June 2009 1791 Letter - Berwick Academy

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Peter Saliba If I combine my own schooling with my career, I have endured approximately thirty commencement exercises. When I use the word endure, I’m referring to the ordeal of the commencement address. Usually, these things are pretty dry affairs, and I fi nd myself counting the caps of the graduates to make sure they are not lying down and napping. This year, Dr. Dora Mills set a new standard for our future speakers at Berwick. Her talk was relevant, connected, and meaningful. I’ve included some excerpts for those of you who did not get a chance to hear her speak. Enjoy! Today, I thought I would share with you three ingredients that I wish I had more of in1978. First, is the ingredient of gratitude. Each and every one of you stands on the shoulders of your parents and/or other adults who played a signifi cant role in your life. Today is a day that we also reach out and thank them – for giving you their patience, their promotion, and much of your potential. As you venture off to college or other such adventures, you’ll learn that it’s not always easy to be thankful for all these gifts. You’ll learn that some of what you grew up with are idiosyncrasies that seem not to be shared by many other families, sometimes hurtful and at the best sometimes embarrassing. The second ingredient is that of wearing a wide angle lens, that is, seeing the connectivity that exists in the world, and acting with that realization. Berwick Academy has already given you a wide angle lens. Although I was not fortunate enough to attend school at this hilltop, I was fortunate to learn about connectivity from a year living and working in the mid-1980s in a small village named Shirati, in Tanzania, East Africa in a Mennonite hospital. Actually, it was the time I returned to visit Shirati years later while practicing medicine in Maine that taught me the most about connectivity. Upon returning there, I was shocked to see so many changes. 10 years after my time there the schools were nearly empty – because the HIV/ AIDS epidemic had stolen their parents, and many children now needed to work in the fi elds. But, the hospital’s pediatric ward was also gladly nearly empty – and had been so ever since the local water tower had been completed, allowing for water to be pumped from nearby Lake Victoria and used for drinking water. As a result, the leading cause of hospitalization of young children, diarrhea, was almost eliminated. When I returned from my trip to practice medicine in my hometown in Maine, I then started seeing the community differently. I saw the connections between the built environment, the natural environment, the economy, education, and health. I started seeing that sidewalks, clean water, poverty, and educational opportunities all had a stronger effect on the health of my patients than most medicines I could dispense. Seeing these connections in East Africa and then in my own community in Maine is why I stepped into public health. I realized that public health gave me the opportunity to work on the interconnected factors affecting health – the environment, the effects of poverty and education. While walking down life’s path with gratitude and with a wide angle lens is important, the third ingredient of passion is the most critical. And, I will tell you how I stumbled across this one. After living out of state for a number of years, I was drawn to moving back to Maine. Before coming home, I took a few months off, hiking in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal and India, then spending a month working in Calcutta with the Missionaries of Charity and Mother Teresa On my last day, as was the custom, I spoke to Mother Teresa, as was the custom when you were leaving, to thank her for the experience of working there. She asked how it had been. I shared with her my gratitude. And, I also shared with her my guilt. I told her that while other volunteers were staying on or talking about returning, my heart was in my home state of Maine. My dreams were about returning to my family and to my roots and to work in Maine after being absent for so long. Yet, I felt guilty, as clearly the abject need was much greater in Calcutta. She then grasped my hands and made the connection for me I had not seen. She said, “if where you are going you will work with love and love your work, then that is where you are called to be.” If you are going you will work with love and love your work, then that is where you are called to be. I am indeed grateful to love what I am doing. It took a trip half way around the world and a little old lady to teach me the importance of walking life’s path with passion. So, I wish for you to walk with these ingredients, these lessons that took me so many years to accumulate and to learn – to walk with gratitude in your heart, to walk wearing a wide angle lens of the world, and to walk with your passion. I know you will do so, as the hilltops and hallways of Berwick Academy have, in the words of your 218 year old charter, promoted “true piety and virtue and useful knowledge among” you – the rising generation of today. It has been a great honor to share with you most wonderful day. Thank you. Go Bulldogs! 4 1791 Letter ~ June 2009
