Our Wildwood, Volume 53

DEAR FRIENDS A Letter from Landis

The same was true of the genesis for the Portrait of a Lifelong Learner, the implementation of which is featured on page 26. For years people had asked the question of why a K-12 school would have two complementary yet distinct sets of language to frame the work with students, Life Skills (K-5) and Habits of Mind and Heart (6-12). The committee that developed the Portrait, which is both an integration and evolution of the Skills and Habits, used that “raw material” to build something new, while also integrating new concepts that weren’t specifically named in either the Life Skills or Habits (technology or diversity and inclusion work, for example), both of which are central to students’ experiences at Wildwood. Reading about these first 25 years of Wildwood School as a K-12 in this issue, I’m inspired by what we have built together and proud to be affiliated with an institution that reveres its past by reflecting on it to continually improve. I hope you enjoy reading this special issue of Our Wildwood as much as those of us involved have enjoyed preparing it for you.

There’s a passage in a book I read last summer— Transitions , by William Bridges—that came to mind as I reviewed the content of this issue of Our Wildwood . Bridges wrote: “Thus it is important in times of transition to reflect on the past for several reasons—not the least of which is that, from the perspective of a new present, the past is likely to look different. For the past isn’t like a landscape or a vase of flowers that is just there. It is more like the raw material awaiting a builder.” I read the book through the lens of the professional transition I’ll be making next year when I leave Wildwood, but this quote and several others also left me reflecting on the work we’ve done over the course of the last two decades—the privileged and sacred work of preserving the best of Wildwood, while, in the words of Ted Sizer, recognizing that, “...good schools change every year.” Anne Roberts and Wayne Neiman, featured on page 14, were some of the first people I met at Wildwood School, as I interviewed as a candidate for the headship. Together with hundreds of others during that process, they made it clear that their expectation was that together we would carry forward the best of Wildwood School, using it as the “raw material” to which Bridges refers in that passage above.

Warmly,

Landis Green Head of School

OWW SUMMER 2025

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