News

Mentors

I’m writing from a conference of heads of school from leading independent schools around the country. Among the roughly 100 attendees are a half-dozen heads – some active, some retired – whom I am lucky to call mentors. Two are former supervisors, and the rest are people I’ve met along the way. They all, at some point, took an interest in my growth and are now always a phone call away when I need advice – and am smart enough to reach out. I feel enormously lucky to have them in my corner. Last week, I had a call with a former student I taught years ago. She graduated from college recently, is in her second year in a new job in New York City, and wanted to talk about what’s next for her education and career. I hope that I was helpful in some small way. And I was glad that she sees me as somebody she can lean on.

Mentorship is powerful. Beyond providing support and advice, mentors can open doors and, like in my case, shape careers. I know from talking with our alums that students at BUA pick up mentors during their years with us – folks they stay in touch with well beyond commencement. Most are BUA teachers and staff members. Some are BU professors who worked with our students in classes, in labs, or through senior thesis. Increasingly, our students are finding mentors among our parent and alumni community through our career mentoring program. Our hope is that a four-year experience opens the door to a lifetime of mentoring.

Connecting Disciplines

I visited several classes this week. Even on these cold, gray January days in the aftermath of a snowstorm, the energy and engagement were high. One special moment stood out. A geometry teacher asked a group of his students who happened to be taking ancient Greek to work through and present on Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean theorem – handing them an English translation alongside the original text. The “Greeklings” lit up – excited to find Greek words they recognized and piece things together. I later talked to a U.S. history teacher, who told me that her class had analyzed Walt Whitman’s poem Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night during their study of the Civil War. She recounted how her students made immediate connections to other Whitman poems from Leaves of Grass they had read in English and were excited to talk about what they had learned. Foundations in disciplines are critical, and there are good reasons why we teach in the buckets that we do. It is, though, really rewarding when students see that boundaries between disciplines are porous and that the deepest insights often come from a combination of disciplinary approaches. Our curriculum is intentionally designed by this talented faculty to invite students to discover the types of connections they made this week. I’m grateful to our teachers and so happy to be at a school where those connections make kids light up.

The Arts in Bloom

In the depth of winter, we are experiencing a blossoming of the arts. The hallway walls are a riot of color – filled with student drawings, paintings, photographs, and digital graphic design work from the first semester. The technical excellence of the pieces is as impressive as the broad range of styles and perspectives, and I love that the building serves as a rotating gallery. We hope that many of you will join us at the visual art show and reception next Friday afternoon. Today is also opening night of the fall play, Radium Girls – a poignant historical piece about female watch-dial painters poisoned by radium-based paints in the 1920s. I’ve always admired our actors’ willingness and desire to take on thematically important scripts and look forward to seeing them on stage this weekend. Next Friday is our Winter Concert in BU’s beautiful Tsai Performance Center. It is a fitting backdrop for the students in our orchestra and chorus, along with a few intrepid faculty members, who will showcase a semester’s work on a number of challenging pieces. It is also a wonderful occasion for the broader BUA community to support the arts and enjoy an evening together. Great thanks to our world-class arts faculty for their mentorship and love of these exceptional young artists. See you in the audience!

Ready for College

One of the things that is especially fun about the first weeks back from winter break is that our college-aged alums come back to visit, since their semesters have often yet to start. They pop in on their teachers and friends – catching up on their college fall semesters and on what’s been happening at BUA.

We hosted a lunch for that cohort last week, which several dozen BUA graduates attended. I had a chance to ask them about how things are going. What I heard was heartening. We know from recent survey results of young alums that they feel ready for college. 95% of recent graduates agreed that having attended BUA, they were better prepared for college than they would have otherwise been. 100% reported that BUA prepared them well as writers. 91% agreed that their experience at BUA helped them navigate college life with confidence and independence. The stories I heard added some helpful context. Certainly, they told me about their confidence in navigating their courses. But I also heard about advanced classes students were able to take because of their BU coursework and how that opened the door to a second major. Alums told me how they took advantage of office hours to build relationships with professors and how some of those conversations turned into research assistant positions. Others told me about how they have started new clubs, noting a need in the community and having the confidence to navigate the college bureaucracy. The picture that emerged was a group of students with the confidence and savvy to not only succeed in college but to get more out of experience. I’m really proud of them, and it makes me happy that they are thriving.

View more from our Young Alumni Lunch with the classes of 2021-2025 from Thursday, January 8th, 2026 here.

Knowing Every Student

As we do every year, the faculty started the semester a day before the students. All teachers and advisors sit together for a full day. The topic? Our students. Over the course of the day, we talk through each student – reviewing academic performance, engagement outside the classroom, and social connections. It’s a chance to share observations, talk about support students might need in the coming semester, and celebrate growth and successes. I’m consistently impressed by how well these teachers know the kids and by the number of voices speaking up about each student. Certainly we hear stories and reflections from each student’s advisor and classroom teachers. We also, though, hear from adults in the community with less direct daily contact but who have managed to form a connection.

Too often in schools, it is only the students who are struggling in some way who get attention from the adults. I’m proud to be part of a place where we take the time to talk about every kid. Every young person deserves to be known and loved – the one central promise we make to our families when they join BUA. We work hard to live up to that each day.