Defining "Success" at Hackley
Connections: Winter 2006 -- One of the slogans sported on Hackley paraphernalia is: “Hackley
Football – A Winning Tradition.” Hackley did have a winning season in
Varsity Football this fall, ending 6 and 3, but the star team in terms
of “winning” unquestionably was Girls Varsity Soccer, which posted its
second undefeated season in a row with an 18 and 0 scorecard. There
aren’t many teams anywhere that can boast a two-year record of 36 and
0, with two State Championships. Congratulations to Coaches Rob Pickert
for his season in Football and Mike Reist for his in Soccer. It’s
worthy of note that veteran Hackley coach and holder of the McLean
Chair in Mathematics Doug Clark came out of athletic retirement at his
students’ request to assist in coaching the Girls Soccer team to
victory. That’s a different kind of “winning” for Hackley, one of
relationships made deeper through shared experiences and teaching made
stronger by that human connection.
Connections: Winter 2006 -- One of the slogans sported on Hackley paraphernalia is: “Hackley Football – A Winning Tradition.” Hackley did have a winning season in Varsity Football this fall, ending 6 and 3, but the star team in terms of “winning” unquestionably was Girls Varsity Soccer, which posted its second undefeated season in a row with an 18 and 0 scorecard. There aren’t many teams anywhere that can boast a two-year record of 36 and 0, with two State Championships. Congratulations to Coaches Rob Pickert for his season in Football and Mike Reist for his in Soccer. It’s worthy of note that veteran Hackley coach and holder of the McLean Chair in Mathematics Doug Clark came out of athletic retirement at his students’ request to assist in coaching the Girls Soccer team to victory. That’s a different kind of “winning” for Hackley, one of relationships made deeper through shared experiences and teaching made stronger by that human connection.
Clearly Hackley values winning games – it’s more fun to win than to lose, and winning is evidence of the commitment, discipline, and skill one has brought to an endeavor. But we all know that there’s a high school soccer team out there that could have beaten ours. If we had lost such a game, would that have made the season less successful, or would such a game if it challenged our players to their best performance have been a different kind of success? Quoted in The Journal News, Coach Reist defined their success in different terms: "More important than the scores of the games is how hard they worked in preseason, throughout the season, every day in practice. It's a dedicated team. It makes every result more worthwhile." And senior Caitlin Garson also seemed to define it differently, saying, "This is probably the closest team I've ever been on. When you love something it's a lot easier to do well at it." I was talking to Deena DelMoro, wife of Hackley’s Football announcer (whose day job is Lower School Director) Ron DelMoro, at one of the season’s last football games. Her son, senior Dan DelMoro, was playing football for Hackley, and she confessed that as a mother she hadn’t been enthusiastic about his playing football, that she was always worried about injuries. When she saw the joy he shared with teammates on the field, though, she realized that football had offered him an experience unlike any other, and she was grateful he’d had the opportunity to play.
Our culture is increasingly focused on winning or success in too narrow a sense, it seems to me. As parents, we want the best for our children, and sometimes our pursuit of that best involves heavily scheduling our children’s after-school lives with additional teams, lessons, and activities. At Hackley, we’re more frequently finding those outside commitments can conflict with a student’s school life, which at our school is already unusually demanding. For some parents, the fact that these outside commitments may be conducted at a high level justifies their taking priority over Hackley’s curriculum. How could Hackley stand in the way of their child’s fulfillment and success in such challenging outside arenas? Shouldn’t Hackley do everything possible to adjust its program around these outside activities?
As often the case with competing values, one is not “right” and the other “wrong.” The choices we make as individuals, as families, and as a community define our values more decisively than our words about them, because our actions not only enact those values, they create who we are and influence the decisions we will make in the future. As educators faced with such a question, then, we need to consider the fundamentals of Hackley’s educational philosophy, while also honoring our partnership with parents by making reasonable accommodations and exceptions.
We believe that the whole should not be sacrificed to one of the parts. Individuals who do something at an exceptionally high level earn respect at Hackley, but such accomplishment is not our sole or preeminent definition of success. At Hackley, academic brilliance, athletic prowess, musical genius, and artistic accomplishment are admired, but the student who has truly learned what it means to be and find a friend, who has shared commitment through pain as well as joy, will have his or her peers’ deepest respect. We define ourselves as individuals through these relationships with others, and the meaning of our individual accomplishments is conditioned by the responsibility and gift of those relationships. As Hackley considers our collective professional judgment about what we think best for any individual’s education, we hold the premise that these relationships are crucial to a student’s development as a human being. Being part of a community means that sometimes one compromises one’s individual desires or goals for the sake of the whole. Doing so serves not only the communal whole, but the individual’s whole, his or her heart as well as mind. That may mean that Hackley will not be able to agree to an accommodation requested by a parent, because we believe in the educational priority of the child's involvement within the life of the school and a responsibility not only to one’s self but to others. Fortunately Hackley is an elective community, and there are other independent schools with different philosophies to accommodate differing parental values.
