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"Head's Letter" Trevor Thursday Digest, October 7, 2021 …There have been many big and small changes to our program and school environment this academic year, bringing us all a little closer to normal. More in-person learning. Fewer quarantines. More music. More athletics. A bit more freedom to be together. And, hopefully, a lot less worry. And on this path toward a new normal, I am really looking forward to our first in-person, schoolwide event since March of 2020. Homecoming 2021 is the perfect setting to reconvene as a community. It is a celebration of a new school year that also honors our history and traditions. Although we have all spent an inordinate amount of time in our homes over the past 19 months, many of the characteristics that define a home have been in short supply. Extended family and friends. Shared food and drink. Celebration. Closeness. Camaraderie. Trevor Homecoming welcomes us all back, when it feels like we've been a long way from home. Welcome home, Trevor… "Rigor and the Pursuit of Happiness" Parents League Review This article first appeared in the 2017 issue of Parents League Review. © 2017 Parents League of New York Each year thousands of parents make one of the most important decisions of their lives: To which school shall I send my child? This question reflects our concerns, worries, and anxieties about competition and what we hold dear, speaking to our very core values. Where can my child find both academic success, and the pursuit of happiness? This individual decision making reflects one of the essential debates going on, on a larger scale in American schooling: Can a school be a place of both academic rigor and happiness? Does the one, surely a most important concept, militate against the other—a goal that we as parents seemingly share for all our children? Who in fact does not want their child to be happy? But who wants a school that lacks rigor, or one that fails in its obligation to promote academic excellence? The Essential Debate In the late 19th century, John Dewey and other proponents of the progressive movement saw the major goal of education as an engagement in a process of making hopeful and democratic citizens. While not fully abandoning that focus, educators in the 1980s declared character education to be the most desirable outcome. Now we are in an age of high-stakes testing, assessment and school rankings. Today's battles over No Child Left Behind and the Common Core, and the role of the SATs and Advanced Placement courses evince a great concern over academic challenge, with standardized testing privileging the acquisition of knowledge and skills over more subjective aspects of learning. Educators also feel compelled to ensure a rigorous academic environment in which children become resilient, learn from failure, and acquire the grit needed in our increasingly competitive world. In an educational terrain that often resembles an intellectual battlefield, there appears little consensus on the question of what students should know, when they should know it, and how curriculum should be delivered. Nor have we arrived at a definition of what "rigor" really means. Supporters of a more rigorous curriculum, with its attendant increase in homework and classroom time, have recently found their own nemesis in examining the results of education in Finland, where fewer hours spent on homework and in the classroom have led to greater academic achievement and, arguably, happiness for students. These findings suggest that a major goal of education should be to ensure happiness and create students filled with empathy and altruism. Clearly there is a tension inherent in these concepts of rigor and happiness. And the debate informs the mission of independent schools around the country. Even a cursory examination of school mission statements reveals the challenge of reconciling these ideal types. Independent schools throughout the country speak of "academic rigor," challenging academics and extracurricular programs, responsibility, compassion, diversity, global awareness (even citizenship), and lifelong learning. The more cynical among us who teach in independent schools might argue there is such a similarity in school missions that it is often difficult to discern what a school really stands for. TREVOR DAY SCHOOL / 45 INSIDE TREVOR TREVOR TRANSLATES FEATURE AR TICLES ALUMNI

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