Daring Greatly

When I was thinking about whether or not to take the job as Head of School and Foundation at Lakefield College School, I reread a quotation that inspired me, from the epigraph of Daring Greatly, which is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

At the time, I wondered if I could start a new job, in a new home, hours from my family.  I wanted to take the opportunity to put everything I had learned from my time at CAIS, when I saw 150+ of the best schools in the world, and to lead a school that our family loved through the experiences of our teenagers, but I felt that it was a huge risk, for many reasons that you can imagine.  Eventually, I realized I was compelled by this opportunity to dare greatly.

Good news so far – I am not sure how long it took, because it felt like love at first sight, but in the past year at Lakefield, I have fallen in love with all things Grove.  Our family feels so good about this decision that it hardly feels like a dare at all.

But now that I have just more than a year under my belt, and now that I have worked with our Leadership Team, board, staff and students, and now that we – as a full community! – have developed our Strategic Directions (stay tuned!), I feel that now is the time that this quotation really comes to life.

In the next few years, we need to make some big choices – for example, what will be our signature programs?  Can we grow our school size while retaining our culture and small-school advantage?  What will be the main elements of our new House Model?  Can we be a school with a rigorous academic program AND a caring community with an experiential, outdoor program?  How can we ensure our school is affordable to great families?

There are so many options for us, and we talk a lot about the fact that not one of them is a bad choice.  As a Leadership Team, we agreed that we will need to have courage to make good decisions and that whatever we choose will require us also to champion the choice for a good 3-5 years.  (We will, however, also do ongoing research and reflection, with the courage to switch gears if something is not effective.)

In other words, when I think about what is needed to strengthen the school, I believe that our Leadership Team will have to dare greatly.  The future of Lakefield, as with the future of all schools both public and independent, will require us to do things differently.  The trick for us at the Grove is to embrace what is new all the while retaining – and possibly strengthening – the best of what we are and have been.

At last night’s alumni reception in Calgary – my first Canadian alumni event and the first of many chances to connect with our global community this year – I loved hearing about everyone’s favourite aspects of Lakefield.  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know a new part of our community – the experiences and stories of our alumni.  It reminded me of Jacob and Kathleen’s stories, and there were so many similarities with what I am hearing from our current students as I tour the houses in the evenings again this year.

But I had two additional questions.  It was important to me to also ask, what might need to change as well as what must never change.

Finding the right combination will be tricky.  In fact, finding the best way to manage our strategic choices will require our entire community of staff, students, parents and alum to fully embrace this concept of daring greatly.

I sincerely hope you will join me in the arena, so together was can make LCS the very best it can be for past, current and future students.

p.s.  On my flight home from Calgary, I started reading Brene Brown’s new book Dare to Lead.  Yesterday, and I kid you not, it was recommended to me by Mike Arsenault in the morning and given to me by Carol Grant-Watt (the new Head of Strathcona-Tweedsmuir) in the evening.  I was clearly meant to read this book!  And then there it is again in the introduction – Brown includes the Roosevelt quotation in this book too.

Lakefield College School Alumni Reception, Calgary 2018

 

Our ‘Lake’ is more Lakefield than ever

We are not sure how many people joined us for Fall Fair 2018.  We outgrew the dining hall and had to move the alumni dinner outside, and even at that we had a waitlist.  Our food service provider told me he made 1300 chicken breasts and had 50 left – only at Lakefield would we use chicken as our metric.  Everyone said it was going to be the largest ever Fall Fair, and it was.  But not just because of the number of people.

On Saturday, we gathered to officially open our waterfront.  We wanted to do something special to celebrate and so we decided – why not throw a party?  We had the usual bake sales and raffles, with alumni from every decade, starting with the 40’s.  We also had children everywhere with bouncy castles, an art fair, and flags.  Our cake was a canoe with cupcake waves – it’s so amazing that I am including a photo below – and one unexpected outcome is that kids cried as they had to wait until after the official ceremony to dig in.  It was a party all right.

And then we gathered at the waterfront and the magic continued.  One of our students, Claire Campbell, worked with one of our teachers, Hugh Dobson, along with a whole crew of others, to organize a Paddle Extravaganza.  Over 80 paddlers canoed 10km of the Trent Severn Waterway – through four lift-locks – in support of the Canadian Canoe Museum.  Before arriving at our dock, they rigged up 41 flags, representing the 40 countries we have at the school, plus one from Curve Lake.  When they got within sight, hundreds of people gathered on our dock.  It was powerful and more than one person had tears in their eyes.  For me, I was full of anxiety about the wind and keeping to our program, but I just had to stop and enjoy the moment.  I relive that feeling every time I hear a story about their paddling experience – when the Turkish brothers made sure that they paddled with their flag; when the group yelled to slow down the American paddlers as they didn’t like the optics of them in the lead; when a staff member described the pride of paddling the canoe that belongs to her grandparents; and when the string quartet and the trumpeters surprised the paddlers by serenading them at the locks.  It was powerful.

And there was more.

Our waterfront is on the shores of Lake Kathchewanooka, and Katchewanooka is an Ojibway word, which directly connects us with our indigenous peoples, who also paddled our lake.  We enjoyed the music of Unity, an a cappella women’s group who perform their own work as well as traditional Indigenous music and began our ceremony with an Anishinaabe elder who acknowledged the land with a blessing and prayer.

Our students performed – we are one of the first schools in Canada to produce Mamma Mia! and we got a sneak peek preview of that show, with our dock as our stage. And we wrapped up the ceremony with a good Canadian song – everyone joined in the singing with our Rock Choir of ‘Ahead by a Century’.

It was a deeply meaningful and symbolic day.

Our new waterfront captures the best of the past – with our iconic boathouse looking spiffier than ever – with the best of the future – with our new dock reaching out into Lake Katchawanooka.  Katchewanooka means lake of many rapids, and typically, rapids are sections of a river where the water moves quickly.  It is the constant flow that ensures nourishment to the environment.  We are inspired by the idea that our lake is a symbol of change.  We began our official opening with our oldest alum – our past – paddling alongside our youngest student – our future.

This year, as we launch our strategic plan, we are working on our current – to maintain a balance of honouring our past and our traditions, but always moving forward with strengthening our strengths, and a genuine openness to always being better.

We know that we want our students to care, connect, and contribute.  We want our students to be known as leaders who demonstrate a responsibility to the environment.  We want our students to be known for their passion, particularly for their community.  When a school like Lakefield, that has been thriving for 139 years, considers its future, the question is not just what needs to change. The question is also what must we preserve.

We have a saying around here – That’s so Lakefield – and there were many moments on Saturday when that was the case. I am grateful that our new waterfront provided us with the chance to celebrate and be reminded of the power of our environment and the strength of our community.