Reflections on a Year of Awareness

Craig Gemmell

May 16 2019

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." Thoreau

Planning for the upcoming year last August, I fixed on a theme for the school year: Awareness. I hoped the idea would shape how we see ourselves as individuals in this community, how we come to see others in their diversity amidst our commonalities, and how we see our agency in the world. At several points in the past nine months, I've had reason to reflect on what I'm looking at, what I'm seeing, and why. Through the course of these pauses in the midst of the stream or, at times, the raging river of this school year, when I'm able to sit in an eddy and do more than look but actually see, I've landed on a few important insights.

First, our students are remarkable. Truly remarkable. In so many ways, they are as a group far more nuanced and connected with themselves and their feelings and dreams and with each other than I could have ever imagined being at their age. In some ways they seem more wise than I was.

Second, their context is complicated. Technology, terror, global climate change, political unrest, the media onslaught—the lot! SO much is coming at them constantly that our students have had to learn to absorb and adapt. And I suspect that such adaptation has caused them to grow up too quickly. (Perhaps that’s why they seem so wise to me.)

Third, their inner lives are at times quite fraught. As good and as wonderful as they are, I see the consequences of their growing up so quickly, surrounded by all the complexities of the 21st century. The collective stress they experience is significant. And try as we might, Brewster cannot shield them from all of the turbulence of this particular historical moment. However, through our SEL program and our collaborative learning practices, we have trained them to be aware of themselves and others. Throughout their time at Brewster, they have practiced working with and learning from others—both acts that demand openness, awareness, and faith in others' good intentions, and in this way we have equipped them to traverse with skill through the waters of our era.

Fourth, our lives as parents are equally complex. We LOVE our kids and are far more involved in our children’s lives than in any past generation. We work longer hours, have evolved from analog to digital citizens, and live lives of so much worry.

In the course of my movement and episodic pauses, I've thought about the interplay among these four matters; I've really squinted hard to see well and clearly. What emerges from my efforts to be aware is a singular truth: The world as we know it—as we see it when we look with intention and intensity——has never justified the existence of Brewster more strongly than now (and the other rare places like it). Brewster has never been more important than today, because our work is in making promising, diverse thinkers into capable, purposeful, compassionate adults. Our world needs Brewster’s graduates, individuals who have learned to live and work in productive collaboration, who understand what it means to stretch and support each other.

What I understand more deeply after this year is that living with awareness has the power to make our community, yes, even our world, better, for being aware is an act of caring—for the self and the other. Being aware enables us to see when we need to speak up to protect our values and our neighbors; it also helps us know when silence will offer the most comfort. I am proud of our focus on awareness this year. I am also confident that attention to this critical element will not dwindle as we take on a new theme next. Building awareness is baked into our everyday lives here at Brewster. And it always will be.

As we head to Commencement, let’s celebrate the 120 young women and men who are prepared to thrive with awareness and empathy as they head off on their next journey!