“All Things Must Change...”

BY PETER BRANCH, HEAD OF SCHOOL

No matter our age, human beings are challenged by change, however small or seemingly positive. Even the anticipation of a trip can make children restless. My dog, Chloe, seems to sense such a disturbance in her rituals and hides where we can’t find her. Grade by grade, our students revel in the end of the school year while simultaneously becoming anxious about the next. Fifth graders look forward with caution to the Middle School, eighth graders to the Upper School, and seniors to colleges. Nothing is more certain than the inevitability of change. As the poet Longfellow wrote: “All things must change to something new, to something strange”.

June will bring the 49th Upper School commencement at Rocky Hill School. For me, it will mark my fifth departure as the head of an independent school and my third retirement. Like our seniors, I do not really know what is ahead but hope I can embrace it with grace, however strange it may initially seem.

Institutions, like people, are equally subject to change, and equally resistant. And yet change is necessary to revive and animate such organizations as schools. Rocky Hill will be welcoming a new school head in Dr. James Tracy this summer. Together with his wife, Jan, he will bring new energy and vision to this wonderful campus and educational idea. His deep education and extensive experience with a variety of schools will offer Rocky Hill’s constituents new perspectives and leadership. But the new implies change and, with it, directions and actions in potential conflict with individual and group expectations based in the past, even the past of my three years of tenure. Such is the outcome of progress.

The prospect of changes in our workplace, or the school our children have attended, or the campus we have cherished, can close us to the opportunities such changes can bring. Rocky Hill School cannot be fixed in time without failing in its responsibilities to its students. The pace of technology makes that reality all too clear. But more subtle expectations of the future will compel us to shape our plans to the new world that is constantly emerging. What will be required will be leadership that is flexible, nimble, anticipatory, collaborative, and courageous.

The initial impression of Rocky Hill School is of an educational village somewhat akin to the campus of a uniquely situated college. The deeper goal must be of a learning community and organization.

It may sound redundant to ask a school to adopt the goals of a learning organization, but such goals for all of us are a call to action. Assume nothing as given except our mission, and even that must be subject to critical examination. Recently, for example, we added to the goal of “producing good citizens” the word “global” so that we now recognize the full breadth of our obligation “to produce good global citizens”. The addition acknowledges our many years of educating international students on our campus, our new consulting relationship with a school in China, and the demands for broadening a Euro-Centric curriculum. We are also accepting the fact that the scope of demands on our graduates has become international and our education must be so as well.

This edition of The Bulletin offers a series of articles that describe various new or increased efforts of Rocky Hill School to strengthen the connections within and outside our school community on behalf of our mission. Nici Lanowy writes of how the Parent Teacher League fosters the essential goal of supporting each other on this remarkable campus. Sarah Shaw Siskin ’78 likewise tells how the Alumni Association seeks to bring current and past students together in ways that strengthen their connections to the School that has so shaped their character. In “Building Bridges”, Beth DeGerlia documents the many programs that have linked our parents, alums, students, faculty, and staff together in education. In “Partnerships”, Peter Hanney details the strategic partnerships with organizations and schools beyond our campus borders that have magnified our programs and expanded our outreach.

Many individuals have supported these initiatives and ensured both their quality and their consistency with our mission. And, as we laud those efforts, we are engaged in an ongoing effort to anticipate and harness change. The work of our Strategic Planning Committee is well summarized by Belinda Snyman in her article, appropriately subtitled as “Guardians, Stewards, and Trailblazers”. In the face of inevitable change, guardians need to protect our mission, stewards need to cherish our past, and trailblazers need to show us the way forward. All are essential to Rocky Hill School’s progress and success. May this wonderful school be blessed with such personal resources as it looks to the future. v

Rocky Hill School does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation, age, handicap, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its admission,