Sam Westelman - Dartmouth & Hanover Experts

Coming off the most beautiful time of the year - majestic days of long shadows and inspiring foliage, the 4 weeks from mid November until mid December can be a bit of a letdown! Gray skies replace the blue and those beautiful leaves sit in soggy drifts. Terrible, right? Depressing, right? Not really! The snow will be here soon enough and weekends will be packed with skating, skiing, sledding and great nights spent indoor with close friends and hot cocktails.

This is the time to slow down, enjoy the peace and take care of the 10,000 little things that slipped down your priority list over the summer. This week I'll call the plumber that I was supposed to call 6 weeks ago, change the insurance coverage that should have been done in February and devote an extra hour or two t getting fit for skiing. When you don't have to fight traffic on a regular basis or figure out which restaurant you can get in to this weekend then you can spend a little more time smoothing life's rough edges and there is NOTHING wrong with that!

Hanover Schools keep delivering

Recently our daughter made the transition from elementary school (Bernice Ray School) to middle school (Frances Richmond School). It was a potentially scary time for her because she can be daunted by interactions with older kids, especially if any part of it involves the need to be "cool" or "popular". It was also potentially scary for us as parents because the gap in social development between a brand new 6th grader and a returning 8th grader can be enormous. Were we (and 120 of our closest friends) throwing our minnows into the pond with the big game fish?

Fortunately neither she nor we needed to worry. It isn't by chance or good fortune though - much more seems to be dependent on the fact that the faculty and staff understand the possible pitfalls and have the experience in planning and communication to minimize the trauma! There were group tours for each of the classrooms of 5th graders prior to the end of their school year and two orientation evenings for kids & parents. Although the information given during each of these events was likley repetitive I believe that multiple exposures to the environment and the information helped to diffuse lots of first day jitters.

After 3 weeks in the new environment we were invited to an open house (parents only) to experience a "day in the life" of our children, complete with a rotating class schedule and real-live requirements to navigate the classrooms between periods that let us know what our kids were expected to do several times per day. By the time this open house rolled around we were already prepared for a great experience as our daughter had displayed unexpected exuberance & enthusiasm in the opening weeks of school however I think we got MORE of everything than we anticipated.

Each teacher gave us a picture of their style, their standards, their macro & micro objectives and most importantly...what they offered to those students that wanted to take the subject further than the basics. Can you imagine 7 teachers voluntarily staying after hours to offer paths of exploration in a setting that welcomes the students to find their passion through "noodling"? What the very wise faculty seems to have pulled off here is to make the pursuit of passion "cool" and it certainly seems to be working.

Bravo!

Why the Ray School has worked so well for us

We made the choice to move to the Hanover / Dartmouth area based on one guiding principle - find a community where our children would stay in one school system the whole way through. Giving a single, well-managed school system the opportunity to have your kids from an early age straight through to graduation means that the child's education has a beginning, a middle and an end with the continuity of a single philosophy. Essentially - kids are "fully minted" when they leave.

Ray School Big Playspace

So it was in this vain that our two kids entered the Bernice Ray Elementary School & we were not disappointed in the outcome!

The first thing that hit us was the dedication of the staff. I really can't think of any way that transitions into the school or between grades could have been handled any better. I think teachers have the autonomy to bring their own personalities and passions their classrooms. We feel that the process of matching the child to the teacher with the most appropriate teaching style is done thoughtfully and in our case, the matches worked out very well.

If you go beyond the experiences with classroom teachers and into arts, languages, special needs and phys-ed the school only gets stronger.

In a time when schools are cutting programs we are incredibly fortuntate to have nationally recognized art & music teachers and innovative cultural events performed by the children and in collaboration with the internationally known artists suchas Odds Bodkin, Tomie de Paola and The Loboc Childrens Choir. It certainly doesn't hurt that educators, administrators and performing groups on their way through town for Dartmouth events often make their way to us!

Need proof? Watch how many kids (kindergarten to 5th) RUN up the path to school in the morning! They aren't all running becasue they are late!

When I was living/working in Asia in the late 90's my wife and I decided to buy a house for our eventual return to the US. To give us the maximum flexibility we decided to buy in suburban Boston. Fast forward to 2003 and the process of planning our new lives back home. Since diversity is important to us we gathered the statistics of non-white students in the town where the house we bought was located. Less than 2% - hmmm, not very good.

Were we really going to take our kids from a kindergarten with more than 12 countries represented to a 98% caucasian school system? It seemed like a big step backward. Time to re-evaluate!

Since quality of schools and diversity were co-number 1 factors we realized that our proximity to the urban center of Boston was more of an anchor than a boon. We looked further afield and were pleased to find that we could get everything we wanted in a college town of only 10,000 residents.

On my daughter's first day of 1st grade at the Bernice Ray School I realized that she was one of 5 Asian (or part Asian) kids in a class of 19 kids! I remember feeling "Wow, did we ever find a loophole in the system!" Consequently we have never regretted selling the house we bought and never lived in.

Dartmouth College and Hanover specifically has given us ethnic diversity, best-in-class school facilities and staff as well as culture and healthcare that exceeded our expectations. What we didn't realize we were getting was an incredible sense of community and a much more tolerable pace of life than we ever could have achieved in the city of the burbs.

I want to admit to one of life's little thrills. It has happened a whole bunch of times and it doesn't get any less pleasurable!

Let me set the scene...it's a Sunday evening and my family & I are driving north on Interstate 93 to our Hanover, New Hampshire home some 200 km north of Boston. On the southbound side of the divider are canoes, kayaks, mountain bikes, snowmobiles, snowboards, bass boats, ATVs and horse trailers as far as the eye can see - every one of them sitting in stop & go traffic 3 lanes wide.

If I could ever poll the people heading back to the urbs and the burbs I guess the most would say that they wish they could swap their Monday-Friday gig for their Saturday-Sunday gig. And that's what makes me smile the widest - because we did. Every mile I put between us and the crowd is another guarantee that my Mondays will be traffic-free, low-stress and spent with neighbors who not only yield to a commuting cyclist but gladly offer a smile and a thumbs-up.

When I pass the Dartmouth College campus and step out of the car after the trip back from Boston I am breathing in sweet, cool air and seeing a dazzling display of the heavens. And I don't feel so bad for the Southbounders because when they get home they are probably being lulled to sleep by the sweet sounds of highway traffic.