Dear NYA Families:

In five short months, my family and I have seen our corner of Maine shift from the green fullness of summer to the crisp blue days of late fall; it’s been wonderful to experience that change in our surroundings. We are deeply grateful to have arrived in Yarmouth and are looking forward to our first New England winter since we lived in New Hampshire six years ago. In short, we feel privileged to be here, to be part of this community and to have had the chance to meet and talk with so many of you here at NYA.

I feel privileged as well to have gotten to know so many of your children and to have seen them excel in so many varied areas. These opportunities have ranged from witnessing 7th grade students present their scientific findings on the Royal River to sitting in on Upper School class discussion where students have created their own political advertisements and debated strategy for candidates in next year’s presidential primaries. In short, it has been a thrilling fall and an extremely busy one. Be assured that your children aren’t the only ones looking forward to vacation. We caught our son doing math at the dinner table only to learn he was calculating how many hours (or was it minutes?) it would be until vacation started. But soon enough, we’ll be launched again into the challenge of learning. January 2012 will be here very quickly, hopefully with some snow for all the skiers in our midst.

Taking a moment to reflect on this learning and how we are involved in our children’s discoveries is perhaps more important than ever. Yesterday, at a coffee sponsored by Parents’ Association, we discussed Thomas Friedman’s op-ed article from the The New York Times and the role teachers and parents have when bridging the learning that takes place at school with opportunities to reflect on that learning at home. What Friedman reports will probably strike you as common sense – parents need to talk and listen to their children – but I wanted to underline the point he makes about the kind of interaction that apparently matters. We need, Friedman reports, to tell each other stories. We need to relive the events of the day to a sympathetic listener and then we need to prepare to receive a story just as sympathetically on the other side. It’s my hope for you and for your families that these few weeks away from the sometimes unsparing nature of our schedule will allow the chance to trade stories, create them, savor them, share them, whether it’s in front of a fire, in the car, on a snowy trail or around a kitchen table.

Thank you again for all that you have done for my family and me these last months and for helping us to create a new home and a new part of our history. I look forward to seeing you in the New Year. I am certain that 2012 will be a year full of achievement, excitement, challenge and opportunity, the chance to trade and create powerful stories about who we are, who we can be, as individuals and as a community. Please accept my best wishes for a lovely and memorable holiday season.

Yours truly,

Brad Choyt
Head of School