I’m often asked where I find the inspiration to write a letter every Friday. Each week is a little different: sometimes I see something that triggers an idea, sometimes it’s a conversation with one of you, sometimes it’s an article I read or a podcast I listen to, and other times—like last week with the Substantial Equivalency Law—it’s a necessity dictated by current events at the school. This week, for a change, it’s a photo that got me thinking. And a photo of me to boot! It was taken during Field Day (which miraculously took place in the middle of an otherwise miserable week weatherwise) in which I am awkwardly attempting the archery activity under the expert guidance and watchful/worried eye of Coach Soden (and laying the groundwork for the spectacularly sunburnt nose I’d have by the end of the day.)
In this photo, then, with my left eye cartoonishly closed, I’m aiming and focusing on the target. In the world of education, we shy away from talking about KPIs and numerical goals, but that doesn’t stop us from aiming high for our families and students. It’s now been five years since I started working to make The École the school we all want—and the school that Philippe and Laurence dreamed of: an ambitious school for the exceptional children who walk through our doors every day. I may be the only one in the photo, but I never forget that what we do is a team effort that benefits from everyone’s strength and talent. It all started, as you know, with an effort to bring more families into our community while remaining a close-knit, human-sized school. This was accompanied by the long-term work of bolstering our academic offering: recruiting outstanding teachers, restructuring our American department, and transforming our Middle School to align it with the best schools in New York. We had to tirelessly insist, persuade, appeal, and communicate to raise The École’s profile—and in that area, I know we owe our families a lot.
Being better known has many advantages. It allowed us to create our partnership with Léman and to guarantee our students access to one of the best high schools in the city, along with the opportunity of graduating with a bilingual IB diploma. It also empowered our students, in turn, to aim high and apply to some of the top high schools in New York. It’s no coincidence that this year we will be sending students to Trinity, Stuyvesant, Grace Church, Clinton, as well as the Lycée français, and of course, Léman. This is a huge source of pride for us all and a clear marker of our success. Other achievements continue to add to that momentum: we’ve once again had stratospheric results in the Kangourou des mathématiques competition (that will we share during this week’s assembly) and in the AEFE’s Course aux nombres; our 4th graders won a national poetry competition, and—this counts too—our Falcons are top of the Consat League and are ratcheting up the wins week in week out, a sign that our Middle School is now just as competitive on the sports field as it is in academics (it wasn’t always the case)!
We know that to a certain extent, we’ve become a different school, and it is only natural that we felt the need to move into a new building. I visited our new space yesterday, and once it’s completed—which will be very soon—it will be a wonderful setting for our students and our teachers. It’ll mark the beginning of a new chapter, but I’ll continue—we’ll continue—to aim high for The École.