"Is there another kind?"

For the majority of my adult life, I have lived in New Hampshire, so I am no stranger to the spectacle that is the first in the nation primary.  With the changes in technology, however, this year seemed different.  Like the past, there was an abundance of television advertising, and every day, as I checked the mailbox, I found dozens of mailers.  This year, I also received an astonishing number of text messages.  This was a little different from the past, but this trend started a few years back.  What I found remarkable this year was the regular and consistent use of hyperbole by all candidates in all formats.

One day, I would receive text messages warning me that a certain candidate was coming to take my money.  The next, a mailer informing me that another hates America, and so on.  It was rare to see politicking that simply stated a policy position or tried to get one “up close, and personal” with a candidate.  The overwhelming majority of the communications were designed to lead one to believe that their vote was not just an expression of preference, but that it would have dire consequences. 

This sense of dire consequence reminds me of the movie A Few Good Men.  Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, while being cross examined by Lieutenant Caffey, played by Tom Cruise, gets trapped in his own sense of hyperbole, as he tries to convey the idea that all danger is “grave danger.”  In the scene, this begins the Colonel’s unraveling.  The moviegoer comes to see that there is a wide range of danger, and that not all danger is “grave,” as Col. Jessup previously suggested.

While the bombardment of hyperbolic rhetoric in the primary season is aimed at voters, it is on full display for all.  Our students passively and actively consume this rhetoric, many without the maturity to understand that hyperbole is a rhetorical device that is used to induce an emotional response.  Despite the fact that we work to help our students become more savvy consumers of media, many are still developing their critical thinking skills, and are unable to accurately decode rhetorical devices.

The primary has come and gone, but the Presidential election is still to come.  With that, it seems likely that the normalization of hyperbole will continue.   It seems to me that adolescents in our modern world will continue to struggle with the normalization of hyperbole.  This can have a number of negative impacts – including an increase in anxiety.

At The Beech Hill School, we will continue to make efforts to help our students consume all forms of media through our Skills program and within the curriculum, in general.  However, there is little doubt that the rise and normalization of hyperbolic language is just another challenge for today’s adolescents.

Trust the Process

My daughter is very fortunate to have been offered the opportunity to attend and play lacrosse at The University of Michigan.  This opportunity presented itself after a long and rigorous recruiting process. Recently, I was at a lacrosse event and several parents just starting the recruiting process inquired if I had learned anything through my daughter’s experience.  One thing that I found, and I believe the lesson transcends lacrosse recruiting, is that when engaging in an endeavor of that sort, or a school/college application, or a job interview, or even just being a student – one should focus on the process and not a presupposed outcome.

Many of the parents that asked for my insights were less than impressed with my answer.  What they really wanted me to tell them was how to specifically achieve a certain outcome.  In the case of lacrosse –they wanted to see if I discovered how to successfully get recruited to school X or school Y.  I truly don’t know how, and I really don’t think that anyone else really does either.

In schools, I see this occurring in similar ways.  The questions are different, but still focused on achieving a specific outcome, like – How does my child get an A in X class? or What should my child do to get into this school or that school.  Like my answer to the eager and anxious lacrosse parents – I am not sure that anyone can provide insight as to how one achieves a specific outcome.  I do think, however, that if one focuses on the way one goes about learning and being a student, those outcomes will work themselves out.

At The Beech Hill School, we assess the way a student goes about the process of learning and report that in a grade called the “Learning Process Grade.”  To assess this, we ask three questions:  Is the student ready to learn?  Is the student trying to learn? and, Is the student allowing others to learn?  Teachers will evaluate and aggregate the daily assessment of these questions, so that our students can focus on the process of learning and recognize that the process has connection to the outcome.

Too often, I find that people devalue process required to achieve outcomes.  At BHS and certainly in my experience as a “lacrosse dad,” I have come to believe that outcomes are not haphazard, rather they are the conclusion of a process of work – in class, on the field, and in life.

Working on the Dream

At The Beech Hill School, we ask students to concern themselves with how they treat one another.  Nowhere is this clearer than in our Foundations of Community.  These guiding principles are printed and displayed in every classroom, invoked regularly by students and faculty alike, and quite simply, the framework by which we expect our students to think, act, and live.

 In the Foundations, it states that members of our community, “embrace and celebrate diversity.”  On its face, this statement seems obvious.  It is hard not to see that in a community that is comprised of individuals trying to learn and to grow that a multitude of points of view, of stories, of perspectives is preferred.   Or in the most basic language – variety is better than homogeneity.

The sentiment that a diverse world is richer and should be embraced is seen as common sense by the students at The Beech Hill School.  As such, it seems almost absurd to imagine that in the lifetimes of people they know, segregation was preferred by some to integration.  That is to say that diversity was not embraced by all.  Not only was it not embraced - it was not celebrated; it was feared and it was fought.

Fortunately, great strides have been made in embracing diversity throughout The United States.  Tomorrow we will celebrate Dr. Martin King Jr.’s life and legacy, as his leadership in this domain was so critical to that progress. However, we have yet to realize the totality of Dr. King’s dream, as we have yet to fully transform “the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

Tomorrow, The Beech Hill School Community will continue to work to make Dr. King’s dream a reality.

Grateful in the New Year

Like many, I was under the weather for much of this winter break.  Plans that were made were broken and time that was supposed to have been spent with family was spent in bed or on the couch.  As I write this, my illness has passed, and I am looking forward to celebrating the New Year with hours of football, family, and food.  But for a couple of days, things were scrambled.

It could have been easy to have been bothered by this, and in the moment, a number of people were inconvenienced by the fact that I needed to lay low.  However, when I look at it more closely, I am struck by how lucky I am.  I am so lucky that on most days, little keeps me from doing just about anything I choose. Because I am so fortunate to be unencumbered by limitations, even a slight restriction is noticeable.

As I head into the new year, I feel like my recent illness has helped me to reconsider my notion of gratitude.  I don’t always consider myself “grateful” for simply doing what is on my schedule.  But gratitude knows no scale.  In 2024, I hope to explore the notion of “gratitude” in greater depth.

Thank you all for another amazing year and best wishes on a happy and healthy New Year!

Spreading Joy

Yesterday, we hosted almost a hundred guests at our annual Gingerbread House Decorating event.  For a school the size of Beech Hill, this is no small undertaking.  The majority of the work was done by the volunteers from The Beech Hill School Parents’ Association.  The number of moving parts in this event however, is so significant that the entire community is needed to pull it off.  On Friday afternoon, the faculty and the students cleaned the school, created decorations, and constructed 45 gingerbread houses in under two hours.

Why do we put forth such an effort for this event?  While this event does raise a little money, it is not nearly as lucrative as the time and energy expended to hold the event.  To fully understand the answer to the question, one only needs to see the smiles on the faces of those that participate.  This year’s participants ranged in age from 80 years old to 8 months, and they all expressed such pleasure and gratitude for the opportunity to simply make a house of sweets.

As I said to the students on Friday at Community, if they need inspiration or if they need to know why they are working, they need only think of the smile on a child’s face.  Putting forth an effort for the enjoyment of others is the very essence of the holiday season, and helping to make the Gingerbread Decorating event possible is an excellent way to catch the holiday spirit!

Thanks to all those that helped create so much joy for others!