What’s Happening at Bement
Each June, members of the Bement team head across the Pacific Ocean to visit families and meet prospective students in Asia. The 2025 edition of that annual journey featured three cities: Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. Kim Loughlin, Assistant Head of School and Director of Admissions, and Jeff Pilgrim, Director of Secondary School Counseling, joined me on the trip this year, and in each city we visited, Bement families and alumni provided a warm, enthusiastic welcome. And, although it was the rainy season in east Asia, Bement’s visit brought mostly hot, sunny days to each of our destinations–so many families commented that “Bement brings the sunshine!”
In each city, we typically enjoy two events. First, Bement hosts an information session for prospective students and their families, featuring testimonials from current students and recent alumni. Then, a few families host a dinner for all current and newly enrolled students and their families, as well as any alumni who are available to attend. And yet, each city is a little different. This year, Shanghai’s family dinner was our largest group, a number of students provided a musical performance to accompany dinner during the Beijing event, and Hong Kong featured the largest group of alumni in attendance. No matter where we go, Bement staff always feels at home, thanks to the support and affection of our many families and friends in Asia. Looking forward to next year already!
What I’m Reading, and/or Watching, and/or Listening To
I finished Karen Russell’s The Antidote during my travels to Asia, so I have moved onto Erik Larson’s latest historical nonfiction title, The Demon of Unrest. Larson’s book retells the story of the start of the American Civil War with a particular focus on the events in Charleston, South Carolina, and at Fort Sumter in particular. Larson is a great storyteller, so the scenes and characters from the years and months leading up to the assault on Fort Sumter come alive on the pages of The Demon of Unrest, and he paints a picture of a remarkable moment that has some uneasy echoes with the state of current affairs in America.
Though he draws an explicit parallel to modern events in a brief foreword, the modern lessons that unfold in Larson’s narrative are more abstract and atmospheric, regarding how political rhetoric and attitudes can become entrenched and lead to binary thinking rather than working toward collaborative solutions to complex problems. It’s fascinating, too, to consider the 1850’s media landscape and how it intersected with politics as compared to today. Larson writes extensively about the various newspapers that fed information to the electorate, including full transcripts of politicians’ speeches – hard to fathom that method of ingesting politics in the TikTok age!
What Else Is on My Mind
It is fully summer in Deerfield now, with temperatures this week in the high 90’s and Bement’s summer camps in full swing. Since summer is on my mind, I am thinking about rest, relaxation, and play. I talk with students about their summer plans all the time, and so often they launch into a list of all the “work” they are going to do–test prep, skill-building camps, taking classes, etc. That’s all well and good, and important, but I am quick to urge them to balance all that purposeful time with play, fun, and unstructured time. Students and their families should think about the summer like a healthy, balanced meal: 25% test-prep or classes (that’s your lean protein), 25% maintenance of school or school-adjacent skills like reading for pleasure or practicing sports (your whole grains), and 50% fun, relaxation, boredom, spontaneity, wandering, social time (the juicy, sweet fruits and veggies).
Put another way, in the world of high intensity fitness sports, there is a saying that “rest is a part of training,” and the same thing goes for ambitious young people and their schooling. If September - May is their rigorous training season, June through August should provide a time for rest so they can recharge and prepare for the next year’s studies.
Now that we are well into the start of summer, I hope all of Bement’s students are finding healthy ways to just be kids and enjoy their downtime. Even stodgy Heads of School seek aimless relaxation in the summertime: my favorite ways to unwind after a school year are to hike, fish, and wander the fields of Deerfield with our dog. I hope the summer holds in store much rest, fun, and unscheduled time for you all!
