S1 E1 Chris Day 2024

Holdenist School is known for nurturing future educational leaders. Chris Day, a former teacher and administrator at Holdenist, discusses what makes the school special. He emphasizes the importance of attention to detail, professionalism, and a sense of community. The school's values and commitment to education are evident in the behaviors and actions of its students and staff. The school's success lies in the collective effort of everyone involved in keeping the momentum going. Welcome to the Holdenist School podcast, From Bold to Vegan, where we explore how the Holdenist experience lays the foundation for success. I'm Head of School John McVeigh, and I'd like to welcome you to Season 1. This season we're interviewing heads of school who either hail from our alumni ranks or once served as faculty to understand how Holdenist nurtures future educational leaders. Listen in as we explore what distinguishes Holdenist and fuels its reputation as fertile ground for educators. Today I'm excited to interview Chris Day. Chris Day has been deeply engaged with Holdenist School as a teacher, administrator, coach, and parent to two alumni. He began his teaching career at Dublin School in New Hampshire, and then at Rye Country Day School in New York. Chris returned to New Hampshire with a brief stop at our rival New Hampton, and joined Holdenist in 2001, where he served for 14 years before becoming the 10th head of school at Cardigan Mountain School in 2016. Chris's wife Cynthia also served as acting director of admissions and associate director at Holdenist. They have three children, Charlie, class of 15, Henry, class of 17, are Holdenist alumni, and Phoebe graduated from St. Paul's in 2019. Chris's rich history with Holdenist makes him the perfect person to explore what makes this community so special. Thanks Chris for joining us today. It's great to talk with you. Well, thanks John. It's really good to be here, and good to be revisiting Holdenist. I'm excited to talk, and ask some questions to help everyone, I guess, start making these connections. Because I think it is one of the really remarkable things that I came to see once I started here was just how many folks who had worked here, gone to school here, have gone on to become school leaders. And you are a shining example of that. Thanks. I felt the same thing when I first arrived at Holdenist, and it became like this prep for head of school, you know, heads of school to go out and run schools, and I often wonder about that. And it's amazing because you can see the threads of the Holdenist experience continue to kind of be passed on in these other schools and other places, and it's a credit certainly to the heads of school who came before me here. But I think it's also equally, or maybe even more, a credit to the ecosystem around those people and all the people that are here, and the way that Holdenist works, because I do think both students and employees have this kind of experience that deepens their commitment to education and gets them excited about, you know, about preparing the future leaders. I thought about that, you know, as I was thinking about this podcast and getting excited about talking about Holdenist and revisiting my experiences there and, you know, as a teacher and as a coach and a dorm parent and as a husband and a parent myself and friend to many and just, you know, wondering what it was about Holdenist that makes it so special. And it is really hard to put your finger on, but there's definitely something, and it's not an accident. And, you know, I've given it a lot of thought, and I think, you know, there's some things that are not very sexy, but they're really, really important that Holdenist does particularly well, and, you know, it's something that I try to continue on in my work at Cardigan. And I'd love to hear what you think some of those are because the one thing that comes to me is that people always say is there's sort of a secret sauce or this magic thing at the school, but people sometimes have a hard time to put their finger on. And that's why, you know, a podcast like this is interesting because you have a little more time to explore. You're not trying to boil it down to a sentence, but I'm curious, what are the things that stand out in that way for you? I think about some of the rush wars of Holdenist for me, and obviously, you know, Phil and Mike Enriquez and Jory Mack Humber, you know, Norm Walker and Dwayne Ford, and there's so many others. There's so many incredible people who have served at that school that I worked with, and who continue to serve, like Peter Dernan and Bruce Barton, Toby Flanager, and others. And, you know, one of the things that I remembered from early on was Norm Walker, who, you know, passed a few years ago, but he was this giant of a man who was an incredible English teacher, beautiful poet. He was the football coach, and he was from Newton North, and he had the accent and everything. And he, you know, he could get people to do what he wanted them to do, but his saying was little things, big things. And he pounded that, and he always talked about that. And that, for me, became something that I sort of hitched my wagon to, and, you know, my leadership style, I know that it's all, it's the details. And if you take care of the details, the big things will follow, as long as you've got vision and some drive. And I think, for me, Holdenists embraced that. They took care of the details. And I remember the day I interviewed, which was back in, you know, 2000, probably, the year 2000, and I was waiting outside Mike Enriquez's office, he was the dean of faculty. I remember just hanging out and waiting while he was finishing up with somebody