Dear St. Christopher’s Families,

 

Greetings from St. Christopher’s School. I hope that you and your family have found the means this summer to connect with each other and to (at least partially) disconnect from our frenetic school-year pace of living.

 

I craft this letter from the majesty of Glacier Bay, Alaska, where I have been privileged to spend a week exploring with my family. This trip, and other opportunities to travel this summer both near and far, are reminders to me of the vastness of our global community—our interconnectedness with individuals of varied nationalities and backgrounds—and also of the scale of humankind’s relationship with the natural world. I hope each of you and your sons have found moments of space and reflection this summer.

 

Despite a flurry of summer campus activity, including a range of capital projects and Summer Programs activity, including our Summer Institute on Leadership & Public Service, our City Saints Program, and our Reading Program Partnership with UVA and the Peter Paul Development Center, summer presents a unique opportunity for reading and reflection that can inform perspective for the school year ahead. Indeed, many of you were thoughtful to share articles, books, and journals with me during the school year that too often were shelved until the calmer pace of summer months allowed me to turn to them.

 

Over the past several weeks I have enjoyed reading Ted Dintersmith’s and Tony Wagner’s Most Likely to Succeed, which makes a forceful case for 21st Century schools to emphasize skill development over content acquisition in their curricula (an approach with some striking thematic consistency to St. Christopher’s own Second Century Vision).  In early summer I enjoyed reading this New York Times piece on the role kindness might play in the college admissions process. It reminded me of a presentation I heard just over one year ago from William Fitzsimmons, the Dean of Harvard Admissions, in which he shared that Harvard and several other highly-selective institutions were exploring ways in which character and kindness, specifically, might play a more prominent role in the college application process.  

 

Further, in early June, I read a Wall Street Journal article by a former college president and current U.S. senator warning of what he sees as a crisis among today’s young people to fully embrace the skills and disposition necessary for successful adulthood. Within the next two weeks, completely independent of one another, I heard the presidents of both Johns Hopkins and William and Mary state that the most significant change they have witnessed in their tenures of leadership is a diminishing of self-reliance among college students, an inability to solve problems or face adversity on their own, absent interference from mom or dad, who are now typically more involved in young people’s college experiences than ever before. The confluence of these messages has given me pause, causing me to think about my own priorities both as an educational leader and as a parent.

 

Here at St. Christopher’s, I believe that our faculty have their sights set on a balanced and age-appropriate approach to modern education—providing the necessary scaffolding and environment of encouragement that allows boys to flourish, gaining both confidence and adaptable skills in a constructive environment. At the same time, we acknowledge that as a boy moves through our program, from the nurturing and homeroom-based approach of our Lower School, into increasing autonomy and subject-based specialization of the Middle School, and finally into student choice, voice, and leadership in our Upper School, we embrace the moments where we, as adults, step back and let the boys think, speak, and act for themselves, in anticipation of what is to come in their personal and professional lives beyond St. Christopher’s.

 

Turning our attention from the philosophical to the start of school in just three short weeks, I hope that by now you have read divisional updates from Head of Lower School Dave Menges, Head of Middle School Warren Hunter, and Head of Upper School Tony Szymendera. Each update provides a glimpse of the preparation and readiness present in each of our three academic divisions, all in anticipation of your boys’ return to campus the week of August 28.

Fergusson Road and St. Christopher’s Road Parking Projects

If you have driven around campus recently, you will have no doubt noticed significant activity at both the southeastern end of campus, near Fergusson and Henri Roads, and also at the northeastern end, near St. Christopher’s and Henri Roads. In both cases, we are undertaking long-desired campus-enhancement projects that will improve vehicular circulation and parking, pedestrian access and safety, and landscape aesthetics. We anticipate that the St. Christopher’s Road project, providing 19 new angled parking spaces for students and visitors, will be complete near the start of the school year. The Fergusson Road realignment and parking project, near the entrance to the Middle School, is scheduled for completion sometime in November.

 

The Fergusson Road project will require that we adjust both our Middle School carpool plan and our campus parking plan for faculty, staff, and students. We will provide detailed information for both carpool traffic and parking before the start of school. In these and other campus-enhancement projects undertaken this summer, we endeavor to serve as proper stewards of the St. Christopher’s campus, a theme and a concept I intend to convey consistently to our boys throughout the 2017-2018 school year.

 

Our intent is to pair the introduction of our new Saints’ Café with the roll-out of student ID cards, “SaintsCards,” for both Upper and Middle School boys, which will allow families to pre-load funds and manage student spending online. Eventually, this feature will be available for student use at the Saints’ Cafe, for regular breakfast and dinner service in the Dining Hall, and in our bookstore.

While cards will be issued first for Upper School boys and later for Middle School boys, we do not intend to issue cards to Lower School boys at this time. However, eventually Lower School boys will be able to use pre-loaded credit that is linked to their individual student account in the Dining Hall, Saints’ Café, and bookstore, with adult supervision.

 

Under this new system, families will have the option to establish prepaid SaintsCard spending accounts as well as to manage spending limits in a variety of ways. This new parent-controlled, credit-based form of payment will replace the prior open-charge, student billing approach that had been used in both the Dining Hall and bookstore. Detailed information about carpool, parking, the Saints’ Café, student ID cards, and changes to our bookstore will be released just prior to the start of the school year.

 

Until then, I encourage you to make the most of your family’s time prior to the week of August 28. And in the spirit of our collective return to the season of school, I can commend the following article on how to facilitate (not directly manage) a successful return to school for your child, particularly relevant for parents of younger students. My best wishes to you and your family.