Happy New Year, Belmont Day!
Welcome to the month of promise and promises. Nothing allows us the opportunity to clean the slate and start fresh like January. A walk through the Schoolhouse, observing classrooms and students this week, has carried a unique energy and warmth. A teacher in the Labyrinth reminded me that we are returning to the “sweet spot” of the year when students and teachers have great wind in their sails from two weeks of joyful rest. The learned rhythms of the school year are picked up again with relative ease, and we embrace the natural energy that comes from starting new units, lessons, and projects surrounded by our classmates and colleagues.
As for the promises of the new year, I am ever the optimist, and begin each year with resolutions to guide me. (For those of you who share the practice, let’s defy those who suggest that we won’t make it past MLK weekend!) In fact, I have found a structure for my resolve that both helps me stay on task and caters well to my emotional and bookish sensibilities: a Stoic Challenge. Each day in January, I wake up to a new challenge set by Ryan Holiday, a modern-day Stoic and author of Ego is the Enemy, The Obstacle is the Way, and Wisdom Takes Work. Through his blog, “The Daily Stoic,” Holiday offers the “New Year, New You” challenge, and as someone who often looks to the Stoics for inspiration, the challenge inspires both head and heart.
To get things started, on New Year’s Eve, the challenge was to write a list of everything I would consider a hardship or challenge from 2025, then throw that list into the fire as an act of cleansing and physical release of yesteryear’s difficulties. This fiery act clears the deck for a fresh start in 2026. Good thing, too, because the first Stoic challenge of 2026 was an ice bath—a chilly way to bolster the immune system and stimulate the nervous system, and, apparently, just punishing enough to be stoic, too. The remaining challenges have continued to oscillate between intellectual and physical—everything from getting your workplace in order to visiting a local cemetery to be inspired by lives already lived. Perhaps to emphasize the point, today’s challenge is to commit to a “year-defining experience” (another antidote to the list I burned on New Year’s Eve).
With each passing day, and with each new Stoic challenge, I am realizing that for as much as the goal of each day is to do or try something new, challenging and inspiring, it is the larger sum of all of the days—the resolve to try something each day for 31 days, whatever those things may be—that results in more lasting change. This brings me back to my classroom visits and the realization of those ‘sweet spots’ my colleague described.
January in schools is sweet because we have already put so many of those systems of lasting change in place, and now we have the shot in the arm that is Winter Break to propel us further forward. We have already taken our proverbial ice bath and organized our workspaces, and we are ready for that year-defining experience. Consider that in 2026, your child will move from one grade to the next. For our eighth graders, this year will bring the wonders of high school and a new community to discover. For our fifth graders, 2026 will bring the move into middle school. For our kindergarteners, a move to Coolidge for lunch as a first grader. For our third graders, a transition to become an elder cross-graded partner. I would offer that all of these moves are already ‘year-defining.’
For me, I will be defining my year and concluding my tenth year as head at Belmont Day by joining AISNE (Association of Independent Schools in New England) colleagues for a professional development experience on the Salmon River in Idaho this summer. Five days in the wilderness, drawing inspiration from the experience of roughing it alongside fellow heads of school, with a leadership coach who will be helping me to bring the lessons learned there back to Belmont Day in the fall.
So, whatever you’ve resolved to do this year, I hope it is not as cold as an ice bath, but if it is, I hope that you have the resolve to stick with it long enough to find that sweet spot. Welcome back, BDS. Happy New Year.
P.S. – If you’re looking for a quick resolution, consider this my challenge: find a child-sized coat to donate to our Cradles to Crayons coat drive. Officially, it closes today, but we’ll be extending the donation window for those who haven’t yet had the chance to participate.