else. And I just happened to notice the windowsill in the schoolhouse, right by the door there, by the baseball field. And the windowsill was clean. And I just thought to myself, like, that's pretty cool. Like, you know, Holden, it never was about, like, you know, arms race or big fancy buildings or anything. It was about taking good care, being a good steward for the things that you had. And that, for me, like a clean windowsill was a really good example of that. It mattered to somebody to make sure that that was clean. And those are the little things that I think nobody, you know, nobody really notices, but they're there. And eventually, they become part of your every day. And I think that, like, we still hear that, Fordo in particular, you know, little things are big things. I think every chance he gets with our kids. It's funny, I read a quick note that I had gotten this assembly today from, oh, just a local resident who happened to be in Plymouth. It was a grandmother who was there with her two little grandchildren. And I read the note to the students today, because she didn't know who the kids were. And, like, she didn't talk very much about it, other than to say, you know, I was sitting there with my grandchildren, and these Holden students came in, and they were polite and respectful, and they ate, and they cleaned up everything. And when they left, I spent time talking to my two grandchildren, said, like, that's how that's how you act, that's how you treat a place, you leave it better than you found it. And it was such a telling kind of like, all right, good, this is translating, because like you're saying, you want it to happen on campus, but even more, you want it to happen when they leave campus, whether they're going to a restaurant while they're here, or when they move into the world and beyond. And so, you know, you're right, that for me that, you know, Coach Walker's name comes up over and over and over. And I feel like I know him a little bit, I never met him, but the, you know, the person who invited me into schools, really, and certainly into boarding schools was his teammate at Williams, a guy named Dan Rourke, who was sort of a similar kind of figure at Brooks, where I started. The two of them played together at Williams and were close friends, and Holderness and Brooks scrimmaged to begin every season. And those two would get to catch up, and Coach Rourke, when he was kind of helping me understand how to do great work, always talked about Norm. And so I've had a chance to meet some of his family, I walk by his mural every day. But you know, that presence, and I think that message lives on, which is pretty special. You know, Norm's not alone at Holderness, you know, that, you know, one of the things that impressed me the most about Holderness was that early on, that it was a community of really incredible people pulling them in the same direction, and I thought that that was important. I remember, I think it was my first faculty meeting, it was in Weld Hall, and we were all gathered in there, we're all sitting on the floor and chairs and stuff, and it was a really spirited meeting. And there was some arguing and discussion, and I was sitting back thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to, you know, this is going to get ugly. And then the meeting ended, and the two people who were arguing the most walked out together, you know, arm in arm, hand in hand, and they were, they were fine. And right at that moment, I thought, okay, I know what this place is like, because it taught me a lot about the difference between congeniality and collegiality and professionalism. And it was from that moment that I realized that I was in a community that values professionalism and knows that, you know, educating kids, other people's kids, is really messy work. And it's also, it's sacred work, and you've got to do it right. And that means sometimes you've got to break some eggs here and have some arguments, have some arguments against other people, but about ideas and positions and policies. And from that first day, I walked away thinking, okay, I'm in a varsity place right now, and I've got to step up, because there were a lot of people who I admired and who I still admire. And there's this kind of locomotive of momentum at Holderness that, it's like a flywheel, right? And I mean, I think that flywheel at Holderness is spinning really fast. And I think everybody at Holderness understands that. And so they just do their part to just keep it spinning, keep it spinning. You know, you don't have to do momentous things, but you've got to keep it spinning, and nobody lets that wheel slow down. And that's a conscious decision on everybody's part there. I'm still in awe, and I think about it a lot. I'm still in awe of just how many incredible people, you know, make up the Holderness community. I'm smiling thinking about your faculty meeting story, because when I interviewed here, I had my version of that between two of the kind of people you're talking about, right, Dwayne Ford and Pete Barnum, like kind of got into this spirited discussion, like in the middle of my interview, but it pumped me up, to be honest, in the same way that you're like, all right, people care. Dwayne was one of the people, one of the people who was in my story, too, you know, like that was what I thought when it was happening, like, wow, these people care, right? And I think that, you know, the thing you don't want is apathy. You don't want people who are not moved and passionate about what they're doing and feeling like that, right? An apathetic faculty meeting, that's the worst. If you're having a spirited discussion, and it's centered on kids, that's wonderful work. And I