FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

Dear Frederick Gunn School Community,

In 1946, less than two years after being freed from his fourth and final concentration camp, Viktor Frankl released the German version of what became Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, Frankl wrote, “There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one’s life.” He goes on to write:

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging a person with a potential meaning for her to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke her will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what a person needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘homeostasis,’ i.e., a tensionless state. What a person actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

Frankl, a Jewish doctor from Austria, survived four concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and his wife, both parents, and his brother died in them. He states in the same section quoted above that the meaning that enabled him to endure and survive was his desire to complete a book manuscript that the Nazis had confiscated early in his imprisonment.

These are serious times outside the walls of our school’s bucolic campus and it looks like they will remain serious indefinitely. Inside the walls, the meaning and purpose that fuels us has everything to do with Frederick and Abigail Gunn’s original goal of providing a loveinfused, home-like, transformational setting for student learning and growth such that they will go on to be active citizens — and we take seriously Mr. Gunn’s admonition that it needs to be fun, that we can’t take ourselves too seriously!

The dynamic Frankl identifies — that we humans require “striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task” in order for us to flourish — is also true for institutions of every size, for families, schools, corporations, even entire countries. Frederick Gunn knew this. Near the conclusion of his 1877 talk,

“Confidence Between Boys and Their Teachers,” he riffs on the characteristics of his “ideal school.” (Read the talk — found on the last pages of The Master of The Gunnery, which is available online at https://bit.ly/FWGunnConfidence to see his description.) At the end of his think-aloud, he asks rhetorically, “But have you found, do you know such a school? My friends, I am compelled sadly to answer, No! I have never seen it, only dreamed of it…I do not expect to find it; but is it not a pleasant thing to dream of? Is it not in some measure possible? Is it not to be found, if ever, in the line of our daily work?” Here is Frederick Gunn 27 years into leading this school, and more than 30 years into teaching and leading schools, an active citizen, and he admits that even his school hasn’t achieved his ideal. We learn from this that a key motivation for him was striving toward this ideal despite never achieving that.

As you will read in these pages, that is the baton we believe Mr. Gunn has handed to us today. The values and motivations — the heart — that inspired Frederick and Abigail are simultaneously our inspiration and our point of orientation today. There are at least two deep benefits from this. The first is that most schools do not have a clear, coherent answer to key questions about why they do what they do the way that they do it. We do. Frederick Gunn had clear insight into the questions that should animate education in every school:

• Who is the student? Who is the teacher? What kinds of creatures are we humans?

• What is the purpose or goal of education — at least, what is the purpose identified by this school?

• What are the key ingredients or building blocks, the necessary conditions, for students to learn and to grow toward the goals we have identified?

We derived our Core Values (see page 4) from the teachings and example of Frederick Gunn. They answer these questions. They are both what Mr. Gunn thought and what he did. As a result, everyone who teaches here, every parent who considers entrusting their child to us, every student, every graduate, and every potential donor knows what we stand for and why we do what we do the way that we do it. This greatly diminishes the chance that we will lose the thread or get distracted by educational or social fads that lack substance (some educational fads have great substance and endure) or are at cross purposes with our values. And it increases the chances for integration and reinforcement in the program we develop, the people we attract to create and execute that program, and the buildings and physical spaces we create that give material shape to the student and faculty experience.

The second benefit to sharing Mr. and Mrs. Gunn’s inspiration and purpose is that they are what we would today call “process goals” — they are evergreen. Mr. Gunn was never satisfied. He was driven by the conviction that the ideal school for student flourishing was just over the horizon. It kept him and the school fresh and creative, curious and adaptive, while cleareyed, mission driven, and fully dedicated to the power of residential education. He cared most about what worked for kids — to equip them for holistic active citizenship — and adjusted his method accordingly and with good cheer.

I believe the late Ogden D. Miller H’69 P’50 ’54 ’55 GP’84, our sixth Head of School, tapped into this when he coined our school motto, “A good person is always learning.”

It is our responsibility to continue “striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal,” as Frankl encouraged, “in the line of our daily work,” as Mr. Gunn wrote, filtered and guided by our Core Values and the model that he and Mrs. Gunn left us. Thank you all for joining us passionately in this pursuit.

Go Gunn!

Peter Becker Head of School

On November 29, it was announced that this will be my final year as Head of School at The Frederick Gunn School. As of July 1, 2023, I will become the next Head of School at Taft, my alma mater. The future of Gunn is so bright!

