Our Wildwood, Summer 2017, Volume 41

a l l s c h o o l f e a t u r e

by Landis Green, HEAD OF SCHOOL

Our Wildwood /Summer 2017 10/11

“The Progressive School ... should be a laboratory where new ideas, if worthy, meet encouragement; where tradition alone does not rule, but the best of the past is leavened with the discoveries of today, and the result is freely added to the sum of educational knowledge.”

“There’s a school in LA. I think you’d like it, and I think they’d like you.”

Chris Arnold, the consultant whom the Board of Trustees hired to guide the search for Hope Boyd’s successor, had called me after a meeting with the search committee because he thought I might be a good fit. It was May 2006, and that was the first I had heard of Wildwood School. Eleven years later, bringing my 10th year at Wildwood to a close, I have met with dozens of

now-old friends, former trustees, and longtime colleagues. Together, we did exactly what we so deliberately and rigorously ask our students to do: We reflected on the work we’ve done together, as well as the work to come. On my first visit to interview with the search committee—made up of 10 teachers, administrators, and trustees—I distinctly remember thinking that Chris had been right. Indeed, I had found in Wildwood a school and community that included so much of what I value in this work. Although I have been circumspect in referencing it too often with those who are unfamiliar with Quakerism, my 10 years at Wilmington Friends School were particularly influential in my life as an educator. The spiritual belief that God is in everyone, which is central to Quaker philosophy in education, seemed to me then—and now—as entirely consistent with how we view the students in our care at Wildwood. Each student, as an individual, is to be respected and honored for who they are, for what they have to contribute, and for how they can grow.

PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, 1919