also think, you know, there was the Dwayne Fords and those kind of folks who just, you know, a lot of energy and a lot of passion. And then, you know, Mike Enriquez, who was then the Dean of Faculty and went on to become the head of Procter. And he hired me, and I admired him so much, and I aspired to be like Mike. And he had that sort of, they call it the Greek mystique. And he reminded me of Lincoln in the sort of that sense of just kind of being really, really wise in the moment and prescient sometimes, and also able to sit quietly and listen to a faculty meeting and let it happen organically. And then, like a beautiful writer, you know, he would introduce it, let it go, and then tie it all together at the end. And he would be firm when he needed to, but he would also, you know, he had a great sense of humor. He would hold people accountable, but he was human. And I just felt so fortunate to work with and for someone like that, who I admired so much that it made me want to be the best teacher, the best advisor, you know, just the best department chair. Everything that I was doing, I thought about Mike, I thought about a lot of people that made me want to do it better. I love that. Can you think of any, whether it's skills or strategies or things you picked up that you feel like you, that you continue to rely on today? But my guess is that was a really critical time in your professional journey, right, as you went from being a teacher to your current role. My guess is that there was a mixture of administration and teaching and, you know, that all kind of came together in that moment. I'm curious if there's anything that stands out. You know, I, when I think about what I learned at Holderness and, you know, arriving there as a history teacher with three little kids, and then when we left, I was the dean of faculty who had, you know, children in college and, you know, so I did a lot of growing up there and I made plenty of mistakes. There were so many seminal moments for me as an educator, but more importantly as a person at Holderness. And I think the opportunities that I earned, and I think one of the cool things about Holderness is that you can, there's opportunities to do a lot of things at Holderness and to lead a lot of things, but they're not given out. You know, you've got to earn them. You've got to hustle. You've got to take care of the details. But when you do, you are given opportunities. I was, you know, I was allowed to go to the Klingenstein year at Teachers College and work on what became Senior Thesis. That was really important for me to be afforded that opportunity to lead and also to have that responsibility to lead. I would say also, probably most importantly, a tragic moment was when we lost Mike and Wes in 2003. I'll, you know, no one who was there will ever, ever forget it, and I never, ever want to forget it. And I think about it a lot because it's one of those moments that if, you know, you knew where you were when, and it was a powerful, powerful moment, and as awful as it was, it helped to center me as an adult whose job it was to educate kids because you realize in a moment like that how precious life is and what's really important. And it's not about, you know, beating Tabor in hockey or, you know, getting an A on that paper, but it's the humanity of it all, and it's that, you know, it can be gone in a fleeting moment. And it's made me a better father, certainly a better educator. It made me a better head of school because it gives you perspective, you know, but every situation like that has to be seen as an opportunity, and for me it was an opportunity to really make sure that every moment counts and to try to help kids and families as best I can. And I think having that perspective and that sort of sense of the moment was a big part of Holderness, and it comes from, you know, the leadership process and the emphasis on citizenship at Holderness that is so important. You know, I've tried to replicate a lot of things. I think if you talk to a few people at Cardigan and say, what's Mr. Day is known for? They might say, oh, little things are big things. You know, I think educators are the greatest thieves in the world, but, you know, I also think that for me, you know, because the little things are the big things, you know, I was a hockey coach and a baseball coach and a history teacher, taught AP and all these other things, and it was those little moments, those little victories or perhaps little defeats that helped people grow, and I know that, you know, I now know that we grow through overcoming adversity, and I think Holderness taught me through its programming that adversity abounds, and there are opportunities everywhere. Outback was the ultimate example of that, and continues to be. We're working hard at Cardigan to introduce more outdoor education programs, and I often talk about Outback. