Message From Head of School - Jean Waller Brune
Summertime in a busy academic institution is always an important time for renewal, relaxation and reflection. This summer, in particular, has been one of my best: a special combination of professional renewal, validation of education as my chosen career, family fun and lifelong learning! Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who moved us last year when he delivered The Last Lecture before his untimely death from cancer, wrote: “The number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn.” This is a hallmark of an RPCS education and one that I take to heart personally. In order to teach our students how to learn, educators must always continue to learn, themselves. From time spent in June with our auditioned Upper School performing arts groups – the Semiquavers, the Roses Repertory Dance Company and Footlights Theatre Ensemble – on their tour of Austria and Czechoslovakia to my Kent Summer Sabbatical in Alaska, I have had the privilege to cultivate my own passion for lifelong learning. It has been a summer full of new experiences along with time at my own special getaway in Vermont, bringing memories that I will treasure for the rest of my lifetime.
Many opportunities for lifelong learning at RPCS are a result of the generosity of the Parents’ Association. Each year the Parents’ Association helps fund some of the items on our “wish list,” thus allowing us all to develop and maintain habits of lifelong learning. This academic year your daughters will benefit in many ways from the weeklong professional development workshop, held here at RPCS in June and attended by many of our faculty members and administrators. Schools Attuned, underwritten by the Parents’ Association for the past two summers, offers educators new methods for recognizing, understanding and managing students’ learning. To date over 50 faculty members and administrators have completed Schools Attuned Training. This fall, Carla Spawn-van Berkum, our Assistant Head for Academics and a trained Schools Attuned facilitator, will be offering several parent workshops – Learning About Learning – that coordinate with the Schools Attuned program. There is information about these workshops in the All-School News section of this newsletter.
I am also very grateful to The Parents’ Association for their support in underwriting the Lower School Biz Town project, the Middle School Renaissance Festival, the Upper School Baltimore Girls’ School Leadership Conference, and Freedom from Chemical Dependency (FCD) presentations in all three divisions. On behalf of RPCS, I would also like to express my deep appreciation for its support of this year’s Red Book.
I am also very grateful to The Parents’ Association for their support in underwriting the Lower School Biz Town project, the Middle School Renaissance Festival, the Upper School Baltimore Girls’ School Leadership Conference, and Freedom from Chemical Dependency (FCD) presentations in all three divisions. On behalf of RPCS, I would also like to express my deep appreciation for its support of this year’s Red Book.
Through the generosity of a former parent and trustee, we will be holding the Robinson Health Colloquium on October 19th -21st. Entitled Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Finding a Sizeable Voice in a World of Shrinking Sizes, the focus this year is on body image, nutrition, and exercise: important topics, designed especially for our Middle and Upper School students. Because Mr. Robinson is particularly committed to fathers being educated about issues impacting their daughters, and because research now indicates what an important influence fathers/father figures have on the self-esteem and achievement of girls, we are holding a special evening event for Upper School fathers on October 19th and one for Middle School fathers on October 20th; there will be morning coffees for Upper and Middle School mothers on the 19th and 20th, respectively.
Noted educator and psychologist JoAnn Deak, Ph.D., who spent time with RPCS employees as part of our opening week back-to-school meetings, will return to RPCS to offer additional professional development as well as parent forums in April. She has written several books and articles about girls, including How Girls Thrive and Girls will be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters. Her newest book The Brain Matters: A Middle of the Road Guide for Parenting and Teaching will be published in January. She is included in a new publication by American Girls, Raising an American Girl: Parenting Advice for the Real World which will be in bookstores soon. JoAnn Deak has also requested to speak with fathers at 7:30 pm on Monday evening April 5th and mothers at 8:00 am on Tuesday morning April 6th.
Adults engaged in continuing education provide a wonderful role model for our students about the value of lifelong learning. In July many members of the faculty attended technology workshops, especially structured to enhance the integration of technology in our RPCS classrooms. I have always been proud of the School’s leadership for curricular technology integration; our vision and our work are certainly affirmed by this recent email from an alumna, Parilee Edison, 2004 who currently works at Barnes and Noble in their eBook department:
Our class was the pioneer class for laptops at RPCS and I know that I was amazed at the advantage that laptop familiarity gave me in college. While my peers struggled to learn how to take notes constructively on their laptops, how to email in an academic setting, and how to tune out the myriad distractions that an internet connection brings, I was able to focus on what the professor was saying. There is no question in my mind that RPCS’s pioneering stance on the technology front helped me academically.
Our innovation was particularly evident this summer as Admissions held an interview with a prospective family in Korea using Skype technology! Our Communication and Technology departments have been hard at work this summer updating the RPCS website. We are planning to launch the newly designed website early this month. There will be a separate portal for parents. We anticipated that this will help you find parent events, Parents’ Association information, RedEvent – the all school calendar, and business office forms much more easily than in the past.
As I hope you know, every year a key word or phrase is added to the wooden plaque outside my office. Each has been a theme for an academic year. In total, they represent fundamental, enduring qualities of an RPCS education, characteristics that transcend decades and trends of the teaching and learning we provide. For the past several years since our Centennial I have selected a word or phrase from the School’s Philosophy with the exception of last year which focused on sustainability. This year’s phrase ~ mutual trust ~ comes again from our philosophy. I believe that we are extremely fortunate to work together in an inclusive community that values a friendly atmosphere of mutual trust, and I look forward to holding this concept before us and the students throughout the upcoming academic year. You, at home, and we, here at School, are partners in the teaching and learning that goes on from kindergarten through 12th grade as we work together to raise confident girls and young women who will graduate and go on to become responsible, contributing members and leaders of their communities. None of us has all the answers, but if we work together with mutual trust, we will discover, I believe, how best to serve each of your wonderfully unique and individual daughters. It is not always an easy journey from childhood to adulthood; the road can sometimes be rough, and we may not always see eye to eye. In both good and challenging times, when we don’t always know how to start a conversation together, I hope we can remember these words by Emily Dickinson: I scarcely know where to begin, but love is always a safe place.
In the summer I look forward to all that the new academic year will bring. From new school supplies, to new classrooms, to new teachers to new students, there is no other place that has the same annual opportunity for new beginnings and a “clean slate” as a school. It is why I always look forward to September and welcome you especially to Roland Park Country School for our 2009-2010 year together!
~ J.W.B.