I look forward to a great finish for all of us to the 2022-2023 school year.

How to Become a Force

The Path to Active Citizenship Begins With our Connection to our Founder

July 25, 2022, marked the second anniversary of the renaming of our school in honor of our founder, Frederick Gunn, his vision and ideals. The name change was not principally a branding exercise. We recentered the school on Mr. Gunn: who he was and what he believed and modeled, as an educator, outdoorsman, abolitionist, and citizen. The essence of those beliefs — distilled from Mr. Gunn’s writing, his accomplishments, and what others have written about him in The Master of The Gunnery and other primary sources — are reflected in what we now call our Core Values. These beliefs influence and drive everything that we do as a school, from our programs to our campus, our facilities, and the talented and hope-filled faculty who teach, challenge, inspire, and support our students in all aspects of our 24/7 boarding school life. Knitted together, these timeless ideals form a value statement:

We believe that integrated humans, immersed in a learning ecosystem, surrounded by hope-filled faculty, and engaged in moral character development results in the creation of active citizens.

Through our connection to these Core Values, we have developed keystone programs: Gunn Outdoors, the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy, the Center for Academic Excellence, and soon, a Center for Entrepreneurship. All exemplify how we are building an academic program grounded in Mr. Gunn’s educational philosophy as it is applied in the 21st century, which will be transformative for our students and faculty. These programs will provide the superstructure of the student experience, which will continue to include courses in chemistry, physics, calculus, and AP classes that have been a challenging and familiar part of a Frederick Gunn School education for decades.

“We are continuing to transform our programs, our campus, and our teaching and learning culture in ways that leverage and build on Mr. Gunn’s core values. The Frederick Gunn School will define a unique and best-in-class boarding school education for the next generation,” Head of School Peter Becker said. “What we are creating here is nothing less than a transformative learning community — one whose students become an entrepreneurial force for good in the world.”

What follows are examples of how Mr. Gunn’s vision and ideals are transforming our programs in and out of the classroom. The goal is to build integrated programs and facilities that foster crossdisciplinary education, active citizenship, and lifelong curiosity and resilience. Our programs are centered around these four pillars: Risk Taking and Innovation, Learning Yourself and How to Learn, Rootedness and Place, and Public Character and Active Citizenship. These are the design standards and guiding processes that we will use to align all of our programs with our Core Values. This is what will make our school a place for students and faculty to live, learn, and thrive.

“What is exciting about this is that what we are doing has not been done before at our school, since Frederick Gunn was alive,” Becker said. “Frederick Gunn as an educator had key insights into who students are and what they need to learn, live, and thrive — yes, to be successful professionally, but also to be engaged citizens. And essentially, we are saying the reason we are recreating our school around our Core Values and pillars is that they represent the 21st century version of his key insights. No boarding school that we know of does this. Most schools just do school. Meeting this higher standard and purpose takes intention and requires significant financial investment. We have to hire incredible teacher-leaders, we have to house them well, and we have to give them budgets to build their programs and time to integrate them intentionally.”

“We are putting stakes in the ground,” Becker said. “We are making a claim that, at the intersection of Frederick Gunn’s educational philosophy, the latest research and best practices in the theory and practice of education, and what families and colleges want in education, we can do something that is important and distinct in American education. And it will be distinct because it speaks to the deepest needs of who our students are, and who our faculty are, but in order to do it, we have to raise and invest an incredible amount of money. It requires new endowed funds to do what we want to do sustainably — to invest in people and programs. This is not something we can accomplish through tuition revenue alone.”

Risk Taking and Innovation

“Mr. Gunn was awesome at setting students up to try things that they felt were outside of their comfort zone, and he himself was an innovator. He was a social entrepreneur,” said Emily Gum, Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning. “Today, we want all of our students in various areas of their life on campus to figure out how to put themselves out there, take risks, fail, get back up, and try again. That’s what innovation requires.”

Students already explore Risk Taking and Innovation in the Arts, in engineering classes that are the hallmark of our IDEAS Lab, and in Honors Entrepreneurship Seminar, where they learn that being an entrepreneur is about much more than starting a business. Many of the skills associated with successful entrepreneurship are the same kinds of skills that matter in life itself — self-awareness, creativity, ability to assess risk, team orientation, resilience, and problem-solving.

