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W
e are still thrilled by the HVAL wrestling championship and also by the wonderful sup-
port of the team by the entire school. I enjoy seeing all our students in their sports, their love of a
sport moving them past losses to a pleasure in the teamwork and their improving skills. As their
scores improve, it is felt to be a win usually and by all of us on campus.
Our burgeoning outdoor program is also taking off, with weekend trips rock-climbing, hiking,
and skiing growing in enrollment. I truly know that if everyone can go on a camping trip in com-
binations not of their choosing that the coalescing of friendships will increase geometrically.
I look forward to returning next year for these events, for the plays, music, films and art shows.
When I speak to good alums who also enjoyed some of these things while at SKS, their tales are
fraught with nostalgia, genuine pleasure recalled. I have been going ‘on the road’ as part of my
assignment since my first months up on the mountain. Each year we reach new alumni, have
more long conversations, are able to explain who we are today, and what the differences are, as
well as the similarities to their times here. Irene and I are about to hit the road again, her job as
well as mine. We enjoy everyone we meet.
Right now, there is the nervous pacing of our seniors awaiting their college news. Each will do
well, and again they will attract phenomenal scholarships and financial aid packages. But most
important, each one is resilient and ready. When a first choice school passes them up, but other
good places come through, I try to tell them that the colleges
that want them should make them pause and respect the
offer. I also let them know that a good first year will set each
one of them up for transfers if they do well, for other choices
if they feel they need them at that point. The trajectories
these students will take are not always linear and predictable:
their resilience will be all. The adventure for each should be fun to hear about in this magazine.
Several pods of recent alums returned these past few weeks, and each one had much to tell us of
their time in the world. They stand tall, and display the confidence we saw starting with us.
For those of you remote from the school right now, I must tell you that these students who
come to us for so many reasons, to prepare for the next step, for the arts, more opportunities for
sports, a safe and gentle atmosphere, the opportunity to work very closely with teachers in certain
areas, for English—all these students are truly good, funny, challenging, changing, idiosyncratic
in wonderful ways. As were my students in the previous few decades whom I see frequently, email
and now Facebook with (if that is a verb). The world, however,
is
different, perhaps more complex
or complex in different ways. Today, there is a greater need for students to become, self-conscious-
ly, citizens of a larger world and more knowledgeable about that world. We hold Friday luncheons
with our seniors to raise questions that the media toss at us, and that writers and thinkers in dif-
ferent countries raise for us all. You must have opinions we tell our young men and women. And
they must feel ready to change these as they learn more.
No two days in a school are ever the same, no two hours. This has been daily the greatest of
pleasures, this part of my own trajectory, up here on the mountain. There is more fun ahead of us
all. And I want to conclude by mentioning the temporary “motto” we exercised one year, that at
our school it is:
esse quam videri:
to
be
rather than to appear or seem to be. A kind of honesty —
and something to be proud of each day. Our faculty and good administrators model this and it is
passed on truly.
— Helen “Steevie” Chinitz
SKS
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Steevie’s Notes
“Esse Quam Videri”
(to be, rather than seem to be)