Noon Wednesday, April 14, 2004 through noon Friday, April 16, 2004
Sugarloaf Conference Center * 9230 Germantown Ave. * Philadelphia, PA 19118
215-242-0731 * Fax: 215-242-3911 * e-Mail: mallery@davidseminars.com

A Small Gathering of School Heads

As we move toward the eighteenth of these Seminar-Treats for the Head of the School, and as I look down the list of the 325 heads of school from all over the world who have taken part in one or another of them, I have such a feeling of deep respect and admiration for the procession of people who have come to these gatherings and have found their ways in them, alone and with others, to make something fine for themselves and each other.

Having the seminar be invitational is not to make it clubby. It is so that past participants can portray the Seminar-Treat to colleagues, friends, seek them out, then let me know about them, and I can get in touch with them directly. The process has brought together an extraordinary range and variety of talented people of many different kinds of schools between New York and Beylorussia, California and Hong Kong, Chicago and Athens, Cleveland and Bucharest. We continue to take the word "treat" seriously, and do not apologize for it or hurry to explain that the gathering is serious and professional. "Treat" has many meanings, and we hope the heads of school who gather for the sixteenth one of these will find their own most appropriate and congenial meanings for it as they make their experience alone and together across three days in April, 2001.

Of course I know April is an incredibly busy time for heads of school. Of course I know heads worry about faculty development money and often hesitate to ask their boards for a special grant for themselves. (Don't hesitate!) Of course I know that heads are so often over-meetinged, over-seminared, overwhelmed with nuts-and-bolts lectures and visionary big picture exhortations. Instead of all that, this Seminar-Treat offers

• Time...alone and with 20 or so other people who share the unique experience of heading a school, time for reflection, sorting out, savoring, designing, enjoying, renewing, replenishing, even time for celebrating one's talent and mission and personal/professional splendor.

• A chance to engage in active conversation with two authors, one an independent school headmaster, one a Harvard University researcher/professor/artist: Richard Hawley, author of, The Headmaster's Papers, Seeing Things: A Chronicle of Surprises and Boys Will Be Men, and Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, whose artistry in "portraiture" shines in The Good High School, Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer, and I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation (published six months before the tenth Seminar-Treat). These books will be available for purchase from our office and will be the "homework"--delightful and illuminating, not duty-reading, for the seminar.

• Other sessions will be just the participants together, with David Mallery simply as instigator-presider, in which the heads explore with each other issues that seem particularly interesting, urgent, alive for them, and in which the heads' own vision, hopes, sense of their own stories, their own journeys, are explored and celebrated.

• A setting that is comfortable, even a bit elegant... grounds that are beautiful and abundantly celebrating spring time...surroundings for walks, runs, exploring woods.

Special note: Many heads have been sending and continue to send their teachers to our seminars (Experienced Pro, Westtown, First Five Years in Teaching, Administrator's Life, etc.), gatherings in which we continue to do our best to treat them like kings and queens and provide some reflection and stimulation, collegiality and renewal. Now it's your turn in the king-and-queen department.

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