The school will expand this popular class into a four-year curriculum supported by a Center for Entrepreneurship, to equip students with the mindset and skills to engage the world proactively. The Center for Entrepreneurship will be an integrated, interdisciplinary hub where students discover how to turn ideas into action: develop plans, pitch an idea, learn from failure and then adjust their sights to move ahead. While it begins in the classroom, it quickly becomes practical as invited guests, often alumni entrepreneurs, come to tell their stories and offer critiques and guidance to students as they set up early-stage ventures. Exposure to these entrepreneurs enables students to understand how a vision becomes real, how to create a space in the market, and what it takes to compete today. And, through practice, students learn what Mr. Gunn already knew: that far more than just an approach to one’s profession, entrepreneurship can be an approach to all of life.

The school has made a commitment to have full-time directors for both the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Center for Academic Excellence in place by the 2023-2024 school year.

Learning Yourself and How to Learn

Emily

At our school, students learn about themselves and how they learn best in the classroom and on the playing field. It’s really about connecting life skills like self-awareness and developing a growth mindset. One of the best examples of this is The Center for Academic Excellence, which provides students with the skills to make their school experience more enlightening and rewarding. Our learning specialists coach students on planning, goal setting, research skills, note-taking, executive function — effectively, project management for high school. The school’s vision is for the center to empower every student to acquire the skills that will allow them to be more successful learners across all subjects.

“The focus is on what it means for every single student to know who they are as a learner, and crucially, to be able to tap into strengths and advocate for themselves, and leverage those strengths,” Gum said. “That is something we all do as adults. If we can help our students do that in college, and start to do that in high school, that is incredible for them. Neuroscience has made it clear that we all have particularities as learners and as thinkers. The whole idea of educational testing is that we are all pretty unique when it comes to the way our brains are structured and what those strengths and weaknesses are. Helping students really know themselves, know how their brains work, and to be great at advocating for themselves and leveraging their own learning is something we can do across our whole ecosystem.”

In keeping with our motto, “A good person is always learning,” the goal is for the center to become a resource for faculty, too. The school aims to create a home — a resource center for professional growth — that will enable teachers to stay abreast of the current research, methods, and practices in their subjects and to learn from one another’s reflective practice. This will give them the tools to create an environment that will excite and engage every student.

A Sense of Rootedness and Place

Outdoor life and adventure have been part of the school’s ethos since its founding. Frederick Gunn himself set the tone and set the bar. As we continue to evolve our Outdoor Program as a cornerstone of The Frederick Gunn School experience, we are creating more opportunities for students to connect with the world and engage in placebased learning. Our students are already benefiting from this through a relatively recent collaboration between Gunn Outdoors and our residential life programming: our “Live Like Fred” Community Weekends.

First introduced in 2020, these weekends foster a sense of community while connecting students to our founder and his love of the outdoors. The seasonal program grew out of a desire to provide a space for students during the early waves of the pandemic. The goal is for students not to feel “like they are trapped in this bubble and isolated from their family and friends,” Gum said. We want them to really feel that ‘living like Fred’ is cool and give them a sense of connection to Washington and a sense of rootedness at a time globally that can be extremely disorienting.”

Activities offered over the past two school years have included astronomy lectures and viewing the night sky through a highpowered telescope on the Quad with science teacher Steve Bailey P’09, night hikes at Steep Rock and Macricostas Preserve, fishing, canoeing, and kayaking from Beebe Boathouse, and navigating low ropes and camping at South Street Fields. Students have tried ice fishing, curling, skiing, birding, and practicing winter photography. They learned about owls at Sharon Audubon Center and viewed bald eagles at Shepaug Dam.

Students participated in a Live Like Fred weekend this fall, and a second is planned this winter, along with an Earth Day celebration in the spring. Dan Fladager, Director of Outdoor Programs, is seeking to expand the range of activities to include three tiers of programming, from an on-campus poetry walk and yoga classes to adventures in mountain biking, backpacking, rafting, and climbing.

A Sense of Rootedness and Place also informed two curricular changes this year. Science teacher Jordana Graveley redesigned the curriculum for Environmental Sciences as a local ecology course. “It addresses the same questions and the same content knowledge for students in Environmental Studies but uses our design standards to give students an experiential education in and around Washington and Steep Rock to explore more questions of environmental studies. This moves the learning experience from the abstract — anywhere — to the concrete — right here — and that improves student learning tremendously,” Gum said.

