Shoot the Moon

By Tim Richards, Head of School

On the windowsill in my office, I have a game called Shoot the Moon. The game dates back to the 1940s, and I can attest to it being part of my life since the 1960s. The object of the game is quite simple.

According to the website masterofgames.com, “The ball starts at one end and you grab the handles of the two bars at the other end. You need to move the bars apart to get the ball going and then you have to gradually manipulate them to make the ball roll as far as possible to the other end. The further the ball goes before it drops, the more you score.”

This gravity-defying game has transfixed me for almost sixty years. It can become a bit of an obsession, and I have to admit that after literally thousands of attempts, I have never hit the Moon, which is the best possible outcome. Alas, I have progressed all the way to the Fourth Stage, a respectable achievement, and yet agonizingly close to winning.

To achieve anything meaningful in this wonderfully confounding game demands patience, resilience, and no small amount of dexterity. To successfully move the ball uphill through all four stages to the Moon requires the perfect amount of friction; if you spread the bars too slowly, the ball goes nowhere. To move the bars too quickly is initially exciting but invariably results in a less-than-satisfactory outcome.

I keep this childhood game in my office both for brain breaks and as a perpetual reminder about progress. The game is a near perfect metaphor for schools. Progress, or change, at institutions like Pomfret, is always and inevitably an uphill climb. It requires patience, adaptability, and agility. I have learned much over the past twelve years about school change. I know that being too deliberate, too slow, or too cautious will result in no forward movement at all. At the same time, as I have seen on more than one occasion, movements that are too quick or hasty can lead to setbacks or even failure.

Back in January 2022, we released a new five-year strategic plan called Change Makers and Problem Solvers . If this is news to you, I encourage you to check it out. It is a quick and easy read, but it conveys a powerful vision for the future of our School. We did not call it Shoot the Moon, but we very well could have. It is an ambitious plan that seeks to create a more aligned, more inclusive, and more sustainable Pomfret. Easy to envision; hard to accomplish. Sounds like a certain childhood game.

As custodians of the strategic plan, the members of the Strategic Plan Accountability Task Force are the gatekeepers, the traffic cops, and the flight controllers of our institution. Do we want to be bold? Always. Reckless? Never. Pomfret has worked hard, over many years, to build its reputation as one of the best small schools in the nation, and we have a responsibility to be good stewards of that legacy, even as we hurtle headlong — and perhaps even uphill — into the future.

To date, the task force has logged more than sixty actions in service of the strategic plan, demonstrating significant progress in all twelve goal-areas. For a school of our size, this is a remarkable achievement. Of course, some of our attempts have resulted in less forward momentum than I had hoped, but I know that, like the friction between the ball and the bars in Shoot the Moon, resistance is an essential component of progress.

By and large, we have managed the game pretty well. Long ago, we passed the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Have we reached the Moon? No, not yet. Have we been too slow in some areas? Perhaps. Have we been too quick in some of our attempts to move the ball up the hill? Almost certainly. But with each attempt, each passing day, we get a little closer. It is my belief that if we thoughtfully continue to refine our approach to the “how” of school change, we can, like those skilled gamers who have succeeded at “shooting the moon,” move Pomfret toward its most fully actualized version of itself. I can’t wait. I trust it will happen more quickly than my personal pursuit of the Moon.