As I write this month’s contribution to the 1791 Letter, I am torn between the opposite poles of thinking ahead and looking backwards. June is like that; a pivotal month for those of us who work year round, and build our lives upon the rhythms of an academic calendar. Having no luck at deciding, I will do what I do when faced with two equally appealing pairs of shoes: I’ll take them both. The hindsight that June offers me is clear. I believe that we have done our best work as a community to work together and to have fun together. While the students have shouldered the academic burdens of a new grade, they have also navigated the social waters of early adolescence. There have been days of cooperation and ones of tension. Through the intervention of committed adults, students may have found consequences for careless and unkind behaviors. Equally, they have been applauded for their academic, athletic, musical, and artistic productions. We adults have worked tirelessly to promote individual growth. As a faculty, we have worked together this month to examine the year and all of those moments that we wish to recreate for the future. We want to explore the integration of our core values into the fabric of the school year, and so we shall select one value each quarter to be the focus of our planning for assemblies and for discussions. We will continue to address the social development of our students through the deliberate teaching of character education and social skills. Some of these activities will take place during specific time set aside each week. Others will be woven into our subject area lessons. Among the changes we expect will be the shift to a homeroom model for all grades. The homeroom teacher or teachers will start each day with announcements, topics for quick discussion, a “morning meeting,” check-ins with students, and then will begin the first period with that same class. While we have much to do to prepare for this shift, it was the thinking among the teachers that a consistent five-day approach to advising would benefit our students in numerous ways, including providing them with more consistent time. Each week we plan to use one block of time for assemblies, and another for special projects including wellness programs, service activities, and Options For Fun (O.F.F.). The fl exibility we will have throughout the year will diminish some of the unequal approaches to advisory time that parents had noted this year at the February Parent Forum. More specific descriptions will come in the letter mailed in August along with schedules. The next big shift for the 2009-2010 school year will be in eighth grade. We will build individual schedules for our eighth grade students that will allow for a change in student groups each period. The homeroom, then, will become an important part of each child’s day, as they will no longer be going to classes with the same group of students for an entire day. We hope that having this experience will better prepare students for the transition to high school. Fifth and sixth grade students will fi nd a class on their schedules that will be called “Fifth Grade Seminar,” or “Sixth Grade Seminar.” This course will be taught by our Academic Support Coordinator, Stacey Sevelowitz, 1791 Letter ~ June 2009 who has mapped out topics such a organization and study skills, learning strategies, time management, social skills, and who will collaborate with our Counselor, Cindy Briggs on specifi c wellness topics. Both will be aided by Holly Bennett, our Health Educator. The students will receive an effort grade and a participation grade for their work in these seminars. Stacey Sevelowitz and Cindy Briggs will take up residence two days each week in our Clement Middle School Building. It is our shared hope that students will fi nd accessing these critical support people will be far easier through their scheduled presence. The school has begun to undertake a review of the entire yearly and daily schedules. Some of our Middle School plans will go far to support any future changes. We hope to test the waters with our homeroom program, and to build a stronger community by committing ourselves to purposeful integration of our core values each quarter. Finally, all educators on this campus will begin using new software to map curriculum starting this month. The training and the mapping work will be part of a campus-wide professional develop across all disciplines and grades. We hope that through this work we will find gaps in instruction that we may begin to fi ll and places where unnecessary redundancy can be eliminated. The maps will be rich in resources, will have links to national educational standards, and will provide us with reference materials to help us improve instruction. Recently, we have welcomed a group of seven new interns into our Teaching Institute. You may expect a letter from the mentor teacher in the continued on pg. 11... 5
Page 1 and 2: June 2009 CLASS OF 2009 GRADUATION
Page 3: connection between home and work th
Page 7 and 8: Rob Quinn SPRING SPORTS SUCCESS ON
Page 9 and 10: PRESIDENT’S NOTES It is hard to b
Page 11 and 12: thank you to Peter Saliba, Ted Smit
Page 13 and 14: Rachel Saliba SANDERS TO MAKE HISTO
Page 15 and 16: SPORT MVP COACH’S JV Softball Mon

June 2009 1791 Letter - Berwick Academy

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