How do we define success at Hackley? In the most recent issue of Hackley Review, I considered this question at some length, and wrote, “The success of our school…can best be measured through the lives of its alumni. Has Hackley helped you develop your talents and make meaningful contributions? Has Hackley helped you discover friendships across differences of values and experience? For … [some ancient Greek philosophers], human nature is essentially social, and so the ultimate arête [the excellence distinctive to human nature] lies in how the individual contributes to the polis, the society.” Put more simply, what we want for our children is a future in which they find fulfillment both in work and in love, both in the accomplishments of their minds and talents, and in their sustained relationships with family, friends, and communities. If we want that to be possible for them, we need to do our best to model such a balanced whole in the decisions we enact on their behalf.
Back
Clearly Hackley values winning games – it’s more fun to win than to lose, and winning is evidence of the commitment, discipline, and skill one has brought to an endeavor. But we all know that there’s a high school soccer team out there that could have beaten ours. If we had lost such a game, would that have made the season less successful, or would such a game if it challenged our players to their best performance have been a different kind of success? Quoted in The Journal News, Coach Reist defined their success in different terms: "More important than the scores of the games is how hard they worked in preseason, throughout the season, every day in practice. It's a dedicated team. It makes every result more worthwhile." And senior Caitlin Garson also seemed to define it differently, saying, "This is probably the closest team I've ever been on. When you love something it's a lot easier to do well at it." I was talking to Deena DelMoro, wife of Hackley’s Football announcer (whose day job is Lower School Director) Ron DelMoro, at one of the season’s last football games. Her son, senior Dan DelMoro, was playing football for Hackley, and she confessed that as a mother she hadn’t been enthusiastic about his playing football, that she was always worried about injuries. When she saw the joy he shared with teammates on the field, though, she realized that football had offered him an experience unlike any other, and she was grateful he’d had the opportunity to play.
Our culture is increasingly focused on winning or success in too narrow a sense, it seems to me. As parents, we want the best for our children, and sometimes our pursuit of that best involves heavily scheduling our children’s after-school lives with additional teams, lessons, and activities. At Hackley, we’re more frequently finding those outside commitments can conflict with a student’s school life, which at our school is already unusually demanding. For some parents, the fact that these outside commitments may be conducted at a high level justifies their taking priority over Hackley’s curriculum. How could Hackley stand in the way of their child’s fulfillment and success in such challenging outside arenas? Shouldn’t Hackley do everything possible to adjust its program around these outside activities?
As often the case with competing values, one is not “right” and the other “wrong.” The choices we make as individuals, as families, and as a community define our values more decisively than our words about them, because our actions not only enact those values, they create who we are and influence the decisions we will make in the future. As educators faced with such a question, then, we need to consider the fundamentals of Hackley’s educational philosophy, while also honoring our partnership with parents by making reasonable accommodations and exceptions.
We believe that the whole should not be sacrificed to one of the parts. Individuals who do something at an exceptionally high level earn respect at Hackley, but such accomplishment is not our sole or preeminent definition of success. At Hackley, academic brilliance, athletic prowess, musical genius, and artistic accomplishment are admired, but the student who has truly learned what it means to be and find a friend, who has shared commitment through pain as well as joy, will have his or her peers’ deepest respect. We define ourselves as individuals through these relationships with others, and the meaning of our individual accomplishments is conditioned by the responsibility and gift of those relationships. As Hackley considers our collective professional judgment about what we think best for any individual’s education, we hold the premise that these relationships are crucial to a student’s development as a human being. Being part of a community means that sometimes one compromises one’s individual desires or goals for the sake of the whole. Doing so serves not only the communal whole, but the individual’s whole, his or her heart as well as mind. That may mean that Hackley will not be able to agree to an accommodation requested by a parent, because we believe in the educational priority of the child's involvement within the life of the school and a responsibility not only to one’s self but to others. Fortunately Hackley is an elective community, and there are other independent schools with different philosophies to accommodate differing parental values.
How do we define success at Hackley? In the most recent issue of Hackley Review, I considered this question at some length, and wrote, “The success of our school…can best be measured through the lives of its alumni. Has Hackley helped you develop your talents and make meaningful contributions? Has Hackley helped you discover friendships across differences of values and experience? For … [some ancient Greek philosophers], human nature is essentially social, and so the ultimate arête [the excellence distinctive to human nature] lies in how the individual contributes to the polis, the society.” Put more simply, what we want for our children is a future in which they find fulfillment both in work and in love, both in the accomplishments of their minds and talents, and in their sustained relationships with family, friends, and communities. If we want that to be possible for them, we need to do our best to model such a balanced whole in the decisions we enact on their behalf.
Hackley School
© Hackley School | Privacy Policy & Terms of Use & Nondiscrimination Hackley School is a registered 501(3)c
