Page 2 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 1 Fall 2012

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The Essential Nature of a St. Paul’s Education
As I write today,
Hurricane Sandy
has just passed us
by with little effect
– a few trees down
and several academic
buildings in the dark
for a morning. More
on our minds is the
enormous damage inflicted on so many of
our St. Paul’s families along the Atlantic coast,
especially, but not only, in New York, New Jer-
sey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. By the time
you read this, I trust that life will have come
back somewhat to normal for most, but I know
the effects of the storm will linger painfully for
many others.
There is so much for which we are fortunate at
the School, where the labor of many, over many
years, has brought us to this place of strength
among independent secondary schools. It remains
our responsibility today to examine closely all
that we do – everything we offer our students –
and to look forward strategically to ensure the
School’s continued relevance and leadership in
the future.
Many of you have already participated in one
or more ways to contribute to the strategic plan
that we began developing over the summer and
early fall. The final plan will not alter the funda-
mental mission of St. Paul’s; we will remain fully
residential, Episcopal, and focused keenly on the
strongest possible academic program in a com-
munity environment based on healthy relation-
ships between students and adults.
Beginning with a survey of alumni, parents,
faculty, and staff; continuing with our two-day
planning retreat in August; and moving forward
with numerous live and online conversations, the
theme appearing most emphatically is the essential
nature of education as a learner-centered activity
– in the classroom, certainly, but in every other
part of a student’s life here as well. It is very clear
that the School’s continued success will ultimately
depend on its ability to attract, hire, develop, and
retain teachers best suited for this deeply en-
gaging environment.
Our faculty works extraordinarily hard for our
students in a setting where demands on them have
only increased, where performance expectations
have risen dramatically in all areas of their work
– in the classroom, on the playing fields, and in
student houses. To allow them to develop even
further professionally, our strategic plan must
focus on finding ways to create space within our
shared life for more intentional reflection on our
practice, building within this culture the commit-
ment to continuous professional development, all
for the ultimate purpose of serving our students
as well as we possibly can.
In my letter in the spring Alumni Horae, I wrote
about the new daily schedule, designed in large
part to address the need for additional reflection
time for students as well as their teachers. Now
in place, the schedule has begun to reveal how
necessary for a humane and effective community
it is to create such opportunities. What a strategic
plan must now accomplish, rather than extend us
into new program areas, is to find and enrich what
is great in what we already do.
Michael G. Hirschfeld ’85
RECTOR
JEFFREY SCHIFMAN