I've had a busy week, and I'm still sort of riding the high of the election (thank you all again). It's pretty difficult to summarize all I've learned, but I would be remiss not to try.
This weekend was busy, I was with family over passover, and I spent the weekend telling anybody who would listen (and some who wouldn't) about how excited I am to be serving my friends and community, building this blog and writing the first post, and communicating with Gabe and Emily via email about entering our new positions. Emily wanted to meet with us to tell us about what EPC does and the projects they are currently working on. We scheduled an appointment for Monday during conference block.
During the meeting, Emily introduced us to the functions of EPC. Most of you probably already know generally how EPC works, but I'll summarize for you: EPC is the committee charged with running the curriculum of this school. This being Putney, though, curriculum doesn't just mean academics. In addition to the daytime classes EPC also has a hand in overseeing the Evening Arts, Afternoon Activities, and Residential life programs. In fact, there are very few programs (notably alumni relations, finances, and admissions) that EPC doesn't help run. Because it handles so many facets of our community, EPC is massive, with around fifteen people working with the committee at any given time.* The committee usually divides into smaller groups to get things done, both working in long term, permanent groups managing things like exhibitions and tutorials, and short term, ad-hoc groups working on specific projects.
Speaking of specific projects, Emily brought us up to date on the current massive undertaking of EPC: rewriting the Graduation Requirements. They've been rebuilding the requirements from the ground up, digging down and asking, "What should high school really be about?" The new system is massive, and really drafty right now, but I look forward to sharing it with you and getting your input further down the line.
So finally (whew) we're at Thursday. We arrive in Library 1 ready to work and we're greeted by all of the current members of EPC. We exchange formalities, and then dive right in. First task is to choose what committees we're on. That goes by without a hitch, and we move on to wordsmithing the graduation requirements. It took a while. We split off into small groups and worked on parts of the graduation requirements. It took my group one and a half hours to decide on four sentences. To be fair, I get it. Those four sentences are pretty important, and we need to be clear and concise, and I actually enjoyed really thinking about how we want Putney students to be able to communicate. That said, I can see why it's already taken two and a half years to write what we have so far, and it's probably going to take another two years to finish.
So, in all, a pretty good first week on EPC, I'm looking forward to working with the wonderful people on the committee, and I'll share again with y'all next week!
-Asa
*For those of you who want to know, the usual makeup is: The Head of School, All the Department Heads, The Residential Life Coordinator (who is always the dean of students), The Afternoon Activities/Work Program Head, The College Counselor, The Dean of Faculty, Two Student Representatives, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
This weekend was busy, I was with family over passover, and I spent the weekend telling anybody who would listen (and some who wouldn't) about how excited I am to be serving my friends and community, building this blog and writing the first post, and communicating with Gabe and Emily via email about entering our new positions. Emily wanted to meet with us to tell us about what EPC does and the projects they are currently working on. We scheduled an appointment for Monday during conference block.
During the meeting, Emily introduced us to the functions of EPC. Most of you probably already know generally how EPC works, but I'll summarize for you: EPC is the committee charged with running the curriculum of this school. This being Putney, though, curriculum doesn't just mean academics. In addition to the daytime classes EPC also has a hand in overseeing the Evening Arts, Afternoon Activities, and Residential life programs. In fact, there are very few programs (notably alumni relations, finances, and admissions) that EPC doesn't help run. Because it handles so many facets of our community, EPC is massive, with around fifteen people working with the committee at any given time.* The committee usually divides into smaller groups to get things done, both working in long term, permanent groups managing things like exhibitions and tutorials, and short term, ad-hoc groups working on specific projects.
Speaking of specific projects, Emily brought us up to date on the current massive undertaking of EPC: rewriting the Graduation Requirements. They've been rebuilding the requirements from the ground up, digging down and asking, "What should high school really be about?" The new system is massive, and really drafty right now, but I look forward to sharing it with you and getting your input further down the line.
So finally (whew) we're at Thursday. We arrive in Library 1 ready to work and we're greeted by all of the current members of EPC. We exchange formalities, and then dive right in. First task is to choose what committees we're on. That goes by without a hitch, and we move on to wordsmithing the graduation requirements. It took a while. We split off into small groups and worked on parts of the graduation requirements. It took my group one and a half hours to decide on four sentences. To be fair, I get it. Those four sentences are pretty important, and we need to be clear and concise, and I actually enjoyed really thinking about how we want Putney students to be able to communicate. That said, I can see why it's already taken two and a half years to write what we have so far, and it's probably going to take another two years to finish.
So, in all, a pretty good first week on EPC, I'm looking forward to working with the wonderful people on the committee, and I'll share again with y'all next week!
-Asa
*For those of you who want to know, the usual makeup is: The Head of School, All the Department Heads, The Residential Life Coordinator (who is always the dean of students), The Afternoon Activities/Work Program Head, The College Counselor, The Dean of Faculty, Two Student Representatives, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
