NEW DIVISION HEAD PUTS DOWN ROOTS IN THE PARKER COMMUNITY

BY MATTHEW PIECHALAK

Ben Temple settles into a seat at a table outside the back entrance to the Linda Vista Library. Six members of the Upper School Associated Student Body (ASB), struggling to contain their youthful exuberance, talk over each other as they get their new head of Upper School up to speed on the meeting’s agenda.

The group is conducting a video interview with Ben—but there’s a twist. During the interview, they will also be subjecting him to a hot wing challenge, an important detail purposely glossed over when Ben agreed to the interview. Ben, however, takes it all in stride. “Just let me know what you need me to do,” he tells the students with a polite smile.

The Temple family (left to right): Olivia Temple, Class of 2028; Erika Temple, Lower School Associate Teacher; Sam Temple, Class of 2032; Ben Temple, Head of Upper School; Austen Temple, Class of 2025.

Each question asked by the ASB members is accompanied by eating a buffalo wing, and each wing gets increasingly spicier. It’s the students' take on the popular YouTube show, “Hot Ones,” and it’s about getting to know their new division head in a comfortable, albeit spicy, environment. “It’s important that Upper School students get to know the head of Upper School and vice versa because it’s how Parker becomes a stronger community,” says ASB Vice President Scott Drouin, Class of 2022. “Wings are messy, informal, and not what you would expect the head of Upper School to eat with students, so we figured having Mr. Temple eating wings with us would be a great way for the student body to get to know him as a person rather than a principal.”

The questions are broad, openended, and fun: Is water wet? Is fire hot? Brown or gold? Shake Shack or Five Guys? “Shake Shack all the way,” Ben answers to the burger-related question. “However, my family and I have had In-And-Out Burger, and it’s far superior to Shake Shack,” he says, much to the delight of the teenage California natives. “You do have to convert to our West Coast ways,” one student quips.

“One of ASB’s goals for the year is to get to know the people who run our school,” explains Scott. “Over the course of the year, we’ll be working with Mr. Temple and it’s important to start building that relationship as early as possible.”

“Staying connected with the kids has always been a part of my job,” says Ben, who came to Parker in July from New York City, where since 2015 he has served as head of upper school at the Collegiate School. “When I first started teaching, I was working at a boarding school, coaching, and running a dormitory. My career has always been on the student side.”

Ben grew up in Philadelphia in a family of educators.

“My grandmother taught at an independent K-12 school called Westtown,” he says. “She taught Kindergarten there for 28 years. My mom and uncles went to the school. She taught there, too, and then became a division head and an associate head of school. I went there and then worked there for a period of time. I grew up on an independent school campus. Teaching is what I knew I wanted to do.”

Ben is currently in his 20th year as an educator. In that time, he has been a classroom teacher, dormitory head, college counselor, grade-level dean, coach, and assistant head of upper school. Now in his seventh year as a division head, Ben says his role, fundamentally, is to support teaching and learning.

“Teaching looks like a lot of different things—it takes place in the classrooms, it takes place in an art studio, in J. Crivello Hall, at lunch, in advisory, and athletics,” Ben says. “Learning is the student side of that engagement and that happens, also, in those same places.”

At the Collegiate School, Ben was responsible for all aspects of the upper school program and supervised 225 students, more than 50 faculty, and eight department heads. In Parker, he was looking for a bigger division and a bigger challenge.

“Working in a coed environment and working in a division that was more than twice the size were really compelling professional opportunities for me,” he says. “The team of people here in the Upper School—the adults—were a significant driver, and then the kids I met along the way were really wonderful.”

The chance to bring his family to the West Coast, where they could all be a part of the Parker community—his wife, Erika, is a Grade 1 associate teacher and their three children now go to Parker—was also an important

component in the coast-to-coast move. And then, of course, there is the benefit to living in a place with yearround sunshine.

“San Diego is wonderful and certainly a cherry on top of the sundae, but honestly, we were not planning to move to the West Coast. It was, ‘Is there a job offer out there that allows for a new set of challenges for me that also would meet the needs of my family?’”

When Ben arrived at Parker, he was eager to get to work, but with an important caveat that he volunteered to those he met: “I don’t know anything about Parker and I’m here to learn.” For him, personally, that approach means being intentionally introspective. It leans heavily on listening before speaking; learning before acting.

“It’s who I am and it would be disingenuous of me to say that it wasn’t a calculation in some respect,” he says. “I want to be thoughtful about how I enter a new community. I’ve seen other folks enter communities and do it in a bunch of different ways— some say, ‘This is who I am, this is what I’m about, and this is what is going to happen next,’ and that’s okay. For me, the way to do it is to try really hard to listen as much as I can. I believe this is one way to do it well and honestly, it’s comfortable for me because it’s how I approach new things.” As Ben says, there is no school that is monolithic.

“We are sort of wonderfully heterogeneous communities that all have different perspectives, experiences, and opinions. The goal of leadership should be to understand what those perspectives are and to try and chart a course forward that is in the best interest of everyone.”

During Upper School Back to School Night, Ben shared his appreciation for Richard Powers' Pulitzer Prizewinning novel, The Overstory. The novel, in part, explores how trees form communities in forests, communicating and nurturing one another. To Ben, an old-growth forest is truly a fitting metaphor for a school community.

“I identify with the analogy because I really do feel like I’m a tree that has been plopped down in the forest and the roots from everyone else’s trees are out there and communicating and I’m trying to add my network of roots to all the other networks—it’s going to take some time. It’s going to take time for students and faculty to trust me, it’s going to take time for me to get to know the School, and I have been around schools long enough to know that they are all really unique, so I want to be cautious in my early days here and really try to listen and understand as much as I can.”

One of Ben’s goals for this school year is to learn something new about the School every day, whether that be a policy, historical tidbit about Parker, or an individual’s unique perspective.

“I have a really outstanding team of people who are supporting specific aspects within the Upper School division,” Ben says. “There are a lot of people that are very specifically involved in various aspects of this. My role is to try my best to help those people do their best work and to try and understand the experiences of students and parents—to see as much of the full picture as possible. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that for many, this is among the most important institutions in the lives of their families and that really matters. It’s an enormous responsibility for us.”