What’s Happening at Bement
Each December at Bement, every student shares in studying a single topic. We call it mini-term, and mini-term 2025 focused on creatures from myths, legends, and the fascinating world of cryptozoology. In other words, bigfoot, unicorns, and yeti, oh my! The creativity and passion that Bement’s faculty bring to school each day really shine during mini-term each year – every mini-term is a labor of love that showcases so many of our amazing teachers’ talents. This year alone, a teacher created stained glass overlays for windows in the Barn that feature mythological creatures, another toiled–with her mother’s help!--to craft a magnificent phoenix that has hung in the Barn throughout mini-term, and another donned full wizard garb to launch mini-term with a magic-filled opening presentation when students returned from Thanksgiving vacation.
Students have explored campus searching for gnomes and other fantastical creatures, sampled mythical foods like ambrosia and pomegranate, constructed a three-dimensional dragon at Pine Hill, and imagined K-pop groups composed of mythological creatures, in addition to field trips to area museums and visiting experts including an active Bigfoot hunter! Many activities during mini-term are multi-age, too, with students from K-9 sharing in the joy and wonder of the subject together. A unique Bement tradition, mini-term continues to amaze and delight each and every year at Bement.
What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening To
As children of the 1980s, my wife and I are Stranger Things aficionados, so we have been back in that world for the last few weeks, rewatching the first four seasons and enjoying the first installment of the series’ last chapter. Revisiting the show’s early years now, it struck me how accurately the Duffer brothers have recreated suburban life in the 1980s, from the clothes and music to so much 80s ephemera like Lite-Brite, the pink Sidestep boom box (and accompanying cassettes, of course!), and New Coke.
From my perspective as a school leader and the parent of two adolescents, I was also struck by the parenting styles on display in Stranger Things. Benign neglect may be the simplest way to capture how the Wheelers, Hendersons, Byers, and Sinclairs parent the four boys at the center of the series, and seeing it from a distance of a few decades, their experiences resonated loud and clear with this 80s kid. While I–gladly–never encountered a demigorgon in my travels as a kid, I definitely cruised my neighborhood on a BMX bike, visited the video arcade in my hometown (again astride my two-wheeler), experimented with some light mischief, played my fair share of Dungeons & Dragons, and negotiated many a disagreement and even a few minor scuffles between peers, all with little to no parental knowledge or involvement.
Both my parents were present and attentive, something I never took for granted, especially since they divorced when I was in elementary school, and they instilled in me a set of values and habits that are central to who I am as an adult. But, they also largely left me to my own devices, something that feels harder and harder to do in this day and age. Parenting my own two children for the last sixteen years has presented that challenge on the regular, and there’s no question I am more involved in my kids’ day-to-day lives than my parents were in mine. Hopefully, on balance, that shift that I and so many others in my generation have been a part of is a net-positive for our children, but Stranger Things and other reminders of that bygone era are a useful reminder of another way of approaching child-rearing, indeed the prevailing approach for many families for a longer period of time in American history.
Looking back now, I wish I could have gotten an earlier start on getting to know my parents as individuals, and of course, with one gone, I wish I had had more time to spend and make memories together. But, I am grateful for the independence, confidence, and resilience that the “benign neglect” approach of yesteryear granted me and so many young people of my generation.
Poetry Corner
At last week’s All-School Meeting, I shared a poem by the British poet Brian Patten called “A Small Dragon.” I chose it to connect with this year’s mini-term theme, as well as because of its final message about the importance of believing in the magical and mystical, even if just a little bit!
“A Small Dragon” by Brian Patten
I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed.
Think it must have come from deep inside the forest
because it’s damp and green and leaves
are still reflecting in its eyes.
I fed it on many things, tried grass,
the roots of stars, hazel-nut and dandelion,
but it stared up at me as if to say, I need
foods you can’t provide.
It made a nest among the coal,
not unlike a bird’s but larger,
it is out of place here
and is mosttimes silent.
If you believed in it I would come
hurrying to your house to let you share this wonder,
but I want instead to see
if you yourself will pass this way.