What’s Happening at Bement
Over the summer, Bement’s faculty and staff spent time diving into emerging trends and research related to adolescents and technology. Specifically, they read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, Growing Up in Public by Devorah Heitner, and Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, and some also watched the documentary film The Social Dilemma. This summer work felt particularly relevant for our community of educators, and it prepared us all for a visit earlier in September from Dr. Allison Baker.
Dr. Baker is a practicing adolescent psychiatrist in the Boston area, and she provided two workshops for Bement adults on September 11. Speaking first to faculty and staff and then again in the evening for families, Dr. Baker walked us through the science and latest data about the worrisome effects of smart devices and social media on young people. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom–Dr. Baker, who is a regional and national leader in providing strategies for families and schools to stem the tide of digital addiction, shared a number of great resources and gameplans for schools and families to help provide children with healthy, in-person childhoods.
For families who were unable to attend the September 11 workshop, I recommend you view this recording of Dr. Baker’s talk.
What I’m Reading, and/or Watching, and/or Listening To
As the school year started, I finished reading a mystical and somber novel, Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings. Giddings’ novel centers around a set of twins who explore a mysterious phenomenon: doorways that appear and disappear throughout the globe and lead into an otherworldly realm that may or may not be the afterlife. It reminded me of Mohsin Hamid’s gorgeous novel, Exit West, but it delved more into the supernatural than Hamid’s book, which was much more a novel of the moment as it explored the explosion of global migration about a decade ago.
With Meet Me at the Crossroads back on the shelf, I have moved onto Footsteps Through the Adirondacks, a biography of Verplanck Colvin by Nina Webb. Colvin led the first complete geographical survey of the Adirondack Mountains in New York State and cut an impressive and singular figure as he did so throughout the late 1800s.
What Else Is on My Mind
One of the things that I love most about Bement is the way our school embraces and intertwines with the natural landscape of Old Deerfield. We are a school community particularly attuned to our surroundings, from the village to the farms and from Pine Hill to the North End. September in Deerfield this year has been remarkably dry–according to Weather Underground, barely an inch of rain has fallen in Deerfield in the last month.
While this drought has left some fields looking patchy and feeling a bit more prickly, it has also meant lots of outdoor play time for children at school. And–while I don’t know if the dry end of summer is the cause–Pine Hill has welcomed some new residents! Beavers have taken up residence in the Pine Hill pond, and they are hard at work taking down trees around the property. Ms. Navarro has had a lot of fun introducing students to the beavers’ feats of engineering, and we will all watch with interest as the fall unfolds and the pond continues to dry up. Will the beavers hunker down on Pine Hill for the winter or move on to wetter climes? Stay tuned!
Poetry Corner
I have shared a few poems at the start of Friday morning meetings this year, but none was more popular than Mary Oliver’s gem, “The Summer Day.” I offered it to the school community in hopes that students and adults alike would think of the school year ahead as a unique but fleeting opportunity to make lifelong friends, learn and play together, and share in something that no other group of people will be able to experience.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver