“Albert Lexie shined shoes at Children’s Hospital for over three decades, and during that time,” Rev.  Leslie Reimer explained at our final Chapel Service of the year, “he donated all the tips from his shoe shining business to the Free Care Fund at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.  In total, Albert Lexie donated over $200,000 from his humble shoe shine business.”

What a wonderful story to conclude the 2016-2017 school year, a time of nearly unprecedented generosity for St. Edmund’s Academy. As the silent phase of the school’s first comprehensive capital campaign in nearly twenty years proceeds, donors have committed nearly $2.4 million dollars. St. Edmund’s Academy children may have discovered Albert Lexie and his generosity that morning, but their families routinely model that same spirit of generosity, a fact I observe almost daily. 

St. Edmund’s Academy families know that our community grows in strength and effectiveness through supportive and active partnerships. Cohesive communities that promote enduring core values require people to strive together in the pursuit of excellence. In fact, it is through this collaborative striving that our strongest bonds are formed. Children learn more by watching what we do than listening to what we say. St. Edmund’s Academy’s effectiveness exists not in a set of policies, but in the way we spend our time together, how we relate to each other, and how we grapple with the utterly human experience of educating children. 

I listened to Leslie Reimer’s Chapel Talk with our parents in the background. How fitting. As she described Albert Lexie’s generosity, I noticed Hans and Leslie Fleischner, current grandparents and parents of alumni, at the front of the parents’ section. I thought of their three decades of support for our school. I guessed that at some point during their sons’ education they must have grappled with difficulty. Yet, after all those years, there they sat with unyielding loyalty watching their grandson, Andrew, receive the Lead Student distinction. That generosity of spirit and trust makes our community great. 

Associated with every family sitting behind Hans and Leslie, I recalled gestures of staggering generosity. From donated architectural expertise to strategic planning insights, every single family in attendance had given something meaningful that I knew of directly. Bookending Hans and Leslie in the back corner of the parents’ section sat Nonie Heystek, mother of Babita, whose countless volunteer hours led the PTA to create a volunteerism award that will be given each year in her honor. Whether called upon to be a librarian, dishwasher, or wolf, Nonie steadfastly answered the call. That generosity of spirit and trust makes our community great.

Each spring I take small groups of eighth graders out to lunch. They stand in that moment on a precipice with St. Edmund’s Academy’s safe confines still under their feet and the seemingly wild and unruly territories of adolescent life just steps ahead. From this vantage point they see much more clearly the road at their backs.  With great sincerity, a group of students described a class that resonated with them. “None of us really LOVES math.  But we really like the class because Mr. T always helps us. Mr. T. never lets us think our questions are stupid.  He really listens and cares.”

 

What leads them to feel this way? Simply this—for Mr. T. the students come first. He models their importance by placing their needs at any given moment above his own. No deadline or administrative responsibility takes priority over his students in the moment they need him. They know they matter because he shows them every day. 

St. Edmund’s Academy teachers, from Preschool through 8th grade, model this ethic of care. In the process of developing our current faculty and hiring new teachers, three points matter. First, St. Edmund’s Academy teachers possess expertise in their field and resiliently adapt to new findings that fit our mission. Second, they commit time and attention to the social and emotional development of children, recognizing that the foundation of every child’s cognitive growth and success in life begins with a healthy outlook towards self and others. Finally, they model and advocate the St. Edmund’s Academy way. 

Nothing matters more in a child’s education than great teachers and nothing matters more than the behavior they model.  We know, as Samuel Phillips explained in 1778, that “goodness without knowledge (as it respects others) is weak and feeble; yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous; and that both united form the noblest character, and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind.”  Moral, intellectual, social, and emotional threads braid inextricably to shape the St. Edmund’s Academy experience and these commitments live in hearts, minds, and actions of our faculty. 

While this blend of priorities matters, it shapes the foundation of a child’s life only because of the individual attention provided to children and families. Effective teaching begins with educators committed to meeting children where they are.  From Jen Losego’s support of children learning to enter play situations, to Beth Harbist’s guidance through a complex grammar rule, our faculty knows that children who grapple with questions that matter to them will discover answers that also matter to them. We understand at St. Edmund’s Academy that high standards for all children does not mean the same standard for all children and to see them clearly requires time and opportunity for the entire community to know a child and family well. 

As we look ahead to the 2017-2018 school year, I am pleased that we will be even better positioned to meet children where they are. Our recent hiring of a learning specialist with experience and expertise in her field will allow us to more flexibly support children who need significant support or acceleration beyond the curriculum. By providing parallel instruction in classrooms and pull-out customization for children who need it, the entire community will meet the unique needs of all learners with increased effectiveness. 

In just a matter of days, the end of year in-service will conclude and our summer work will begin. Four faculty-led Project Teams will each spend a portion of the summer improving our school’s program and campus. 

The Facility Project Team, led by Justin Addicott, will collaborate with Strada Architects to complete the design concept for renovations ambitiously set to begin a year from now. The Schedule Project Team, led by Jerry May, will collaborate with Independent School Management to begin work on a daily schedule to improve the pace and structure of learning at our school. The Assessment & Evaluation Team, led by Katie Sullivan, will partner with EdLeader 21 to map how the 4 C’s (critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration) develop through our curriculum. Finally, the Signature Experience Project Team, led by Robin Colin, will design interdisciplinary signature experiences at each grade level to enhance student engagement. 

While each Project Team oversees a critical component of our strategic evolution, St. Edmund’s Academy remains committed to the good ideas that got us this far. This morning we conducted our annual “Moving Up” ceremony.  One by one our 8th graders left their place at the front of the Church of the Redeemer, passing on their hymnal to a first grader and making room for the 7th graders to take their leadership position at the front of school. The ceremony dramatizes that “St. Edmund’s Academy” does not exist out there somewhere on a distant horizon. Rather, it exists within all of us and will be carried into the world by those 8th graders departing chapel for the final time. 

As teachers and administrators shape the St. Edmund’s Academy of tomorrow, we start by looking inward and downward, to the deepest center of our school’s purpose.  I am reminded of Seamus Heaney’s “Bogland,” 1969, where he celebrates Ireland’s tradition.

Our Pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.

The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.

During the year that he wrote “Bogland,” the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet, Heaney, also read P.V. Glob’s (1965) The Bog People.  Heaney found metaphoric value in the well-preserved bodies found deep in Denmark’s bogs where favorable conditions allowed the fingerprints, hair, caps, tunics, skirts, and even blindfolds to be maintained on bodies that were nearly 2000 years old.  Heaney perceived Ireland’s bogs as a “dark casket where we have found many of the clues to our past and to our cultural identity” (Seamus Heaney Interview, 1977).  Ireland’s pioneers today turn inward and downward, their sense of self and purpose existing not in the space of a wide-open horizon, but in the layered time of a deeply buried past.  In Heaney’s bog poems, “the ground itself is kind, black butter / Melting and opening underfoot.”  His Ireland is a place rich in tradition where the wet center is bottomless.

So is our St. Edmund’s Academy.  Thanks to people like Nonie Heystek and Hans Fleischner, Coach Gathagan and Susan Miller, we benefit from the wisdom of our past as we springboard into our future.

Please watch for an announcement in the days to come outlining Familiar Faces in New Places and introducing new St. Edmund’s faculty.  Also in that update you will find dates and times for summer play dates for children where they can get acquainted with each other and with their teachers for the coming year. 

As always, thank you for being part of the St. Edmund’s Academy community. I appreciate our collaboration as we support all children in their reach for excellence.  

 

Chad Barnett