A Head of School must consider lessons learned from the past, take stock of the present, and contemplate the future. Many schools in our area have been blessed with long histories and have been celebrating various milestones. During such times, the Head focuses more on understanding the foundations and traditions of the School. This is Maret’s Centennial and much of my time has been dedicated to learning more about the creators of the school. I have discovered that much of our present DNA derives from the three Maret sisters.
These remarkable women came here from Europe with little money, but possessed a vision of creating a school that celebrated people from all over the world. They crafted a program that exacted high standards while forging close bonds between students and teachers. One of their mottos was La Main dans la Main(“Hand in Hand”).
For over thirty years, they would annually bring to the faculty new ideas on how to improve the program and how best to utilize the rich resources of the Nation’s Capital. They were never complacent, believing as they did in constant assessment of all aspects of school life.
I think they would have seen eye-to-eye with former Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, who said “If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more.”
In addition to studying our school’s rich history, I have also spent much of the year gazing into my crystal ball in order to figure out what our students will require for success in college and the world beyond. Responding to a survey of Maret alumni, our graduates report that they are very well-prepared in most areas—but less so when it comes to doing sophisticated research using resources available on the Internet.
At a conference last year, I had an “Aha!” moment after a speaker advised that we need to teach our children to be not just knowledgeable,but also knowledge able. As Nobel laureate Herbert Simon states, “The meaning of ‘knowing’ has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it.” If we are to meet this objective, our curriculum must adapt to address the challenges of life in an “information society.” Educational leaders—even those of us over 40— have to get a handle on new and emerging technologies and teach our students how to use them responsibly and thoughtfully. This challenge can be frightening to some of us who have been very successful teachers for a long time, standing before students with a chalkboard and using traditional reference books.
Teachers across the nation are working to connect discipline-based academic skills with real-life thinking so that our children can excel in a complex and unstructured global society. They recognize that it is important to move beyond the traditional canon of content to concentrate on the cultivation of these skills, including learning how to manage information overload. It is our obligation—and therefore our goal—to teach students investigative problem-solving and critical thinking, skills that foster energetic, personal engagement with inquiry, discovery, and analysis.
With the creation of online high schools by George Washington and other universities, some wonder whether independent schools will still be relevant in 10 or 20 years. I firmly and confidently answer yes—so long as we prepare our students for the world they will encounter. I still believe deeply that dynamic personal interactions between students and teachers (“La Main dans la Main”) are essential to the growth and cultivation of the whole child; something that online lessons alone can never achieve. Our independent schools are tangible communities of learners guided by highly responsive teachers who interact directly with their students as individuals with different strengths and perspectives. Just as the Maret sisters 100 years ago strived consistently to improve their practices, we continually assess and improve the ever-evolving tools and technologies needed to carry out a superior education.
