Head of School Blog - Thinking About School

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Off to Kathmandu!

Namaste Wooster!

As most of you know, I will be leaving on Saturday morning with three Upper School students to travel to Kathmandu, Nepal and make connections with teachers, students, and families at the Rashmi School. Our partnership with the Rashmi School is hopefully the first of many that we will be establishing under the auspices of our Center for Social Impact and Innovation. The students and I will be engaging in an initial “problem identification” process with the school, which means we’ll be asking questions, listening, and observing over the course of several days to better understand life at the school, and in Kathmandu in general. Our goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the school’s goals for its students, and the aspirations that students and parents have for themselves. If we can begin to understand these goals within the context of the Nepalese culture, and our own conceptions of what a happy, successful school looks like, we can begin to figure out how we can best help each other. While there, we will also be meeting with members of the Ten Friends Organization and visiting the Happy Home orphanage that they’ve established in Nepal. Using the same process, we also hope to partner with them going forward.

Part of the mission of The Center for Social Impact and Innovation is to open up opportunities for Wooster students to have a positive social impact “beyond the bridge.” As with all of what we do, these opportunities start with us being thoughtful about who we are hoping to help, and how best to help them create a better life for themselves. This is not unlike what we are doing everyday here on campus with our own students and families. I’m fairly certain that our trip is going to be a deep learning experience for those of us who are going, and a great opportunity for our whole community to get involved in the future. We’ll be doing a little bit of blogging from Nepal, so stay tuned for some updates.