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it was one of the greatest things I've ever done. I often said that in Outback, every day, there's a part of every day that's where you're having the best day you've ever had, and there's a part of that same day that you've had the worst day you've ever had, but having that sense of you're not a passenger, you're a crew member, and this is real, and you've got to do your part, and what I loved about Outback and what has helped me as an educator is that in every group that I was part of, I went out several times, every single time, you always go out and you think, well, here's my eight kids, and this kid's going to be a star, and this kid, now I'm a little worried about this one. Every single time, that's flipped, you know? It always happens, and that's that sort of that reservoir of strength that emerges in terms of your resourcefulness and your courage and your ability to do these things, and you learn so many interesting things about these kids and each other and yourself through programs like Outback, which are not rides to go on, and they're real, and they have risks involved. That's education at its absolute best, and I don't think it can be replicated, and so it's taught me to look beyond the cover and to pay attention to people, adults and kids, to get to know them as best I can and not to pass judgment, because I've been mistaken way too many times, and Outback showed me that, as well as Project Outreach and all kinds of cool programs that Whole Worms does. You nailed it, right? Yeah. I was fortunate to be able to witness Mike and Wes's classmates and friends come back last year at the anniversary of the accident, get to see them and watch their bond, and I went through a couple of experiences at my former school where we lost students. You're right. There's nothing that compares to that. I watched those friends still be together, you know, and I walked around campus with them and listened to them tell stories, and, you know, it was amazing, because we goosebumps hidden sitting here thinking, you know, and then the school also creates some experiences, so we don't just rely on the hard stuff. We create experiences that say, you know, we can do hard things, and Outback certainly is one of them. We talk about developing people the world needs most a lot, and that ability, right, the resilience, the grit, the, you know, whatever the qualities you want to talk about that help you to overcome and persevere, that matters an awful lot, and it feels so central to not only the purpose of wholeness, but the purpose of education. Yeah. Hey, Fordo, what day is it today? Today is a great day to be a Bull. Dwayne Ford here, and Bruce Barton right alongside. Thanks so much for listening to this Bulls to Beacons podcast. If you're loving it, like we hope you are, please share with friends and classmates so they can hear too. You know, at Hoverness, you know, and it's similar at Cardigan in a little ways. I mean, we're not an Episcopal school, but we do have chapel once a week, and I think one of the things that, you know, going to chapel on every Monday morning at Hoverness was, you know, the way we started our week, and sometimes I labored my way over to chapel, and sometimes I was excited to go, but in the end, over the years and years and years of going to Rich Weymouth chapel services, which you never know what you're going to get, I found them to be very, very peaceful and a great way for me to center myself for the week, and then Thursday evenings were always really wonderful, but one of the takeaways for that that I carried on to, you know, at Cardigan, we have chapel every Thursday, and that's the one day we get dressed up in our Cardigan uniforms, and I think it's important for, you know, adolescents, high school age or middle school, to know, you know, how to be in the moment. There are times where you can frolic around and be goofy and playful, and then there's times you've got to button it up and know how to sit and stand up and follow rules and know which way to, you know, the knives go on the right and the force go on the left and the salt and pepper go together, and those things, those are important parts of growing up, and, you know, like when Dwayne Ford talks about the fit with a handshake and the eye contact, and, you know, those are really important things. Please and thank you goes a long way in this life, and, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people don't learn that until they come to places like Holderness or Cardigan or places that take the time to really talk about that and that really honor the core values of the school and the institution, and those are the things that I think create a lot of that texture that gives kids footholds in life, and for me, you know, I think Holderness was always about hustle, humanity, and humility. I just always felt like Holderness was never not hustling, never not trying to get better, and it did so in a way that treated people, adults and kids, with respect, respecting who they are, but also that they were part of something bigger. You're part of a team, and everybody needs to chip in. You can't take a ride at Holderness. It just doesn't work. You're not going to last, and I think everybody's humble. I mean, I think that there's a sense of, you know, being really proud of who you are, but also, you know, knowing that we haven't got it all figured out, and, you know, the jobs program at Holderness is one that I was always really psyched about. My kids, when they went through Holderness, were super psyched to get, you know, one of them was a weld hall leader, and, you know, they had these different jobs, and, you know, that process, the leadership process is one that creates this notion of stewardship and giving back and really, you know, knowing that everybody has to pitch in to help the overall and to help the community, and that's a lesson that I think everybody needs. When I walked out my door at Holderness from the Brown House or when we lived up on the hill by the hockey rink, and now it's called Henderson, you know, when I walked out that door, I didn't feel any different from being inside my house because my values were completely aligned with the school, and that made me feel really good. And it made me realize that wherever I went after Holderness, that's the recipe for me is to find a place where my values, the things that are important to me, and the things that I believe strongly in are aligned with that institution because if they're not, you can't change something