Head of School Blog - Thinking About School

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Dr. José Bowen Talks About the Three R's

Over the last several years, our Student Advancement Office has worked hard to help us enter into meaningful conversations with colleges and universities throughout the country. We began with our College Admissions Series, which led to great conversations with Deans and Assistant Deans of Admission from places like Wesleyan, Carnegie Mellon, Union, Amherst, Grinnell, Fordham and High Point. Then we introduced over twenty colleges to our Deep Learning Initiative. What we got was an overwhelmingly positive response to the DLI and a new connection with each of the schools who responded. Finally today, we were very lucky to have Dr. Jose Bowen, President of Goucher College, on campus to address our Upper School students, faculty and parents. We invited Dr. Bowen to give us some insights into how smaller, liberal arts colleges like Goucher are thinking about teaching, learning, and the future of work.

I would encourage you all to watch Dr. Bowen’s talk:

What did we hear? Well, because Dr. Bowen is also an accomplished musician and scholar of music, it is safe to say that what he talked about was music to our ears. At Goucher, what matters most are Relationships, Resiliency, and Reflection. They are operating from the premise that the knowledge and information age are over and the age of learning, and the leaner, have begun.

When Dr. Bowen talked about reflection, and the importance of being able to change one’s mind and apply new knowledge in multiple ways, you could see our students and teachers nodding their heads. Yes, we’re doing that.

When he talked about strong relationships being the foundation of learning, and about the importance of mentors and people that believed in you, we were all thinking, “Yes, that’s how we work.”

When he talked about resiliency, and risk-taking, and being able to fail and recover in a learning environment that was more challenging but also less stressful by design, many of us thought, “that’s the Deep Learning Initiative.”

So, while we’ll never be a school that will rest on its laurels, it was gratifying to hear from a college president and master teacher and learner that he thinks that we are on the right track, and we are doing the right work with our students.