Jane's Pocket Change: Remembering Day
On this coming Sunday we will celebrate the life of an amazing woman: Day Bramhall McDowell who passed away this past summer. She embodied so much that is special about CSW and she never stopped trying to make us all better at what we do.
On this coming Sunday we will celebrate the life of an amazing woman: Day Bramhall McDowell who passed away this past summer. She embodied so much that is special about CSW and she never stopped trying to make us all better at what we do.
Day was the co-chair of the search committee when I was hired in 2001. Clearly, she took this job very seriously, helping to manage competing ideas, weighing one candidate against another and tuning in attentively to my candidacy. What was helpful to me in this search was Day's sense of the needs of the school and her knowledge, as a parent of Robert McDowell '87, and as both past board chair and then vice chair. She understood the power of our community, she also wanted us to be proud of who we are and be sure to take our school to the "next level" supporting our amazing teachers and providing the best programs for all our students.
Here at CSW many of us play the role of mentor to a colleague. We pair mentors with new faculty and staff throughout their first year (and potentially longer), and there is a highly developed mentoring program as an integral part of the Progressive Education Lab. Day was one of my key mentors. She knew schools; she knew boards and she knew fundraising and finances. Many a late afternoon after a difficult conversation with someone, or at the end of a long week where we might have struggled with an issue, I called Day and she advised, questioned and led. These conversations were never easy, because Day had very high standards. She liked data, logic and clarity. When I called Day, I needed to be prepared to be challenged--even if inside I felt helpless in the face of some tricky issue.
I won't forget Day, and nor will our school. Why do we remember? I asked this question already this year. We remember Day because she was part of our institutional history at a time when we needed a tough-minded, hard working trustee with a distinct background in education--and this was in the 1980s.
Let's not forget Day McDowell.
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Pocket Change is a web diary written by Jane Moulding, head of school.
Let's not forget Day McDowell.
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Pocket Change is a web diary written by Jane Moulding, head of school.
The Cambridge School of Weston is a progressive high school for day and boarding students in grades 9–12 and PG. CSW's mission is to provide a progressive education that emphasizes deep learning, meaningful relationships, and a dynamic program that inspires students to discover who they are and what their contribution is to their school, their community and the world.