Dear Trivium Families,

I am reaching out with a follow-up and a huge thank you after our annual parent survey. Because of your efforts and follow-through, we nearly doubled our participation rate! I was already being an optimist, but this improvement was even better than I had anticipated, so thank you!

As I said, my leadership team and I pour over these every year as we look ahead and make goals for the future. I have already noted three particular areas to focus on based on your feedback:

1) Homework load and expectations. Actually, it is true that this requires recalibration every few years. Because of their commitment to excellence, our teachers slowly become more eager and zealous for rigor, and we start to tip the scales too far in one direction. I have already begun conversations with leadership, deans, and teachers around this issue, so we can begin to remedy it as quickly as possible.

We certainly don’t want to sacrifice rigor, but homework should be meaningful not plentiful. Additionally, I believe that schoolwork should never be allowed to displace quality time with family and loved ones not to mention a time of respite at the end of the day.

2) Athletics. This has been an area of focus for some time now and one that I mentioned in my “state of the union” letter. We need to continue building relationships, community, and camaraderie among the students; we have done a lot of work on structure over the last two years, and we need to continue building healthy systems, rhythms, and processes – including onboarding, development, and support of coaches. And finally, we will put a concerted effort and focus on proactive communication and collaboration with our parents and teams. To that end, I am very excited about having Mr. Wahlstrom step in recently, because I am confident he and I together will be able to make these changes.

3) Discipline and teacher-student relationships. There is a fine line to walk between rigorous expectations of behavior and humane, subjective responses to particular behaviors. This is something we need to keep getting better at. Of course, it was much easier when there were 84 students and 6 teachers. The ripple effects of exercising subjective judgment and grace were miniscule and manageable. Now, with nearly 900 students and 110 staff, we simply must have standardized systems and policies. However, I will never condone enacting policies at the expense of the human connection and the relationships with students. I will admit that I don’t yet know exactly how we will tackle this, but this is my promise that we will get better at caring for and loving on our students as we walk them through teaching and learning moments.

Thank you again for all of your responses; we can only get better if we all chip in and work toward our common goal of excellence and virtue, and I am so thankful for your partnership in that great endeavor. Your commitment to and engagement in the life of Trivium is one of the primary reasons that working here is one of my life’s greatest privileges to date.

Now, I’m sure you’ve been on pins and needles regarding the possibility of a “jeans” day. I am very happy to say that, because you nearly doubled our previous response rate, I am granting all of our students a jeans-day spirit day this Thursday! So, all students may wear any sneakers of their choosing, jeans (no holes, etc.), and a spirit wear shirt!

Have a wonderful rest of the week, and GO KNIGHTS!!

Warmly,

Headmaster Schutten