From the principal

On June 2 I will officially bring to a close not only my tenure at Woodstock School but my 30th year as an educator. The granddaughter of a railroad man and daughter of public school teachers, I began my career as an English teacher in Proctor, a railroad town near Duluth, Minnesota, in 1977. I was the youngest teacher on the faculty, barely four years older than some of my students.

This year, I could easily be the mother of many of our teachers; in fact, my daughter Karen has come to Woodstock to join the music faculty-and, to my delight, has decided to stay on after I leave. I will literally leave this school my greatest treasure, and I know that she will find the fulfillment here that I have found as long as she remains focused on her students, seeking in them her greatest joy and challenge.

When I look back at my tenure here in a variety of roles, as teacher, guidance counselor, deputy principal and principal, I must take my measure the same way that each of you should take the measure of this school. We must ask ourselves what Woodstock students are like in 2008 and how we are serving them. What brought them here? What are their dreams and aspirations, and are they getting the education they need to fulfill them? How are their characters being shaped, their spirits nurtured, their minds sharpened and their bodies strengthened? How do they view the world and how do we hope they will work to change it?

Woodstock students create. Our students tell us they come here because we provide opportunities to cultivate their interests and abilities, inside and outside of the classroom. For a small school, we offer a wide range of course choices and extracurricular activities, and our students take advantage of them. More than half are involved in the music program, over 150 participate in Model United Nations and about 250 were in team sports including field hockey, cricket, basketball, soccer, and track and field events.

This year, over fifty staff and students across the school make regular use of our clay center, dedicated in March 2006 by Distinguished Alumnus Gerry Williams '42. Middle School students learn to knit, make ornaments for various festivals, and participate in Corbett Club, chess club, nature and photography clubs, among others. Elementary students did origami, spatter painting, "things that fly" and Hawaiian hoola dancing at a recent activity night, but they also have an after school club called the "Gargling Gang" which has greatly reduced illness at Edgehill during a recent spate of throat infections.

Lest I give the impression that we regulate every spare minute of their lives, our students still have time to organize "garage bands" and dance groups for talent show, to wander into the Buzz on Saturdays, to decorate their dorm rooms for open houses and to do each other's hair and nails-the stuff from which lifelong memories are made.

Woodstock students care. Every student in Elementary and Middle School, plus ever-increasing numbers of high school students, has been involved in the CARE program this year. Activities have included playing musical instruments for the students at the Sharp Memorial Blind School (and letting the blind kids try the instruments themselves,) painting and maintenance work at the Tibetan Homes Foundation, playing games at the Barlowganj Children's Home each week, organizing a sports day on Hanson Field for village children who don't have playing fields of their own, and running after school programs for employees' children.

They care about each other too. They continue to respond to a school-wide anti-bullying campaign which encourages students not only to treat each other with respect but to hold each other accountable for disrespectful behavior they observe, in the classrooms or in the residences. Our guidance team is stretched in helping students cope with the stresses and anxieties of a high-pressure world-but they also report that the students are more open than ever before, responsive to increases in trust and personal responsibility.

Woodstock students conserve. As staff and faculty make a conscious choice to put environmental awareness, outdoor education and service learning at the center of our program, the students have risen to the challenges as well. Caring for the environment has become the focus of student publications, interviews and news broadcasts, and is the theme of an exciting staff and student documentary project featuring a village which is being transformed by its commitment to organic farming and sustainable living.

Within a few days of the dedication of our organic garden on the orchard land, a group of students were seen tromping happily around down there, with other students clamoring to join them. Students in environmental science classes have done field work in nearby villages to learn about composting and fertilizer techniques, some of which will be replicated on the orchard.

This semester, I participated in the fulfillment of a six-year dream: two All School Hiking Days, when every able-bodied student throughout the school plus most of their teachers and support staff went on a hike. The hikes ranged from easy to hard and each one had a theme, such as Impact of Tourism (Dhanaulti and Surkhanda Devi) or Mountaineers are Us (Top Tibba) for the middle schoolers. High School themes included Birds and Ecology (Thatyur) or Village lifestyles (Satyon from Surkhanda) or Landscape Art (Benog Tibba.)

Woodstock students are conscientious about academics. After all is said and done, one important measure of a school must be the academic achievement of its students, throughout their years here but also as they move on to undergraduate and postgraduate work. We update statistics on standardized tests and college placement each fall and publish them in our school profile; this year's college admissions are just coming in, but we are already pleased with what we have seen. Among the first round of decisions, students have been granted admission to Cambridge, Williams, Smith, Babson, RIT, Knox and the University of British Columbia. Parameters for measuring academic success along the way can and should be debated rigorously, but we do know that between 40 and 50 students, forming a solid core of our graduating class each year, have been here since middle school or elementary, reassuring us that in academics as well as in all of the other areas I have mentioned, we are preparing them well for life beyond Woodstock.