Linden Hill School
Northfield, MA

Letter From Linden Hill School

I am writing as I am heading into the second half of my fifth school year associated with Linden Hill School in Northfield, Massachusetts. What a wonderful location we have so far from the hustle and bustle of the urban traffic, but so proximate to NYC and Boston for our recreation and arts enjoyment! The Linden Hill community and I truly enjoy this 'green' valley style and pace of life.

This year saw a great deal of professional development of the faculty and staff. Faculty presented at conferences, developed new curricula that reflect the newest brain research as well as the traditional multi-sensory Orton-Gillingham methodology. I was fortunate enough to have an article published in the Southeast Education Network's fall magazine (accessible on line), entitled, Finding Our Way: Lessons from Hansel and Gretel, and am working on a follow up that speaks to the implications of current educational issues espoused by Alan November, Daniel Pink and social issues of Friedman's The World is Flat, on specialized learning environments such as Linden Hill's. Finally, I served as President of the Junior Boarding Schools Association most of this year before turning the gavel over to Tom Army of Rectory School at the end of October.

Our administration core at Linden Hill is the most experience team that I have worked with in such close proximity and will such confidence. David and Libbi Murray who are now in their second year with Linden Hill bring experience from thirty years in education in such roles as Admission Director, Dean of Faculty, Division Head, Head of School and Development Director. Walter and PK Sanieski provide approximately the same years of experience but almost entirely at Linden Hill School. Walter is the school's Master Teacher, Assistant Headmaster, and truly represents a large portion of the school's institutional memory. PK is our Orton-Gillingham Fellow and master scheduler, Academic Dean. Along with my, now twenty-eight years of working with middle school students, each of this team is a parent, who understands both the educational and emotional needs of our boys and faculty.

We have been blessed as well, to have secured a team of trustees that support the program and our efforts in every way. Their understanding of the school's mission and newly established core values of responsibility, respect, community, integrity and loyalty is deep and their ownership of them is evident in their daily work and giving patterns toward our school. Having just ratified the school's Strategic Plan that has Linden Hill in place to have reached enrollment milestones, facility upgrades, and development goals by the school's fiftieth birthday in 2011, we now have a road map to show foundations and prospective community members. For the first time in the school's history, our school has an endowment! Linden Hill has not simply survived its difficult times of five years ago; it has surpassed all expectations to be thriving at this time in its history as the oldest junior boarding school for boys with learning differences.

Finally, Linden Hill has committed to globalize its mission in conjunction with the burgeoning changes in the educational landscape of our world. My recent efforts in Korea have helped us create the only existing ESL program in a school that focuses on learning differences. We are working on setting up relationships with local universities and the Yale Reading Center to learn more about the testing and diagnosis tools for these international cultures. Our commitment to this new direction is firm and will ultimately show us to be leaders in our field for our early development of this curricular piece of our program.

I thank you for taking the time to read this letter intended to update you on the progress that we have been blessed to make at Linden Hill over the past five years. I hope that you will remember us and recommend us to families of boys between the ages of 9-16 with language learning differences and/or attention issues. We also can work with high functioning spectrum children with language needs that match our program's strengths as we do wonderful work with social pragmatics at three distinct levels of the program.

Have a wonderful holiday season and may you enjoy time with those close to you over the coming weeks.

Peace,

Jim McDaniel
Headmaster
Linden Hill School