Jumping in

When I was in middle school, I was invited to travel across the country with friends of my parents — a spirited bunch of three boys, a mother, and a father. We left early one morning from their house in Weston, Mass., in a 32-foot Winnebago. Civil War battlefields were our first destination, and we were regaled with stories of carnage and heroic acts by the businessman father, who would rather have been a history professor at his beloved Princeton. As our motley crew progressed across the southern route, I saw parts of the country that I had only read about in history textbooks. We swam, we played, and we fought like only middle school boys can. Alliances came and went as quickly as new state borders were crossed, and our competitive zeal ebbed and flowed. At around the midpoint of our adventure, we chartered a houseboat on Lake Powell along the border of Arizona and Utah. As a lad from New England, I had never experienced the dryness of desert heat, let alone its impact on our Wonder Bread tuna sandwiches—toast took on a whole new meaning. While on the boat, we explored a terrain that looked like the apocalyptic set of the original Planet of the Apes. One of my fondest memories on Lake Powell was jumping off the primordial rocks that towered about the startling clear water. The absolute thrill of each leap was both freeing and terrifying; the slow rise from underwater depths brought comforting solitude that was in short supply.

As I watched our students begin the new year, I saw these same themes of adventure and alliances, the inherent messiness of family and friendship, and the excitement of leaping into something new. Our sixth grade trip to Big Bear last week was designed to stretch our new Middle Schoolers’ sense of independence and how they see each other as classmates. In the Upper School, Varsity teams and ensembles are coalescing, challenging our students to resist the narcissism of adolescence by joining something bigger than themselves. And our Lower School students are literally jumping out of their parents’ cars and into reading circles, Panther Pods, and new friendships. The thrill in all of these transitions and passages is complicated by the inherent tension of how others see us and how we see ourselves. As parents, the startling rise of independence in our children is both rewarding — we really do want our children to be independent beings — and devastating. How can they possibly manage without our battle-tested guidance? For our students, “new” isn’t always easy or exciting when peer approval and acceptance is so central to their sense of self. Many of them are constantly looking for signals about what is okay to share, to express, or to try.

The good news is that Poly students are courageous, inquisitive, and willing to experience something new. They like to share what moves or inspires them with their peers.They lead and follow with generosity and enthusiasm. And, of course, they make mistakes, and they are sometimes unkind. We all are. It’s not a 32-foot Winnebago, but our campus is a pretty special place where we explore, play, and disagree. And each day we return, together, to shape an experience that is uniquely ours.

JWB