Last weekend, my father-in-law and I were watching football. It just so happened that the quarterback coach for one team was my friend from college. My friend was injured early in his college football career and never played quarterback. So my father-in-law asked why it was that these NFL professionals would trust a guy that barely played division III football and never played the position he was tasked with coaching. While phrased differently, I had asked my friend essentially the same question back when he was coaching Eli Manning. (He eventually helped Eli win a Super Bowl ring.)

He shared that professional football players are very clear in their goals and aspirations. They understand that the coach’s job is to make them better and to prepare them for success. Of course, a good coach must constantly be working to know about the position they coach and the players they coach. In the end, the player and the coach are united in their goals and aspirations.

At The Beech Hill School, the relationship between the students and the faculty work in much the same way. The students, their parents, and the faculty are all on the same team, working together to help the student achieve their goals and chase their dreams. To be effective in this, teachers must be honest in their feedback and thoughtful in their delivery. I have worked at schools where students, and sometimes faculty, have taken an us and them stance, where they relationship is untrusting and adversarial. Fortunately, that is not the case at BHS.

While our teachers are not compensated like NFL coaches and our students are not quite as single-mindedly focused on goals as professional athletes; we share a common purpose in understanding that the only way to “win” is to help bring out the best in those in our care. This, I believe, is one of the important reasons that students thrive at The Beech Hill School.