Head of School Brian Easler and Dean of Faculty Wally Swanson will serve as speakers when prep school administrators and faculty members from throughout the country gather in Boston for The Association of Boarding Schools' annual conference.
Mr. Easler will speak to new heads of school on the topic of being a new headmaster, while Mr. Swanson will offer a presentation on the perspective of boarding school athletics.
"Of all the heads in the 250 or so boarding schools in the country, I'm honored to be asked to be on this small faculty," said Mr. Easler, who attended the same seminar in the summer of 2014 when he started as WMA's Head of School. "I benefitted from it greatly when I first started and I hope to offer the little pearls of wisdom to people who are just starting out."
Mr. Easler will be one of four new heads to present at his session of "New Heads Symposium: Supporting the Unique Life and Work of a Boarding School Leader." Specifically, Mr. Easler will address the delicate matter of school management.
"I went to this session when I first became head of school," Mr, Easler explained. "Many of the pearls of wisdom that have guided me well, I received from heads at this preconference workshop. My intent is to do the same for others, to pass on things to them that will help them with their transition to this complicated role."
Meanwhile, after going to TABS Conferences for many years, Mr. Swanson realized the topic of athletics was often overlooked despite being such a prevalent part of boarding school life. He will be one of two administrators for "The Four Sportsmen of the Apocalypse," which will dive into trying to balance maintaining the core values of sports in a world of specialization.
"My colleague and I have been talking about this for years," Mr. Swanson said. "You go to all these conferences and there's never one thing on sports, but as schools we dedicate arguably too much time and an incredible amount of time toward athletics, but we never actually discuss them in an intellectual forum. We thought that was weird. There are presentations on everything but nothing on sports.
"As athletics gets more and more specialized, which is great, it's a small percentage of kids. We want to make sure the majority of the kids playing sports at school have a positive experience."
Mr. Swanson serves as the WMA Rugby coach. He will present with the Hotchkiss School Ultimate Frisbee coach.
"One reason we did this is because as schools we become increasingly diverse with kids from around the world," Mr. Swanson added. "It's hard for a chunk of our population to excel at traditional American sports they've never had access to. Bringing in sports that are a little more international, or new for everybody, puts everyone literally on a level playing field."