BGA Thankful List

As the holidays are upon us we are ever thankful for our family and friends. At BGA, we have many things of which to be thankful and below is a partial list of those items. This list was emailed to alumni and parents a few days before Thanksgiving. If you missed it, we hope you enjoy reading it today.

1                 Teacher for every 9 students

2                 Art galleries for student art exhibits in the new Mary Campbell Visual Arts Center

4                 HVAC Championships for the Middle School (2 individual championships in

wrestling, 1 team championship in cross country, 1 individual championship in golf)

5                 Art Studios in the Mary Campbell Visual Arts Center for Middle and Upper School art

                        classes.

6                 National Merit Semi-Finalists

6                 National Merit Commended Scholars

10               Newly inducted members of the BGA Hall of Fame

11               Members of the BGA Alumni Board

14               Years of education experience (average) of faculty and  staff

20               Upper School Students to participate in the first ever BGA Fall Build for Habitat for

 Humanity

23               Alumni Class Agents working to keep their classmates  informed

27               Middle School Students selected for the National Spanish & French Exam recognition

39               Senior Student Athletes (18 football, 5 cheerleading, 6 soccer, 6 cross country, 3 golf, 1

 volleyball)

66               Volunteers helping BGA meet our $400,000 goal for the 2011-2012 Annual Fund

122             Years of BGA history and tradition since our founding in 1889.

143             New students enrolled for 2011-2012

200             New lockers for soccer, track & field and football in the soon-to-be complete 50,000

 square foot Athletic & Wellness Center.

219             Upper School students involved in fall extra-curricular  activities

286             Friends, and growing, to "LIKE" our new Facebook page

349             Student Greers on campus

351             Student Platos on campus

550             Alumni and friends who have attended an alumni event this fall

900             BGA family, friends and alumni who attended the 6 Friday Night Tailgates hosted by 

the Advancement  Office Staff

1419           Flowers to bloom at the Lower School this spring from the bulbs planted this fall by

                        parent and student volunteers

2884           Volunteer hours completed this school year by over 420 parent volunteers in the Arts

 Council, Parents Club and Wildcat Club

4000           Hours of community service to be completed by Middle School students by May 2012

10,000        Books checked out of the Middle School Library

33,000        Net Dollars raised from magazine subscription sales in August/September

70%            Faculty with advanced degrees

99%            Extracurricular participation of students in the Middle School

100%          Faculty and Staff support for the 2011-2012 Annual Fund

44,000,000   Words read by Lower School students in 2011

Giving Thanks

As we approach Thanksgiving week and a nice break in the rhythm of the fall semester, I am including in this blog a poem by a 19^th century American writer, Ella Wheeler Wilcox.  Not often anthologized and seen as a sentimental poet, she occupies the same kind of place as Edna St. Vincent Millay or John Greenleaf Whittier.  Her most famous lines were: “Laugh and the world laughs with you;/ Weep and you weep alone.”  In the following simple and heartfelt poem she shares some thoughts about Thanksgiving that I think are worth remembering at this time of the year.  She asks us to be thankful not just for blessings but for hardships: “But he who has the faith and strength/ To thank his God for sorrow/ Has found a joy without alloy/ To gladden every morrow.”  As educators, we know these hardships are critical parts of the process of growth for the children we serve.  I hope that all of us can focus, too, on those blessings to which we do not often pay attention: “For blessings common in our sight/ We rarely offer praises.”  Hope the Thanksgiving holiday brings you and your family some “daily store/ Of pleasures sweet and tender.” 

“Thanksgiving” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hang about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives
And conquers if we let it.

There's not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past's wide measure.

But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble.
Farseeing is the soul and wise
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o'er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Please don’t forget to remind your friends and neighbors about the BGA Open House on Sunday, December 4^th, from 3:00-5:00 p.m.  We strongly encourage any current parents thinking about the transition to the next division or prospective families whom you think are a good fit for this community to visit with us during this exciting event.

