What's in a Name?

A few days ago I returned from our seventh grade fall trip in Craftsbury, VT. What a glorious experience! Teachers alongside students participated in wilderness and survival training and enjoyed bonding through team-building fun and games. It was wonderful to see students engage with teachers outside of the classroom, as when a group invited Spanish teacher Gretchen Bowder to partake in lunch to chat about issues of mutual interest; or when science teacher Oliver Hay helped students build a campfire, and fellow science teacher Julia Jennings, having returned to her old summer camp, told the group about the “polar bear” plunge that starts the day every day; or School Counselor Katie Hertz canoed with a small group down Hosmer Lake and discussed paddling techniques—and then switched from canoe to kayak mid-lake without getting wet! I feel privileged to work with professionals such as learning specialist John Clark or science teacher Jake Ahern who take such good care of the kids day in and day out. We all know our “trips” are important, but we don’t often discuss them or why experiences like these are so significant.

Shore is not just any school; Shore is a Country Day School, and those words, which we often leave out when we say the name, are imbued with meaning. I am fascinated by history, so I hope you will indulge my propensity to find meaning in the past. While much positive can be said about America’s oldest institutions of secondary instruction, especially about their focus on character formation, whether called Latin Grammar School or Academy they were originally ensconced in the center of towns to provide an educational locus for the village and its rural surroundings. In America, it is only with industrialization and the concomitant emergence of Transcendentalism, with its emphasis on self-reliance and a connection to nature, that educators started to seek new educational forms. Public and parochial schools emerged in those years, and so did the boarding school as we know it , when Rev. Endicott Peabody, amongst others, rearticulated residential education around family and active outdoor living. In 1901 Frank Hackett’s Riverdale Country School started the Country Day School movement, with its aim, much like Peabody’s boarding school, that of forming citizens of character through active outdoor learning. Through this history we see that Shore’s trips are not mere ornament; these trips are in the very bones of the school.

The character-building that we hope will come from communing with nature and connecting with others are among the defining components of the Shore education. Yet, times have changed. Peabody and Hackett’s schools were exclusive; ours now aim at being inclusive, and most are preparing students to live in a global economy and society. Similarly, the purpose of our trips has, over the years, adapted to this changing environment.

At the core of preparing students for a 21st-century global education is making sure students know themselves as individuals, as members of a group, and moreover as citizens of a national and global community. We ask students to talk across differences, to serve others, and to learn from them. In that sense, the trips, more than any other program at the school, enhance our ability to deliver well-balanced and inclusive character, socio-emotional, and global education. How do our trips accomplish these goals?

Through these trips, Shore Country Day School offers a well-articulated sequenced and age-appropriate set of outdoor, leadership, service, and global education opportunities designed both to be fun and to build character. In the words of a faculty committee, “Shore’s trips program asks students to step into unfamiliar environments and situations in order to discover connections that exist outside of their regular routines. By stretching their comfort zones and finding how they relate to circumstances, people, and places, Shore students are faced with the chance to delve deeply and meaningfully into relationships with their community, the environment, and the constantly changing world.”