School Announcement
Dear Oxford School Families & Faculty,
After an extensive candidate resume review, followed by a thorough interview process, which saw several talented candidates, we are delighted to announce that Adam de Pencier will become our next Head of School. He has committed to our facility for a minimum 7-year term commencing August 1, 2020.
Adam’s most recent appointment was Deputy Head at Grand Banks Preparatory School near St. John’s, NL, where he advised this new school on admissions, HR, and curriculum development. Prior to Grand Banks Prep, Adam was a school Head in Canada and the United States, including Blyth Academy (Toronto), Trafalgar Castle School (Whitby, ON), Hammond School (Columbia, SC), and Madison Country Day School (Madison, WI). Adam’s held teaching and administrative jobs at several leading Canadian independent schools including Upper Canada College (Toronto), Branksome Hall (Toronto), and Trinity College School (Port Hope, ON).
Adam earned degrees from Queen’s University (B.A. Hons., M.A.), and the Universities of Edinburgh (Merit Cert.), Chicago, (M.A.), and Columbia (M.Ed.). He also studied at Harvard’s Principals’ Centre, and completed his diploma towards a Q.Med. (Qualified Mediator) designation in the Province of Ontario.
An accomplished writer, Adam publishes articles in the Globe and Mail, National Post, and Lake Superior Magazine, on topics including education, sports, and the environment. Adam enjoys spending time on Lake Superior’s north shore and is an enthusiastic bagpiper with the Toronto Fire Service Pipes & Drums.
“I am thrilled to be coming to the Oxford School, and a careful interview process made it clear that this is a place where every child is known and loved. The team were very clear that a cheerful, supportive, environment is prized by families. So it’s an honour to build on the legacy created by Sandra Hurley, and continued by George Friesen and the Van Haeren family”.
Adam lives in Toronto with his wife Jane, their two university aged sons, and a King Shepherd “Puff”, who looks forward to moving to the Woodstock area.
In making this important decision, we thank the many parents who returned surveys about what makes the Oxford School so special; your input was indispensable to making the right decision in the interest of your wonderful children.
And on behalf of our entire community, we want to express our profound gratitude to our outgoing Head of School, George Friesen: George transitioned the school successfully from our founding Head, and into our new building, with the greatest skill and diligence. We look forward to properly honouring George this spring, and will provide information about when parents, teachers, and students can meet Adam.
Yours sincerely,
The Van Haeren Family
Q & A With Our Future Head of School
Recently, we sat down (well, over the phone that is) with our soon to be new Head of School, beginning in the 2020-2021 School Year, Adam de Pencier to elaborate on some of the things we learned in the interview process that we could share with The Oxford School families and faculty.
TOS: Tell us a little bit about where you’re coming to us from.
Adam: My most recent assignment was Grand Banks Preparatory School, just outside of St. John’s. It’s a small school with a unique value proposition: all students (high school) spend three months at sea on a tall-mast schooner. It’s now under construction and is slated to open in 2021. I’ve been helping with the admissions, curriculum, and building the campus.
Prior to that it’s been at several schools of all shapes and sizes: all girls, all boys, co-ed, boarding, day, elementary, high school, Canadian and American.
TOS: So how are you handling the current coronavirus lockdown?
Adam: Well first of all, let’s look at the school: the teachers have done an outstanding job, to judge by the website, Facebook, and conversations I’ve had. This level of commitment during a time of such uncertainty speaks volumes; it means that the school should come out of all of this as strong, if not stronger, then it currently is. Teachers in the public system, through no fault of their own, are simply unable to have this level of outreach. Ditto for the universities.
As for me and our family, we are all fine and getting on with it.
TOS: What attracted you to coming to the Oxford School?
Adam: Lots!
First, the bios of the faculty members told a compelling, uncontrived, and unaffected story. I was touched by each and every one. I’ve worked in schools, especially independent schools for years, and you’d be surprised (or maybe wouldn’t) at how rare this candour is. I also liked how the Oxford School has developed organically, has stayed true to the tenants and values of its creator, Sandra Hurley. Small schools produce big results. Academics, sure, but more than that a happy environment, and this is the foundation for any success in an elementary school. When I sat down with Bill and Tony Van Haeren, and Jackie Bowcott and Cheryl Van Haeren, they projected a personal and empathetic vision of what they want for a school that will serve the families of Oxford County.
When I came in for my first interview Yvonne was just lovely—she took a whole bunch of time that she really didn’t need to (or probably have time for) to make me feel comfortable; I consider her position to be among the most important since hers is the first point of contact for families and so many other details.
My last conversation with the search group was the clincher. Bill Van Haeren said to me, ‘this is a really important decision for us. We want to get it right’. That sort of commitment won me over. I thought, “well, if the Van Haerens are going to put their trust in me, I can’t let this opportunity slip away and not justify their confidence’.
TOS: Do you have a management style? A philosophy of education?
Adam: So the thing about running a school is that you have to have lots of different styles, or temperaments, since the constituent parts are so different: a child in tears requires a very different approach than a building contractor who in turn is altogether different from a concerned parent or teacher. A Head of School runs something like a busy doctor’s office: you never know what’s coming through the door. Sometimes it’s the sniffles, sometimes something more serious.
