Head of School Welcome
Ten years ago, I started this welcome the following way:
Wendell Berry once advised, “Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in.”¹ At Vermont Commons School, we believe that just as life cannot be contained within a frame, so too should learning not be confined to what can be achieved with chalk and a board. Here, we’re about finding and removing those walls that get between learners and learning, the biggest being the belief that one needs to wait until some later time to do, to accomplish, and to contribute.
A lot has changed in the last decade, both at Vermont Commons and in the world. Our campus has more than doubled in size with the addition of the south building and the south woods, a gymnasium, a library, a filmmaking studio, and a music suite. And now we have campuses, with the addition of our 55-acre Outdoor Education Center, its climate sensor suite and soon-to-be-completed trail system, learning village, and wilderness yurts. Our community has grown and broadened–more students from more diverse backgrounds and identities of all kinds, full-time faculty in our World Language and Arts departments. Our programs have expanded, from English, Science, and Social Studies electives to a refined and student interest-driven high school service learning program; from middle school Social and Emotional Learning and Executive Functioning programs to a school-wide health curriculum for every student.
But 11 years ago, just before I arrived, a former board member and parent who’d moved to the same city where I was living at the time asked me out to breakfast, just weeks before I was to move to Vermont Commons. He emphasized that above all else, my task was to keep Vermont Commons Vermont Commons. Of all the changes that have happened in the world, the core of who we are and what we do at Vermont Commons remains. Academic and scholarly excellence in an invigorating college- and life-preparatory curriculum, small student-teacher ratios and the accompanying strength that comes from true educational partnership with our incredible and passionate faculty, a deep certainty that students must experience the world directly and have ample practice navigating it and impacting it positively right now.
A world in great need needs Vermont Commons students: their articulateness, their belief in each individual’s ability to do well and to do good, their intrinsic motivation to seek out their own role for improving the world along with their skills and competencies to do so.
Come by and visit sometime soon. About fifteen minutes in the door, and you’ll not just see it–you’ll feel the palpable difference that Vermont Commons is. A place I wish existed when I was a student. A place that will became a part of you forever.
Dr. Dexter P. Mahaffey
Head of School
Vermont Commons School: Scholarship. Community. Global Responsibility.
¹ “How to be a Poet (to remind myself).” Given. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2005.