Jane's Corner

Head's Message: Dare To Be Wise

In late January, I became a full-time student again, participating in a two-week fellowship at the Klingenstein Center at Columbia University. I was exhilarated by the joy of learning, the unabashed fun, the cracking open of the books, the engagement in spirited debate and those quiet Saturdays in a corner of the library researching and writing. How fortunate I felt to dare, once again, to be a student.

I pursued three main areas of study: moral leadership, current issues on education, and enhancing teacher professional development. The area of moral leadership, especially inspired my thinking. In his essay "On Educating Children," sixteenth-century French essayist, Michel de Montaigne asserts a number of ways to ensure a child will grow up to be well-educated in the broadest sense. "Dare to be wise" Montaigne writes, "sepere aude." The words "dare" and "wise" took on a new significance during those two weeks.

To dare is to be courageous, to try new things, to test and to take that leap forward into the unknown; to be wise is to have more than knowledge or intellectual talents, it is to develop a feeling for the world around, to build judgment, and commit to the ongoing struggle to learn.

Isn't this daring at the core of The Cambridge School of Weston? My time at Teachers' College led me to consider some other CSW values.

• Optimism: the sense that each student and adult, has the human potential to succeed is a conviction we bring to all our interactions. In reading Montaigne and John Dewey, I understood more about the ways in which optimism and hope can be developed further into an understanding of the systems and principles that might ensure the journey we are all on as learners can be a rigorous, explicit one.
• Desire to understand and make meaning: self-motivation, and how to access that drive within yourself, or as a teacher how to help students find it, has always been part of my educational philosophy. Montaigne describes the perfect tutor-student relationship, as the flow of ideas moving easily between student and teacher. CSW teachers work tirelessly to consider how best to engage all kinds of students, and they equally care that students understand how to learn. Education is not about learning subjects and cramming knowledge into the students' minds; it is about human development, deeper understanding and making meaning for one's moral journey. The consciousness of learning, the intentionality and the awareness are important to the CSW community.
• Conflict and Empathy: Dewey lays out the idea of conflict as an integral and vital part of our growth and learning. At CSW, we discuss the conflict between the individual and the community constantly; we want to understand the conflict of wills and desires in this struggle. Dewey asks us to engage deeply, learn from each other, use empathy to understand, and collaboratively, arrive at a deeper meaning that informs our future actions.

One of the tenants of progressive education is for us to get out and learn from the world around us. I used my time away to learn and re-learn. It strengthened my resolve and focused my thoughts on CSW's growth. Metaphorically, I joined our students back in the classroom. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, in the span of three months surrounding my fellowship, our teachers led groups of students to travel and learn in the world's classroom – taking them to Italy, Central America, New Orleans and our nation's capital. As in my case, their experiences enriched their education, broadened their minds and opened their hearts.

The return to daily life at school, after a stimulating learning experience, is anything but mundane. Side-by-side, with our students, we teachers grow. The professional and personal renewal that comes with knowledge leads us to "dare to be wise," dare to know, know deeply, and dare to know nothing at all.

Jane Moulding, Head of School