Alumni Journeys

January 18 - I’m just on my way back from the Halifax branch event, which I attended with Tom Karcz, our Assistant Head of School, Community Life, and Caitlin Ford, our Director of Alumni Relations. On Tuesday evening, alumnus and long-serving teacher Dave Suchanek joined Caitlin and me at the Kingston Branch event. A variety of unexpected travel complications in Halifax have provided me an opportunity to jot down some thoughts … time to make some lemonade.

I really enjoy alumni events and spending time chatting with former students about their recollections of Appleby from their student years, their impressions of Appleby today, and their thoughts on the meaning of education seen through the filter of subsequent life experience. Most attendees at the branch events I’ve been at so far are fairly recent grads – those who are either at university now, or who have recently completed it. However, there is usually a smattering of not-so-young alumni.

I am left with a couple of impressions. The first is that recent grads are almost unanimously very happy with the Appleby experiences and feel well-prepared for university. Most significantly, they (and their parents) think that the Senior Two (Grade 12) mandatory boarding program was incredibly positive, especially in how well it prepared students for living away from home and having to develop self-management skills. Ironically, this subject is often a point of great concern for parents of prospective students, especially younger ones. As a parent of a Grade Six student myself, I can appreciate that the thought of having your 11-year child go into boarding can be a bit ominous. But the “half step” towards university seems to be a perfect transition. Having spent the first half of my career in the university sector, it is clear that most students who get into trouble do so not because of some intellectual short-coming, but because of issues with the lifestyle, being able to cope with the freedom, and the need to self-manage without parents or teachers hanging over your shoulder. Spending at least a year in boarding provides the optimal (although not fail-safe) inoculation against these pitfalls. Moreover, the whole Grade 12 class living together forges a powerful bond that will stay with most of them for a lifetime.

I know that this has always been the “official line” about Senior Two boarding, but all of my interactions with recent alumni and their parents have provided the proof – they are raving fans, and there is no more important indicator of success.  It also reinforces why there are a number of heads of other schools who believe (privately) that this is an optimal educational approach. Their problem is that it is almost impossible to start a mandatory boarding requirement in a mixed day/boarding school. It is probably Appleby’s most impactful differentiator.   

In speaking with the not-so-recent alumni, there are a couple of other points that stick with me. The first is that Appleby has changed a great deal over the last 50 years. More than most other schools, there are quite distinct generations of Appleby alumni who, while they had some very similar experiences, also had many profoundly different ones. These changes mean that the nature of alumni connections is quite variable, which challenges us to come up with a variety of ways to stay relevant in the lives of different alumni generations. I have been struck, however, by how many of our more senior alumni have become very comfortable and proud of Appleby today, despite it being in many ways quite different from the school they experienced, and even if they had issues with some of the decisions along the way.

It is also interesting how many alumni have “taken the path less travelled.” I have met with numerous alumni who have spent most of the careers doing different things or in living in different places. The last three discussions I had with grads of my age or older featured one who was a great athlete but a mediocre student. Through some help from Headmaster “Rusty” Bell, he went on to do an undergraduate degree (while playing sports) down East, then surprised many by kicking it up a notch and getting admitted to, then completed a Masters of Economics at the University of Illinois. He worked in labour relations in the shipping industry – certainly not for the faint-of-heart – before a highly successful career in human resources consulting.

The second came to Appleby on scholarship and was one of three outstanding boys from the same Appleby class who went to MIT. He studied engineering at MIT then, after further studies, settled in Silicon Valley just when it started to boom – a trajectory that hasn’t slowed. A very wise soul, I enjoyed talking with him about challenges facing education.

The third graduate came to Appleby to get onto a different path than the one he was on in small-town Lambton County. After finishing at Appleby, he bounced around some colleges, was in a rock band, lived a hippy life on the West Coast, worked as a lifeguard in Australia, then went to university to study education. Partially native Canadian himself, this alumnus has spent most of his life teaching and advising on education in First Nations communities, including some that are only accessible by plane.

I believe that there are many paths to success and it is important to open our students’ minds to some of the potential routes. Often young people feel confined in their plans for the future. Alumni can be helpful by providing examples of outstanding success on in both traditional paths as well as those less travelled. I am hoping that we can have many of these examples brought before our students in the years ahead.