About >Founders' Day > Head of School Speech

Founders' Day 2006 marked a new, exciting beginning for Poughkeepsie Day School with Josie Holford's official inaugeration as the 14th head of school. Established by the late PDS director Tony Buccelli to pay tribute to the school's rich history and forward-thinking founders, Founders' Day began in 1994 with the honoring of founding director Elizabeth Gilkeson, who was the featured speaker at the school's 60th anniversary celebration. Since then, Founders' Day has enabled faculty, students, parents and alumni/ae to connect with each other and this unique institution and its distinctive and compelling mission. What follows is a transcript of Josie Holford's remarks.

Members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished guests, members of the community here at Poughkeepsie Day School, family and friends-good evening. This school is honored by your presence here this evening.

Thank you, Julie [Stevenson, president of the PDS Board of Trustees], Tom [Tinker, former acting head of Trevor Day School] and Liz [Vinogradov, PDS upper school head] for your kind remarks.

As we go forward it is important for you all to know that when I manage to do something right it is because I learned it from Tom Tinker. When something goes well at school you can be sure that Liz has a hand in it. And that when something fails, or I make a bigger misstep than usual, it is a basic deep-seated character flaw for which there is no remedy, only the grinding of teeth and dark muttering.

I have received a very warm welcome from everyone here at Poughkeepsie Day School, and I thank everyone for helping me feel so very much at home in my new school and community.

The founders of PDS had a vision of a school that would serve and educate children in the best way they knew how and toward the best future they could imagine.

We still have that vision.

I have spent a little time in the PDS archive-read the minutes of board meetings-and have in hand a wonderful admissions brochure from the earliest days.

It states: "Children are to be taught in accordance with recent scientific studies." And it says that education means:

…the complete all-round development of the child-physically, emotionally, socially as well as intellectually. Through first-hand, practical experience, studies are closely related to the children's daily life and natural interests, gradually deepening their understanding of the world about them, present and past. They are taught to think for themselves, express their own ideas clearly, have well-placed confidence in their ability to live and work with others, and meet real situations in life.

Not much changed there then.

It is clear that the founders held a number of radical notions. They believed in the arts; in imaginative play as the intellectual work of the child; in science as active investigation and verification; in the exchange of ideas; that true learners engage in meaningful activity; that communication, research and presentation matter. They further believed that children must be cherished and valued as individuals. They held to notions about the importance of imagination and intellect, freedom and responsibility, skill development and expression, self-knowledge and empathy.

They built a school where children were secure enough to be adventurous, safe enough to take risks and who knew themselves well enough to trust others. They built a learning community where everyone matters.

Strange people, those founders.

Of course, the world has dramatically changed since 1934 and the pace of that change continues to accelerate. Our understanding about learning has evolved and deepened.

Schools as organizational institutions may well be facing huge challenges in this age of crumbling community, shifting authority and the knowledge and communication revolution. Schools as institutions may be facing a choice between radical transformation and obsolescence.

What strikes me is that schools that have weathered the vicissitudes and fads and pendulum swings of educational fashion, that have evolved with the emerging knowledge about learning but have kept true to enduring values-a school like PDS-may now be best poised to meet the demands of educating for the 21st century.

It has become a cliché to refer to the rapid global transformation to a post-industrial, digitally-connected, information-rich world.

But information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. And within us all lies the human hunger and hope for community-true security in an age of terror! terror! all the time can arise only from community and connection. Our safety and survival may depend on our sense of community, and on how we conceive of community in a world that is both shrinking and fragmenting.

Peter Drucker, the business philosopher, has posited that:
"In the post-industrial world, into which we are emerging, schools will be located at the center of the community. Professionals who create new knowledge and meaning will be the leading class."

As brain power replaces machine power in driving the economic engine, enterprise, innovation and creativity become prime attributes. The future belongs to learners-those who can learn, unlearn, relearn and do it all again.

At heart, a PDS education is a moral endeavor centered more on questions than on answers. It seeks the know-why as well as the know how. It seeks to graduate students who have been known and valued for who they are and who leave us with their dreams and passions uncovered, their skills developed and their talents recognized.
Our graduates need the optimism to know that they are equipped to make a difference and that they have the tools and personal skills to thrive and lead in a world that demands the highest possible levels of problem solving, diplomacy and creative and ethical thinking.

That means valuing these abilities now, at every level, every day: creativity, problem solving, cooperation, flexibility, empathy, connection, the ability to cope with change and a commitment to self-sustaining learning for life. It means understanding that the capacity to learn and grow is the key attribute for the future, and that teachers have the crucial role not of transmitting information but of developing the capacity to learn.

It means working in alliance with parents to forge a path rooted in the present but with an eye on the future.

And that-along with a good measure of joy and laughter-pretty much sums up the philosophy and practice of Poughkeepsie Day School.

It is not an original idea to posit that in this uncertain future we all must learn to live like artists, at the edge of what we do not know.

To see what this world might look like, step into any good performing or visual arts class, or elementary classroom or take a walk around PDS when school is in session. You will see creative teachers demonstrating the ability to live with and handle a multitude of dilemmas, tensions and contradictions.

The good teacher, then, already lives and thrives in that post-modern world of ambiguity and unpredictability, juggling competing needs and complex relationships. Teaching is a creative practice and a fluid craft. Teachers, no matter how well they plan, are constantly adjusting and adapting. They live in the middle of shifting realities where all their preparation and experience are just the springboard for skilled improvisation and endless diplomacy.

As we help students reach into that world, our ability to communicate with, understand and connect with the wider world becomes essential. We have to stretch beyond the comfort zone, into what the great Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky called the ZPD, the zone of proximal development. Striving for something new, but always rooted in shared values and a common purpose for a better world.

PDS was created by pioneers who wanted a better life for children. They dared to break out of an educational mold. And step out in a new direction.

In the poem Landfall in Unknown Seas, written to commemorate the tercentenary of those European settlers who first voyaged to what they then named New Zealand, Allen Curnow wrote:

"…by sailing in a new direction, they enlarged the world."

By simply sailing in a new direction the founders of PDS enlarged the world.

In the last section of the poem, the poet sees a world discovered and mapped and asks for new discoveries and directions for his country in a different realm:

Now there are no more islands to be found
And the eye scans risky horizons of its own
In unsettled weather . . . .
Who navigates us towards what unknown
But not improbable provinces? Who reaches
A future down for us from the high shelf
Of spiritual daring?

I leave you with two final quotations. The first is from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado:

Life is the path you make while you walk it.
It is the walking that beats the path;
It is not the path that makes the walk.

and the second is from the business guru Peter Senge:

A vision without a task is a dream
A task without a vision is drudgery
A task with a vision can change the world

Tonight we honor the founders of this school. They set it on an enduring path along which it is now our task to continue.

I hope that here, now, at PDS-and across the river to the Ridge-we can beat that path, pursue the task with a vision and find that spiritual daring as we contemplate and step out into our future.

Thank you.