Boys and Girls of Fall

     

              By the time this blog is posted, this weekend will have been a critical one for the Wildcats in the post-season.  As I write this I, like many of you, am trying to figure out the suspension of the laws of physics (or at least Chattanooga traffic) that will allow me to be in two places at once—Baylor for the semi-finals in soccer against St. Agnes and on campus for the 7:00 start of the McCallie match-up.  The soccer girls face a tough opponent in St. Agnes, which knocked our volleyball girls out of the quarter-finals and has lost only one soccer game this season.  The game against Briarcrest, with six goals in the second half and some great saves by Ansley Tomlin, demonstrated both our offensive and defensive strength, and I hope that the girls build on that momentum.  Coach Morrissey’s girls are always well prepared, and this year they benefit from one of the strongest groups of seniors in many years.  Several girls have already committed to Division-I programs—Kinsey Sessions at Samford University, Sydney Eddy at Ole Miss, and Cara Ledman at UK.  Mary Hannah Winstead (who is expecting to play basketball at the next level), Megan Kisling, and Kaitlin Davis round out the group of very talented seniors.  I hope that we will have a good turn-out to support them.  If the girls made it past St. Agnes, they will face the winner of the Baylor-Father Ryan game on Saturday evening.

            The football game against McCallie will also be hard-fought.  A large boys’ school with a long and storied athletic tradition, McCallie will bring a great running game and some talented athletes.  Similarly blessed with strong senior leadership, the boys (7-3) have already amassed a great record under Coach Batten and his staff.  Like the soccer squad, several football players already have offers; others have received interest as post-secondary players: C.J. Beathard at Ole Miss, Blake Thomson at Harvard, and Jordan Smith at the Air Force Academy (though he is looking at other options as well).  Jimmy Redovian, another outstanding senior, will be playing baseball at Wake Forrest, and Matt Martin, in the process of returning after a long injury, has had contact with several schools.  There are many other senior players who deserve special recognition for a great season.  Thanks to all our seniors for their leadership: Michael Smith, Reed Loeffel, Sam Wade, John Adgent, Bryce Poisson, Hayden Hickernell, Ty Ragsdale, Connor Mitchell, Corey Amos, Cole Aycock, Austin Davidson, and Chris Falgout.  A win would take the boys to Memphis to face perennially strong Memphis University School. 

           Finally, cross country will be in the state championships Saturday at the Steeplechase at Percy Warner Park.  The squad of just over twenty has been augmented by the addition of a middle schooler—Matthew Minor--who moved up after the end of his season (Matthew won the HVAC championships).  I wish all of our Wildcat athletes the best in the post-season and am excited about the contests still to come. 

I would be remiss if I did not mention another major event that I hope you will place on your calendars.  We are returning to a traditional open house model and are excited about introducing BGA to prospective families on Sunday, December 4^th, at 3:00 P.M.  Please encourage your friends and neighbors to attend this fun event.  In addition to prospective families, we welcome our own families to join us.

Front Porches

            Like a lot of you, I’m sure, my wife and I did some traveling over the break.  While we often stay in town, we spent a long weekend at Rosemary Beach—a community like many along 30A where a lot of our families vacation.  Claire, our three-year-old, naturally loves the beach and would rather be there than just about any other place in the world.  One of the draws of Rosemary or Seaside for us is that it reminds us of our first home in Franklin—Westhaven.  As our travels have confirmed, Westhaven is certainly not unique.  It follows a growing trend of community planning that some architectural critics have dubbed “New Urbanism” or “Neo-Traditional Communities.”  Those are big words to describe a simple concept—the return to front porch communities. 

A lot of folks would trace the founding of that movement to Seaside, though there are many examples across the South today--Water Color, Alys Beach, Celebration, Daniel’s Island, and I’On—to name a few. In the 1980’s a husband and wife architectural team designed Seaside with the conscious aim of reproducing small towns all across America, with squares and parks, back alleys so that houses were not separated by long drives, and, especially, front porches.  These features are what drew Dana and me to Westhaven and why we love Seaside and Rosemary. Virtually every house in these communities focuses on porches and patios.  Of course, architects created these designs for environmental reasons—the sea breezes and ceiling fans cut down on energy bills.  Soon they learned, though, that they had created or recreated the front porch effect.  By getting more people out into the streets and onto their porches, they believed they could create and sustain a sense of community. . . that casual interactions would nurture stronger bonds.  What the architects reacted against were the ranch houses and communities that sprung up in America after World War II.   During that time, as a recent segment on National Public Radio put it, “The front porch took a back seat to the back yard.” 

            What does any of this have to do with BGA?  We need routinely to ask ourselves: How do we work to create the kind of community that we want to have?  As I have said before, of all the schools I have been associated with, I think BGA stands the best chance of being a front porch school.”  For BGA to become what it could be, a truly warm community where everyone feels welcomed, we must think carefully about putting structures in place to encourage the kind of community we want to be.  We must work to create the expectations and design the culture we want.  The summers in the South last a lot longer than they do in New Hampshire, where I grew up—even into October.  I hope that we can still find a little time for the front porch and for discussions of the community we want to create.