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Head Lines
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Head Lines offers Dr. Michael E. Cooper's perspective on topics relevant to education and the Brewster community.
 It's All About Relationships
March 2011
I recently listened to Pat Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), speak about the challenges facing independent schools in the realm of fund raising. While that’s not the topic of this Head Lines (although perhaps it will be in the near future), the context in which he framed his remarks is important and timely. In his talk he made reference to what NAIS calls the “markers of success” or those things that we can point to that distinguish and show the value of a Brewster education. Naturally such a topic is of tremendous importance to us for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is being able to talk about how we impact lives.
Without delving too far into his remarks, there is one marker of success that he spoke about that relates to the theme of our latest issue of BrewsterConnections and that’s about the impact of relationships that get developed while at school and the value that these provide students attending Brewster. One of the benchmarks that we pay close attention to is the rate of attrition, or the number of students who voluntarily leave the school, either through the year or who do not return for the following academic year. The NAIS average for boarding schools is around 8 percent while our attrition rate has consistently hovered around 4 percent. While we make good matches at the front door during the admission process as to who is likely to succeed here and who is not, much of the low attrition rate can be attributed to the kind of experience that students have once they attend Brewster.
It’s the community that we have and the climate found here among the students, faculty, and staff that make the difference. We see evidence of the power of positive relationships each week when students sit with their advisors to reflect on the past week’s activities, both good and bad, and map out strategies for the coming week. The resulting “weekly blog” to parents that outlines the discussion points between student and advisor further solidifies the sense of community and importance of relationship building. The benefits of interactions such as this extend well beyond the advisor meeting. There is a fair amount of research that supports the development of positive relationships with significant others and the proposition that these interactions are significant antecedents to adolescent’s ability to function effectively in social, affective, and academic domains. Some of the research concludes that high-quality interpersonal relationships in students’ lives add to their academic motivation, engagement, and achievement. Our experience would support this conclusion.
When we take these findings a step further and look at the relationships that also develop student to student, and how often these translate into tremendous opportunities throughout life, we see outcomes like you will be reading in the pages of Connections, lifelong associations that morph into business partnerships. Taken in its entirety, it offers us more reason for why we would make a move into the realm of emotional and social literacy, as we have. It is such an important dimension toward furthering the development of relationships that we believe that we will have a clear opportunity to build off what is already a powerful model and provide our students with an even greater leg up when it comes to how they manage the connections between themselves and others throughout their lives. We hope to be able to tell you more about our social and emotional literacy program over the next few months as we continue to bring elements of the approach into the daily fabric of life at the school.
In the meantime, I hope that you enjoy the pages of our latest edition of BrewsterConnections and look forward to your continued connections with Brewster.
Best regards,
Mike Cooper
Head of School
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