or someone. You just can't. You have to be authentic, and that's one of the things that I learned, I think, at Holderness, and I've taken that on and tried to, you know, tried to model that in my life as a leader here at Cardigan. I'm going to pick your brain about Cardigan in a second, but I do want to ask one more Holderness question, and it's related to your work with senior thesis, right, because I think that concept has been around for a long time. There's been several different iterations, but you're integral to the current version of this. You mentioned kind of your work during your year at Klingenstein and kind of coming back. We call it Capstone Now. It's May 10th where, you know, I sit here, and I've got – I set up meetings today with three seniors. I'm going to be their kind of faculty support person who's going through ahead of time and checking slides, and, you know, there's such energy for it. If you could fill in a little bit about where that – kind of your vision for that came from and how excited you were to bring it to Holderness because the ripples still last today. You know, I'm happy to hear that, and it actually was called Capstone at first, and I'm glad to hear it's Capstone again. Yeah, it's Capstone. All the way back around. You know, we had project outreach, and the special programs was project outreach, which was phenomenal, and I went on that trip a few times to Philadelphia, and then Artward Bound, which was amazing, and Monique Devine, you know, just crushes life with that, and she's one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, and then Outback, of course, and then we had Senior Seminar, which was, you know, which was great and I think really interesting, but increasingly, you know, we discovered that a ton of our kids at Holderness were finding – were applying early to colleges, and so about half of the class were discovering where they were going to be going to school in December, and, you know, the whole concept of senioritis or senior spring started to bleed into the community, and it's not how a lot of us wanted our seniors to finish their career. We wanted them to finish doing their best work, their strongest work, and so when I did my cleaning senior, that was the project that I identified as something that I really wanted to dig into, and I did a national study and looked at all the incredible programs, and I cobbled together a lot of different ones with different indicators of success and brought it back to Holderness, and I think it was hard to do because, you know, one of the lessons from bringing Capstone back is that it's a lot easier to inflate a balloon from the inside of an organization than it is to bring a fully inflated balloon and try to jam it in, and there was a fair amount of resistance, you know, you have to work your way in, you have to find space, it has to be an organic, you know, development at the school, and so I think it had some growing pains early on, and we had, you know, Senior Capstone was an optional thing, and then eventually we made it part of the senior year, and I'm really psyched about how it's grown, and I think, you know, the good thing about any program is, you know, a great program is one that, you know, you can create it and then let it go, and then it's going to live on, and that's when you know it's got some good legs, and I'm, you know, I was really proud of a lot of the projects that the kids were doing. We do something here at Cardigan called Gates, which is an invention and innovation competition for 6th and 7th graders. I go to the Gates competition and think about senior thesis or capstone because, you know, there are some kids who are, you know, finding the cure to cancer, and there are other kids who are making sweet snowboards, and it starts with a passion, something that the student is really interested in and is willing to explore without somebody sitting over their shoulder kind of forcing them to do it, and one of the hardest parts of capstone then and probably now was reaching out to adults who you may not know for advice and effort for help, and that can be a really hard thing for a kid, for a high school kid, and it's a really important lesson to teach them and to help them with, so I was really, really, really glad to hear that it's still thriving. We had four, you know, actually the four senior leaders this morning got up and kind of gave a preview of their capstones and invited people, and they did a terrific job, and you can feel the energy and excitement about this. It's, you know, we're less than two weeks away. There's, you know, everybody's kind of finishing up what they want to say, and I can't wait to watch them, so they're going to be... And you know what? That's exactly what we wanted. I mean, that's a win right there because that's what we wanted. We wanted, you know, kids approaching Memorial Day and commencement to be thinking about, you know, their best work. You know, frankly, right now, a lot of kids should be saying, this stinks, and I hated this. You know, in two weeks, they'll be so proud when they're done, you know, and there's just a different feeling. I've talked to so many of them. The moment when you finish it and you get the reception from the people, you know, it's different than dropping off a math exam. Nothing against math, but there's a confidence and a sense of fulfillment that I think at the end of a year-long kind of deep dive into a question that you care about, there's very little like it. So I'd love to, you know, for you to come back and see a couple of them in action because I'd love to as well, but, you know, if I had some time, you're pretty busy. And I guess maybe that's a good segue because I'm curious, you