On the “philosophy” side of things I’d say that effort is almost always more important than ability, and children have the capacity to learn way more than we give them credit for, given strong teaching and a vibrant environment.
TOS: What does a good school look like?
Adam: There are a hundred things to point to, but there are two that encompass the rest: first, that students can concentrate, and second, that every student is known and loved.
Distraction is the educational erosion that undercuts any and every seed we’re trying to plant in our students. But what if distraction is all you’ve ever known? That is the challenge our children face, and we adults—parents and teachers—have to treat white noise as a matter of urgency. The school can greatly minimize all this and in so doing, open up band width for the kids to focus on things that are more important and lasting.
On being valued and included, there was a survey done by the Toronto District School Board that found that almost 75% of students didn’t feel there was any adult they could turn to in their school if they were in distress. Now that’s heartbreaking.
Everything I’ve seen convinces me this is the farthest thing from the day to day experience for The Oxford School students, so the school is in a really good place to succeed.
TOS: we want our new Head of School to be with us for several years. Where would you like to see the school down the road?
Adam: I would hope the school will be firmly established as a school of choice in Southwestern Ontario, and have an even wider reputation for innovation and excellence. Now exactly what form this takes—additional grades, facilities, specific programmes—is difficult to know, but any school is either rising or falling, so progress and improvement will follow as a matter of course if we all do our part.
ToS: Great teachers: born or made?
Adam: Both. I think it’s misguided to cast teaching as a strict profession like engineering, law, or medicine, and attempts to do so miss the more nuanced, vocational and personal side that encompasses a classroom. Teachers are working in a unique context, much more than the aforementioned, and the strategy you deploy in one school may vary widely from the next. But the stresses on a bridge, a contract, or the heart are pretty much the same everywhere.
Now there is a lot that a younger teacher can learn from someone more experienced, and wherever I was able as a Head I teamed up people to work together. Teachers can also learn from simply visiting other classrooms in the school, but this doesn’t happen as often as you’d think. It takes more than a few years to become a good teacher.
I will be a resource to all of our faculty, help them grow, and (hopefully) make their work more fulfilling. If they are happy and reaching their students, then everything will fall into place.
TOS: Can you tell us about one of your more memorable teachers?
Adam: Ah, but I have been blessed! There have been so many. The first was Mrs. Medhurst in grade 3 and 4; her classroom was a treasure trove of rocks, plants, books, microscopes, and costumes. She was extremely creative. Our school was in downtown Toronto, right near the university’s medical school. I don’t know how she managed this, but we were given two hours once a month to visit the UofT Medical School, and there are several friends from those grades, who naturally, studied medicine. What a gift she gave us.
Another memorable teacher was in university, a philosopher named Philip Jackson. He was the first person to coin or discover the term “Emotional Intelligence”, long before it was fashionable. Professor Jackson grasped that children have an inner world that simply won’t be quantified on a standardized test. As he put it, “endlessly testing children is like putting an oyster in a slot machine. Something gets broken”.
But again, I could have chosen several others who had just as big an impact—for example coaches and camp counsellors-- and they were all characters who simply wouldn’t fail where their students were concerned.
TOS: How do you see your first year unfolding at TOS?
Adam: So I crafted something of a “first 180 days” with the Search Committee, and I want to deliberately reach out, ask lots of questions, and report back to people on what they told me. I roughly divide my job into the day to day and the strategic: the former is making sure we’re caring for our children, reassuring our parents as such, and making sure that the teachers have the resources to do their job. The strategic comes at the end of the day, namely, how did we do, what did we learn, could we do better, and what does the future hold? These two poles are really quite different and require different skills. It’s my job to make sure we’ve got a good school today and a viable one next year and the next several to follow.
TOS: Tell us a little bit about your wife and family?
Adam: They’re great!
ToS: Any more details?
Adam: My wife Jane is very musical and left instruments lying around the house -- guitar, tambourine, clarinet, whatever, and sooner or later the kids would pick it up and she'd take it from there. Now our sons are both in university and learned a lot about music from their mother
TOS: in our letter to parents and faculty you mentioned two particular passions as Lake Superior and bagpipes. Care to elaborate?
Adam: So when I was a young boy in elementary school I had a great love of maps and for whatever reason one of the Great Lakes caught my eye and I had it very early in my mind that I would explore Lake Superior. This has taken many forms, from my wife and I paddling the entire north shore, to cottaging with our children when they were very ‘wee. After learning to swim in Lake Superior, they never complained of cold water again! Our dog “Puff” is a King Shepherd with a dash of Newf, so she has big flippers and loves to swim in the big rollers. I’m already looking forward to the ice going out.
I learned to play the bagpipes when I was in university at Queen’s, which has lots of Scottish traditions; in my third year I did an exchange at the University of Edinburgh and that hooked me for good where the pipes are concerned. A musical instrument is a friend for life. I’ve taught the pipes at every school I’ve worked, so maybe there will be a new club!