This post was originally published as the Superintendent's Corner column in the Fall 2021 edition of the Shrewsbury School Journal
As I write this, we have completed a little more than the first quarter of the school year, during which our students, families, and staff have experienced both triumphs and challenges. We began the year celebrating the return of full-time, in-person learning for all of our students and the opening of the extraordinary new Major Howard W. Beal School, while also contemplating how the continuation of the pandemic and the disruptions of the prior two school years would affect our students. Over the past two and a half months, we have seen many of our students thriving in academics, in the arts, in athletics, and in co-curricular activities as the experience of school has returned closer to “normal.” At the same time, we have seen many students struggling with learning, motivation, mental health, and behavior to a much more significant degree than before the pandemic. Sometimes, these are the same students who are thriving in some ways and struggling in others.It would have been naive to think that things would simply get back to “normal'' given the upheaval so many of our children, families, and staff members experienced since March of 2020. As I expressed to our staff in my opening day remarks, it is important that we not fall into the trap of overfocusing on potential “learning loss” or to approach this year as a race to “catch up” on what students missed. This kind of approach can unintentionally send the message to our students that the pandemic caused them to be damaged goods who somehow need to be “fixed,” and that it is academic performance that is the be-all and end-all goal of their school experience. While learning is, of course, the central purpose of our schools, we must attend to our children’s overall well-being in order to create the conditions where effective learning can take place. More importantly, we must do this because our primary responsibility is to meet our duty to care for our children’s health, safety, and well-being.
Attending to our students’ social, emotional, and mental health needs is critically important, and we have taken various steps to increase our capacity to do so, from adding programming aimed at fostering social and emotional competencies for all students, to adding additional counseling staff to provide support for students who need additional assistance. In addition to targeted approaches, we are intentionally emphasizing creating a culture of belonging, where all members of our school community feel accepted unconditionally, regardless of whatever human differences are part of who they are.
While our schools’ core purpose is to advance student learning, we know that this is best achieved in a culture of caring and positive relationships. As we continue to make our way through the many challenges posed by our current circumstances, we will strive to create an environment of unconditional belonging that creates fertile ground for our students to learn and grow.
