Letter from Head of School

Robert R. Peterson
Head of School

November 18, 2008

Dear Oakwood Parents and Friends,

Last night I had the pleasure of addressing the Rotary Club members at their monthly meeting. My speech shared my thoughts and feelings about my first four and a half months living in Greenville and working at The Oakwood School, and I would like to share these thoughts with all of you. This will be my last letter before we break for Thanksgiving. I wish all of you a wonderful holiday with your families and a lovely respite from school routines. My office door is always open; please drop by any time if you have a question or concern.

I am honored to be here with you this evening, and I thank you, Ron, for asking me to speak to the Rotary members tonight. I thank all of you for your very warm welcome. Before I talk about The Oakwood School, I want to say how very happy my wife, Gini, and I are to be living here in Greenville. A year and three months ago I was starting a job search to find a new school to lead. Oakwood’s Head opening was not yet posted, but I had heard about the opening from my colleague and friend Chuck Hamblet, Head of Westchester Country Day School in High Point. In mid-August after dropping my son off for his sophomore year at Methodist University in Fayetteville, I stopped by to see the school and meet with the Chair of the Search Committee. Everyone who greeted me that day as I walked the halls was warm and kind and sincere. I know that the warmth and openness influenced my positive feelings about Oakwood and my desire to work at the school and live in Greenville. As the saying goes, “First impressions are lasting impressions.” In this instance not only did the first impression last, but the impression is the reality. Gini and I have been met with kindness and open hearts everywhere we have gone in Greenville since moving here in July. This city is remarkable: ECU, the medical center, and other businesses keep the job market open and the economy vital, new people coming to Greenville to take some of the new jobs give the town a flavor and energy that only newness can bring, and the Southern roots of gentility and warmth and pride give the city its strength. New people would not want to come here if they weren’t welcomed and treated well, and we are. Old and new mingle happily here, and as a result, people don’t feel new here very long making Greenville a great source of pride for all its citizens. Greenville is a very special place, and I am so very thankful that my job search ended as it did.

So, I am proud to live in Greenville, and I am also very proud to be the Head of The Oakwood School. The Oakwood School is a non-sectarian, independent school that has a remarkable history. In the spring of 1995 42 Greenville families came together to dream of a new independent school for the area. Today, 13 years later, the Founders’ vision has matured into a vibrant college preparatory school of 333 students and 58 faculty/staff members situated on 41 acres of land and housed in four lovely and functional classroom buildings. This year the school has accomplished the dream of its founders: we added a PK class this fall and with great fanfare, we will graduate our first class of seniors on May 30. The mission of the school was developed 13 years ago and remains the guiding compass of the school today: We seek to instill in our students the strength of character, the creativity, and the wisdom to make a difference in the world. We want our Oakwood students to use their skills and talents to make the world a better place, and our teachers are the caretakers of this vision. They develop a social awareness in our students by honoring diversity in culture, ethnicity, and individual strengths and interests and by encouraging students to look outside themselves and imagine possibilities and think of others.

There is a lot of discussion among educators about the absolute necessity for schools to change to meet the needs of the 21st century student. Since Oakwood is an independent school it is not tied to state regulations, thus our teachers are free to develop their own curricula based on their knowledge of today’s children and targeted for the children they are teaching in any given year and using time frames that are right for those students. Our teachers are freer to put into use methods that the most current educational research espouses and that they know will interest the students they are teaching in any given year. Their curricula have guidelines, of course, but the content and skills are taught more organically and with less urgency. Learning, therefore, is full of joy and wonder.

I will briefly explain what the latest educational research tells us; I am certain that you will find it fascinating as well as illuminating. In the December, 2006, Time Magazine article “How to Bring our Schools out of the 20th Century,” the authors, Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe, discuss the findings of the New Commission on the American Work Force, a bipartisan group of education secretaries, and business, government, and other education leaders. Their research shows that American children need to have a new kind of education to survive in a global society and economy.

Our students need to be highly competent in traditional academic disciplines (reading, math, science, history, and technical studies) as well as highly competent in new skills that might be called 21st century skills. The study names four new skills in which our students must also be competent if they are going to survive in the new economy. First, our students must know more about the world. It is imperative that our students are sensitive to and knowledgeable about other cultures and conversant in other languages. Second, the new economy calls for workers who are creative and innovative. The article states that in the past American children were once strong in this area but they are becoming less creative because of the emphasis on standards and testing that have been instituted to assure that “no child is left behind.”  Students must be given opportunities to think across disciplines because this is how new ideas are formulated that create new technologies. Third, students must be able to study information and determine what is reliable and what is not. Information abounds in the 21st century and students must be certain that the information with which they work is accurate before they use their creativity and wisdom to act on it. Finally, students of the 21st century must have good people and good communication skills because most innovations today involve large teams of people.

Oakwood School’s teachers create inquiry-based and collaborative lessons for their students and stress the development of communication skills and teamwork. Students working in groups to research, analyze, and evaluate topics and to develop solutions to problems or create new technologies is what you see at Oakwood when you look in our classrooms. Students are challenged to take their learning and to use it, to thoughtfully process and then create or problem solve. The founding families who started The Oakwood School were aware of the need for schools to do more than fill the vessel and this is why the mission is about developing our students’ character, wisdom, and creativity, and the need for our students to make the world a better place. Oakwood’s mission promotes the kind of education needed for students living in the 21st century.