know, about after 14 years here, what was it that motivated you, you know, to make the move to Cardigan Mountain? What was, what have you found really rewarding about working? It's a different age group. I'm sure there are trade-offs there. And I'm curious about what you found that, you know, kind of the rewarding parts of working with that age group. I mean, I think, you know, for me, you know, when we left Holderness, it was really hard to leave. We, we, that was home. And it is home for so many people. I think that's one of the incredible things about Holderness is that the roots there are deep and there's a reason why there's a lot of people who stay for a long, long time. That doesn't happen everywhere. And we were so happy there and, you know, our sons, Charlie and Henry, went to Cardigan as day students when we were at Holderness. And Cynthia and I really fell in love with Cardigan as parents, you know, just sort of, just really marveling at how Cardigan, you know, really focused on educating middle school boys and how to, you know, honor them where they are, but also help them go as far as they can. And when, after I did my year at Klingenstein and I came back and I did some administrative, I moved into some administrative roles at Holderness, became the dean of faculty and, you know, Cardigan had a head of school opening and, and I, you know, looked at it and I talked to the current head at the time, Dave McCusker, and, and, you know, I talked to him about it and I thought long and hard about it and I looked into it and went and I, and I entered the process. And when I, when we made the final round and were able to come to campus, the same thing that I talked about earlier about walking out of our house, you know, out of the Brown house on the south side and, and, and realizing that, that, that my, you know, that my life inside my home was the same as my life at Holderness. We had the same feeling at Cardigan. It was that, you know, our values were completely aligned with the values of the school. And I believed that, you know, I, I could, not would, but I could be a good leader of this community. And it was a school that meant so much to my family and, and meant so much to our sons that I felt like it was a natural fit. I think of, you know, leading a school for me, I don't know that I could ever go to a, some school that I have no connection with and, and really be an authentic leader. But, but at Cardigan, you know, I can remember going to one of my first events as, as a head of school. We were driving, it was somewhere on Cape Cod or something, it was a summer event. And the director of development, you know, turned to me and he was driving and he said, okay, let's start talking about your talking points and what are you going to say? And I was like, no, I think I'm good. And he almost went for real. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I said, I'm just going to tell my story, I'm going to talk about my kids and why, why Cardigan is so important to me and what it meant to my children and why, you know, now I feel like, you know, I'm honored to be able to serve this, this community and, and help it grow and, and, and be as great as it can be. I feel so fortunate to be able to have worked at a place like Holderness that, that taught me so much and, and honestly continues to teach me a lot. The memories that I have, the relationships that I maintain with, with friends and colleagues from Holderness and, and that my kids also do, I mean, they're some of their best friends or they're, they're Holderness friends. And to be able to see the impact of that community on my kids means that, of course, I'm going to try to replicate a lot of that energy here. And you know, oh, by the way, there's, there's a few folks working at Cardigan that once, yeah, called me more and more of the, the, the, you know, sort of the connections across the two schools. You know, you can't help. I was, I was fortunate enough to go over and spend a little time at Cardigan this winter and you feel it immediately. And I feel, and the, the tone and the people, the number of alums that, that the two schools share, the number of times people have worked at both places, it's, I don't think, I don't think that's a coincidence. No, it's not. And I think, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of great schools out there. There's a lot of great ways to do it. But I think, you know, for me, Holderness is the standard bearer. That's, that's, that's how to educate kids. What I try to do here is to marshal the resources and the, and the people and, and the momentum and the excitement and the love and the joy to be able to do a lot of that same work here at Cardigan. We, I maintain that there's never been a more important time to educate middle school boys than right now. And, and, you know, this is a place where they don't have cell phones at Cardigan, you know, we take them away when they get here and their computers are pretty limited and, and they go out and play and they, you know, they, they, you know, there's a lot of crutches walking around and broken wrists and things like that. And kids climb trees here and they fall out and we can fix broken wrists, but you can't, you know, it's harder to fix mines that have been polluted by a lot of the noises out there in the world. And, and so we both, you know, at this age, we, you know, we're able to protect them from a lot of that. But at the same time, sort of try to introduce, you know, what it's, what it means to be a man in this world. