill in Greenfield, but now most of the upper school buses up to Berkshire East in Charlemont to ski & snowboard together every Friday in the winter. If that weren’t enough time on the slopes, Bement’s alpine ski team heads back and forth from the mountain every day in the winter to train for their competitive season.
This year’s racing season was an impressive one for all of Bement’s alpine skiers, but the girls team stole the show at their final race of the winter. At last week’s NEPSAC alpine skiing championships, Bement’s girls won the Class C division team title! Defeating a raft of high schools from around New England, Bement’s skiers took first in both individual events and ran away with the team title. Congratulations, Bement skiers!
What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening To
I completed McEwan’s What We Can Know a few weeks ago, and now I have moved on to Richard Powers’ novel, Playground. Set in part in the South Pacific, I am enjoying some scenes of warm sun and the aquamarine tropics while winter peters out in New England. Meanwhile, I traveled to the west coast last week which granted me some good airplane reading time and a chance to catch up on past issues of The Atlantic. The March issue included a cover story about AI and the future of the workplace which I recommend taking a look at. There’s much to consider in this vein as we think about what schools need to provide young people and their families to prepare for the second half of the 21st century.
What Else Is on My Mind
It’s admission season in northeastern independent schools, which means schools, students, and families are all focused on what next year will look like. Every year, Bement’s oldest students visit and apply to a wide range of schools, and as the process unfolds, they learn about themselves and how to square their vision of a high school experience with the vast array of offerings that secondary schools provide. The care and thoughtfulness that students and their families put into the process is matched by the schools to which they apply. Every school Bement works with in this process takes great pains to get to know each child as an individual and consider how they might fit into a new class of future graduates. It’s a remarkable and complex process that takes shape each February and March, one that grants students new opportunities to learn about themselves as they look to conclude their middle school years.
Those sentiments are admittedly abstract and lofty – the reality on the ground is sometimes very challenging for adolescents. Do I fit at my dream school? Are my test scores high enough? What if I don’t get into the “right” school? Are my acceptances as “good” as my friends’?!? Most parents of teenagers asked themselves these questions when they applied to college; Bement students face them sometimes as young as 13. While potentially stressful and frightening, these fears and anxieties are normal and something schools like Bement are well equipped to manage. The message we deliver to students over and over is: the “right” school is where you feel most at home and best prepared to thrive. The name and ranking of a school has little bearing on whether or not it is the “right” one. And the process, while long and onerous, will lead students to that school if they engage in it authentically and with an open mind.
Our family has now completed this process twice, and our two children have landed at two very different schools. One attends a big boarding school with a physical plant and expansive program that rivals many small colleges, and the other will attend a day school with a dynamic, comprehensive arts program that meets his passions where they are at this point of his adolescence. What was most important to us in the process for each child was ensuring that they felt that they belonged in the schools they chose. That they saw other young people with whom they could see themselves developing lifelong friendships. And that they identified a culture where teachers would know them as individuals, encourage their unique strengths, and help develop areas where they needed to improve.
As a family, we are deeply grateful to Bement for the nurturing and guidance the school provided along the way to both our children. And whether you are in the middle of the admission process now or it lies somewhere in your family’s future, I hope your experience mirrors ours.