In Their Own Words

Lately we have started talking more about school culture. The New School culture is emerging, of course. There’s no stopping it. Put 18 high school students into a room day after day and patterns start to show. So how do you make sure those patterns are the ones you hoped for? We have focused on intention and aspiration. What do we–faculty and students–want this school culture to be like? As much as any project we lead or class we teach, our culture will distinguish us as a school. Naming our values and the behaviors that support those values will create an incredibly important common language. These are the standards we will hold ourselves, and each other, accountable to. 

Values

Before we could really get into a conversation about values, though, we wanted and needed to understand what students thought high school was for. Ultimately, our culture needs to align with the outcomes we all want this school to achieve. On some level, culture is the means to a very important end. We asked students what that end was, for them.  

Here’s what they said:

• Transitional stage in order to learn what you want to do
• A place to get resources and tools to pursue your passion
• A place to grow up
• A place to figure yourself out
• A transition from asking for help (being dependent) to not needing help (being independent)
• Last chance to find out what you want to do in life–the purpose is discovery
• A time to expand and broaden your mind and self
• A time to determine where kids go–might be college; might not be
• A place to learn to deal with people

If you take that list seriously–and we do–high school should be some of the most important years of your life.

There is a lot of talk these days about the purpose of high school. For most of those talking, however, high school is a pretty distant memory. As part of a recent conversation on school culture, we asked New School students what they thought the point of high school was. Here are some answers:

• A transitional stage in order to learn what you want to do
• A place to get resources and tools to pursue your passion
• A place to grow up and figure yourself out
• A transition from asking for help (being dependent) to not needing help (being independent)
• A place to learn to deal with people

If you take that list seriously–and we do—it looks like your years in high school should be some of the most important ones of your life.

We asked our students to explore this question because we’ve been talking more about school culture. As much as any project we lead or class we teach, our culture will distinguish us as a school. Values, and the behaviors that support those values, are the backbone of a school’s culture. Together we are busy naming those for ourselves.

Peter Lefkowicz

Peter Lefkowicz is the founding Head of School at The New School and has served in that role since 2014. Over the last 25 years, he has taught English and History at both the high school and university levels and is passionate about creating rich learning experiences both in and outside of the classroom. Peter has a B.A. from the University of Virginia, an M.A. in English from Hollins College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.