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, coming, this is the first time I've ever worked at a single gendered school and the first time I've ever worked in a middle school. But one of the things that I've found that I really, really appreciate about it is that because it's all boys and they're middle school age, they don't have to posture to kind of be cool or put someone else down to look good for, you know, maybe, you know, hoping that that person might think I'm cute or something like that. So there's a whole layer of stuff that doesn't exist in that way. And also the boys can show a measure of kindness towards one another and affection for one another that they might not otherwise do it. And I really appreciate that. And we also are able to be, it's a middle school, so we, we can sort of stop what we're doing and go play. And like one day a week we have clubs and we just, you know, we don't play sports. We go out and, you know, do chess club or model UN, you know, skateboard club or whatever. And it's just, you know, I really appreciate the ability to, you know, it's kind of like as a parent, there are times where you got to stop the car and we're going to talk about this. And we have our core values at Cardigan, you know, compassion, integrity, respect, and courage. And when those things need to be discussed, we stop what we're doing and we talk about it. And I think, you know, Holderness is that kind of same place, you know, a high school version of that is that the values of the school drive everything that you do. The mission is tied to that. And when you need to, you stop and you take care of the important stuff. And so, it's something that I'm really proud of at Cardigan. I think it's a school that where we have a lot of momentum, but we also know that we have a lot of work to do. We haven't got it all figured out. We can always get better and, you know, it's getting harder and harder to negate this world of ours and especially to be a kid in this world. And I think those of us adults in schools have a sacred responsibility to do everything that we can to make sure that it's a healthy growth for our kids. And I'm really proud of the work that we're doing at Cardigan. Well, I can't help smiling because I know anyone that's listening to this is making all the connections because I say all the time, I don't think there's ever been a more important time to invest in high school students. I worry about this connection. I think Holderness and Cardigan have been for decades doing the kind of work and providing the kind of experiences and the kind of people that can help push back against some of what we see happening. You know, that's part of the joy of this. And I use joy intentionally because I want there to be joy here and I know you want there to be joy there. There's a troubling trend, I think, on kind of the acceleration of childhood and kind of pre-professionalization and that, you know, as a middle school or a high school student, joy is key to this. It's what fills the tank. It helps them go on to be great adults. And I'm just, I know how grateful the folks at Cardigan are for everything you've done to lead that. And I know we're going to keep working at it hard here too. So this is, I love this conversation. So thanks. Me too. And I've said to a lot of people here that, you know, Cardigan is not necessarily portable. I don't think Holderness is either. I think it's about space, you know, it's about where that place is too. And it's about, you know, being really cold in the wintertime when you're walking across that campus. And it's about, you know, going for a dip in the Pemy and running to the theater to see, you know, Monique Devine's creation in the Hagerman and, you know, all the things that happen. It's about the people. And what you know, John, and what everybody at Holderness knows is that there's so many gems, these people at Holderness and, you know, who are there now and who were there before Terry O'Connell and Norm and all, you know, the good people who are no longer there, but whose spirit lives on and whose lessons are still taught there. And I think those are the people who, those are the voices that I hear, the ghosts in my head, as someone once said at a commencement, that keeps me trying to be better at what I do. And, you know, I always try to surround myself with the best people I possibly can. And I can't remember a time when I've been surrounded by better people than the years that we were at Holderness. And I hope I'm a better head of school for the experience as well. Your presence here remains in the ripples, you know, from Capstone to the fact that the year-end employee golf tournament is still called the Day Open, you know, you're one of those names that when I ask people here, you know, who, you know, particularly our employees, you know, who are the people that helped you, who were your mentors, who helped develop you? Why do you, you know, the way you were talking about some of those ghosts, people here talk about you and, and I know how grateful they all are for that. So thanks for being a part of this today. Thanks for kind of your continued support. And I look forward to staying in touch. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, John, and all the best to you and everybody at Holderness. Thank you for tuning into the Holderness School podcast, From Bulls to Vegans. We hope you enjoyed our conversations with inspiring educational leaders who have been shaped by their time at Holderness. I'm Head of School John McVeigh, and it has been a pleasure sharing these stories with you. Stay connected with us for more episodes as we continue to explore the unique experiences and insights that set Holderness apart. If you enjoyed these stories, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Thank you for listening. And until next time, remember, it's a great day to be a Bull.