Fladager, who also teaches English, similarly reimagined the Nature Writers class in the English curriculum as a field course. “Students are learning the same skills, they’re doing the same progression in terms of content learning, but the content area is allowing them to explore New England and a sense of the outdoors,” Gum said. For example, students will read works by New Englandbased authors, read 19th century poetry written on birchbark, and go on local hikes at least once a week. “It’s all about engaging materially with nature, harvesting things, touching trees, making our own pencils using an old method where we burn wood in a fire until it’s charcoal and carve it into the shape of a pencil and wrap it in birchbark,” Fladager said. Students also will learn how to write nature essays about their experiences, which will become a collective series of their own work.

Public Character and Active Citizenship

Learning to be an active and engaged citizen is Mr. Gunn’s legacy to the school. Not only did he lead by example, he also pioneered a unique approach for students that emphasizes character development, curiosity, risk-taking, and independent thinking. Through its four-year, mission-driven curriculum, the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy provides students with opportunities to practice what it means to be a good citizen, what it takes to persuade others and to lead, and what it means to be an engaged group member.

Beginning this fall, freshmen were asked to think about Public Character and Active Citizenship as it relates to their Frederick Gunn School experience and the college process.

Students are going to realize that what they are learning in English class, on the athletic field, and in their advisor group is all interconnected. They should be able to see all the work they have been doing on themselves as it relates to our Core Values.”

Through a partnership between the Academic Office, the Dean of Students Office, the College Counseling Office, and the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy, freshmen were asked to create a digital portfolio called “My Gunn Portrait.” This is where they will save pieces of self-reflective writing such as the “Letter to Self” they write as freshmen in Pathways, or their junior speech from The Declaration (both part of the four-year citizenship curriculum), along with personal narrative essays from English class, and work they complete as part of their advisory group related to their identity. The portfolio is a place where students can save their applications for leadership positions as well as work they complete outside of the school, such as a published article or summer research project. All of this will enable them to frame the narrative for their college applications.

“As things happen in this learning ecosystem over these four years, it’s important to take note of things you have worked on, so you have an understanding of those things and how you become an integrated human being,” said Bart McMann, Director of the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy. “Our goal is to help our students to develop as citizens and to figure out what matters to them, and to help them develop their interests. So when they arrive at the college process, they have a sense of who they are, and the bigger picture of why they are here, and what they want their Frederick Gunn School experience to be.”

Kate McMann ’05, Director of College Counseling, said the idea to create a portfolio grew out of conversations with Seth

Low, Associate Head of School. “When we meet with students, we always ask them to reflect on their values and things that matter to them, and their character, and what their interests are, their passions. Students sometimes have a really hard time answering those questions,” McMann said. Now, students will use the portfolio to begin to see connections in the work they are doing across the curriculum, identifying themes that emerge.

“Students are going to realize that what they are learning in English class, on the athletic field, and in their advisor group is all interconnected. They should be able to see all the work they have been doing on themselves as it relates to our Core Values,” McMann said. “I don’t know what other schools are doing but I think we are being very intentional with our Core Values and helping students to develop their character and figure out what matters to them, and how to put that into practice.”

With many colleges and universities remaining test-optional, the information that students choose to include in their college applications and essays matters, and more is not necessarily better. “Students sometimes think they have to join 10 clubs and colleges would rather see them doing two or three things that are intentional. That has shifted,” McMann said. “Colleges are looking for that authenticity and seeing that what students are doing outside the classroom is not just to check a box but something they are genuinely passionate about and have developed deep experience in.”

“My Gunn Portrait” can help students to hone in on their passions and interests and find ways to pursue them. “Maybe you care about the environment and it’s getting outside and helping with your local community garden or helping to grow a park. It doesn’t have to be a flashy job or internship. Colleges want to see that students are using their time intentionally,” McMann said.

There is another benefit, too. As McMann said: “We want to help students figure out what matters to them and to use that to do good in the world and in their communities.”

As part of the college process, Gunn students are asked to examine their motivations for attending college and choosing a particular career. “Students always joke and say, ‘I want to go to college because I want to make a lot of money,’” McMann said. It takes a lot of self-reflection and figuring out their values and what matters to them. That should be driving where you go to college and what you do after you graduate from college. Eventually students reach the realization that they want to do work that is meaningful to them and to their values. They’re doing it because they care, and because it matters.”