I have told you that we are teaching students for the new world they live in, but you may be wondering exactly what you would see and hear and feel in the classrooms at Oakwood if you visited our school. I will describe for you some snapshots of what I have witnessed when I have visited classes this year.

• A maximum of 18 students in a classroom with the teacher and children actively engaged in the learning process and in grades PK through 2nd you would see two teachers with the students.
• You would observe that every student in grades 4-12 has an Apple laptop computer of her/his own and uses this tool in all classes.
• You would listen to marvelously interesting literature discussions on classics such as Romeo and Juliet, The Iliad, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Little Prince, and Greek myths as well as current award-winning literature such as Ties that Bind, Ties that Break and The Giver.
• In the Pre-Kindergarten you would watch boys and girls experimenting as they play with blocks to make bridges and buildings and their teachers asking a probing question such as, “Why do you think your building is so stable, Mia?”
• You would enter our science lab and see 8th graders matching chromosomes (on paper) to produce offspring with specific characteristics by predicting recessive and dominant genes.
• You would sing Spanish songs with first graders and their Spanish teacher who went to Uruguay this summer as a Fulbright Fellow.
• You would listen to third graders reading their inventive stories about visiting planets while showing beautiful model replicas of the planets they visited.
• You would learn about newspapers and bias, a topic that was researched by and discussed in the Government and Economics AP class.
• You would hear 7th graders discussing African cultures and relating their understandings to their reading in the book, Things Fall Apart.
• You would walk past a group of parents cheerfully planning for Grandparents’ Day and another group planning our Fall Festival—wonderful events that develop the strong sense of community that children so desperately need in the 21st century.
• You would see three students and their teacher viewing Citizen Kane in a film class.
• You would see wide grins on faces at recess as children try their hands at beach volleyball or ping pong, dig in the sandbox, play four-square, talk at a picnic table, walk on tires, or swing up high on a swing.
• You would learn from lower school children about composers they researched in the library.
• You would hear first graders welcoming visitors from a local assisted living community to their classroom.
• You would watch sports teams board buses to go to away volleyball, soccer, or basketball games at one of the schools in our Coastal Plains Independent School Conference.
• You would see two fathers helping 2nd grade students edit fabulously creative stories the children had finished writing. 
• You would see fifth graders showing PowerPoint presentations on both of the Presidential candidates.
• You would hear a strings ensemble playing in the music room.
• You would see kindergarten children estimating and charting M & M’s by color. 
• You would see eleventh graders using graphing calculators to figure solutions to real-life problems.
• You would see a lovely bulletin board display of kindergarten landscape paintings created in the style of Paul Klee.
• You would hear students and families discussing an exchange program we are establishing with a school from Chengudu, China and another group discussing its winter trip to Washington, D.C.
• You would watch students enjoy a wide offering of clubs including book club, math club, politico club, film club, environment club, geography club, Good Deeds Club, and a young actors’ workshop.
• Finally, you would see children leaving school with smiling parents at 6:00 having completed their homework in our extended day program.

Everyday is exciting at Oakwood, and I am confident that our Oakwood teachers offer an education that promotes both traditional learning and learning for the 21st century. People say I am a visible Head, and this is true. I love walking in and out of the classrooms, and I find plenty of reasons to do this every day. It makes me happy to see children so engaged in their learning and learning so joyfully. Oakwood has the energy of a young school with teachers who are willing to try new ideas and work together in a true spirit of collaboration, and yet it is rooted and has established traditions that unite children and families and strengthen the sense of community. I would love to show Oakwood to any of you. It is a remarkable school and a gift to Greenville and Pitt County because it gives families one more school option in the area. Many people who are being interviewed to work in Greenville and come to Oakwood to investigate it, tell us that finding the right school for their children is their number two consideration in deciding whether to take a job after deciding that the job is the right fit for them. One of our goals is to increase our financial aid budget to make the school more affordable to interested families. 62% of our students have a parent who works in either the medical field in the county or at ECU. We hope that by making Oakwood visible and by reaching out in the community we can serve more families and that we may become a factor in many people’s choice to move here.

The dream of the founders that started to take shape 13 years ago was a dream for a quality education for their own children as well as a dream to make Greenville a thriving community that could attract new families to the city. The dream of a few is now a reality for families of 333 children. The Oakwood School that started in trailers in the Ironwood development now has a permanent and beautiful home on MacGregor Downs Road that is enhancing the city’s development to the west. Our founders envisioned a school that would educate 400-500 children each year, a school with students who would add to the community through their good citizenship and service, a school that would graduate students who would go on to colleges pursuing their passions and becoming productive and positive global citizens, a school with a large number of alumni, many of whom would return home to make Greenville a richer and more vibrant city in the years to come. I would love to see the school grow and achieve the founders’ ultimate dream, and I ask for your help in spreading the word to anyone in the area who is interested in pursuing an excellent independent school education for their children.