David O'Halloran, Headmaster - Saint David's School, New York City

Professionals learn their entire lives. They keep current with the research and development in their field, innovate, implement, reflect, and seek continual improvement. This is the case in medicine, in law, and must also be in education—in particular, teaching, the most noble of professions. At Saint David’s, there’s exciting work going on in professional development under the leadership of Jamie MacNeille, our Director of Teaching and Learning. Faculty members regularly seek out and engage in mission-driven professional development opportunities that include conferences, Teaching For Understanding and innovation workshops, and a new program in exploring action research, which brings academia’s inquiry process into the day-to-day lived experience of our teachers.  For example, several of our faculty recently garnered valuable takeaways to implement with their students after participating in the International Boys School Coalition’s relational teaching conference. We know from rese...

We live in uncertain times, where answers aren’t so easily found, and when they are, they often rapidly change. The questions, however, remain. This is true, in fact, always. Life isn’t about the answers; it is about the questions. Although a baseline of foundational knowledge is important, the true purpose of education is to attain wisdom and understanding, which come to us not through answers, but through questions.    At Saint David’s, questions drive our program. We see this in action this year as we embrace our school-wide theme “scholarly and creative.”   One signature Lower School example is our recently completed collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum for a second-grade fall unit on art. During this unit, our boys engaged in an inquiry process with their art teachers and art educators from the museum. In sessions held both at the museum and at school, the boys examined masterworks by Etel Adnan, Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Vincent Van Gogh. Guidin...