Wednesday, July 29, 2009

From High School Teacher To Leading Our Troops

Jack Blair forwarded me this story earlier this week. It features a former Winchendon School teacher Suzie McKinley who is now doing important work in Iraq.

CAMP AL TAQADDUM, Iraq - Being a high school teacher, a professional soccer player and a firefighter in one's local town are all great accomplishments. For one woman who has been all three, there was still something more she desired to pursue. The majority of active-duty second lieutenants serving in the Marine Corps are right out of college or already have prior-enlisted service before deciding to become commissioned officers. But at 31 and having lived through more real-life experiences than the majority of her peers, 2nd Lt. Suzie McKinley has finally found her calling as a Marine Corps officer. She is currently serving her first deployment to Iraq as the G-6 communications operations officer for the 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward) aboard Camp Al Taqaddum, Iraq. However, just a few years ago, she found herself within the confines of a classroom teaching at the Winchendon School in Winchendon, Mass. The school was not your typical high school. It held classes from 9th grade through postgraduate school, and students enrolled ranged anywhere from your star athlete destined to be drafted to the National Basketball Association, to international students who would return to their native country to serve a number of years in their nation's military. Nonetheless, McKinley loved teaching. She loved the impact she made on the students and the remarkable progress she would see in their academic abilities over the course of only several months. But then there came a point where she felt like she was coming up short. "I needed to be able to do more," McKinley said. "I owed my students more; I wanted to get out and get [credibility] . I felt like I hadn't lived." In hopes of finding that "something more," McKinley left the Winchendon School in 2003 to pursue her master's degree in English literature at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt., assuming that furthering her education was the answer. However, in an unexpected, but welcome, turn of events, she found an opportunity to play on a female professional soccer team, the Vermont Voltage, where she competed against teams from Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and Canada. Having played soccer since she was old enough to walk, McKinley remembers the offer as an opportunity she could not pass up. Unfortunately, she did it for the love of the game and not the money, so she had to hold a few jobs to make ends meet. She coached soccer at the local high school, managed a backcountry ski center, and if that wasn't enough, she also became a firefighter in her town's local fire department in Ripton, Vt. "It was a once in a lifetime shot to train and play at that level," McKinley said. "The best part of it was to have all the young kids come out to the games and see us play, and to see a light in their eyes because they know there are opportunities out there." As much as she loved to play soccer, it was the rush and adrenaline in being a firefighter and being part of an organization where she would be able to possibly take part in saving someone's life that started to draw her into firefighting. Unfortunately, the day came when McKinley and her squad couldn't get to a victim in time. She still vividly remembers when she and a fellow member of her squad went into the building to retrieve the body. She had trained for something like this, but when they got to the scene, they found that there was a second victim. The woman's pet Rottweiler never left his owner's side. That was the tipping point that caused her to search for a way where she would be able to firefight full time. "Once you experience something like that, you can't just do it part time . I wanted all of it," she said. "When the pager goes off, everything stops. The world stops spinning and someone needs help. The only thing that matters is to get from A to B to get to that person." Her first step was to attempt to enter the Air National Guard Crash Fire Rescue, where she would be able to make firefighting a career. But after beginning the process and going through the physical, she was placed on a waiting list. Discouraged by the waiting process, McKinley was talked into going to see a Marine Corps officer selection officer. After the OSO discussed the training regiment, what she would be tested to do, combined with the leadership, physical training and the opportunity to serve her country, she knew she was hooked. "This is what I was meant to do," she said as she serves on her first deployment overseas as one of the officers-in-charge of a section of 19 Marines. "This is it, because I still have those kids looking at me, but they're not in my English class, they're Marines." McKinley finds that many of the attributes that gained her success as a teacher in the classroom are transferrable over to her new role as a Marine officer. She says there's a requirement to be patient, honest and you have to be okay with not being liked all of the time. But most importantly, you have to be willing to listen. She has the utmost respect for each of the Marines with whom she has the pleasure of serving. "The utter gratitude I have for them at their age to make the sacrifice," she said. "I can't imagine at 18, 19 joining the Marine Corps, but here these Marines are doing such an enormous service for themselves and their country." Although there is no definite plan for what her future looks like, McKinley does know she eventually plans to return to teaching now that she has earned the knowledge and credibility she yearned for back when she was teaching in that 9th grade classroom.

This story was copied from DVIDS, a video distribution system for the armed forces. Click here to go to the original story.

Congratulations and good luck Suzie. You are an inspiration for many.



Monday, July 27, 2009

Why boarding schools are like fire stations...

I am settling into a week of vacation in Maine, which gives me time to think about all that we prepare for at Winchendon. Summertime may be the busiest time of year as it is the time that we work to make sure that we are well prepared.

I used to keep a quote from Andy Grove pasted over my desk, but now I can't find it. Grove, one of the founders and former CEO's of Intel, had been asked how he had been so successful at building Intel His response was that he worked to keep his team prepared in the same way that the best fire station crews are. As in fighting fires, Intel could never fully predict what the opportunities or challenges would be as they pioneered the micro-processor business. Grove argued that a fire fighting team could never anticipate every possible scenario but were best prepared if they were able to work closely together to solve problems as they confronted them.

Success in boarding school is much the same. Our schools are in some respects living organisms that need to be adaptable and have teams of faculty and administrators prepared to work closely together to tackle challenges and opportunities. We are very fortunate to have just such a team at Winchendon. Who would have thought that we would face an ice storm, the H1N1 influenza, a crumbling economy, and $140 oil and $50 oil all within the same twelve months? Yet we navigated all of those and have continued to move our School forward in amazing ways, with many campus and program improvements, continued faculty development and impressive accomplishments by our students in so many facets of their Winchendon experience. And 2009/2010 is poised to be more exciting and successful despite the obvious challenges on the horizon.

I've always appreciated Andy Grove's wisdom. Grove would be impressed by the Winchendon team. It's a group who are especially wonderful teachers in part because they would also make good firefighters and would even likely rise to the challenge of figuring out the next generation of chips if that would help our students be more successful.

In case I have not said it often enough, "thank you" again Winchendon faculty and staff.

50 Years of appreciation

This weekend members of the extended Kerney family gathered in Maine to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary. It was a wonderful celebration with lots of love, appreciation and great stories that at least we found very funny. Fifty years is a long time, and we could have easily filled the three days with recollections of the wonderful things that my parents have done for us and so many others.

However, when it came down to time to distill our most important thoughts to just a few words, the thing that we wanted to say the biggest "thank-you" for in addition to their love and support was for the incredible commitment and sacrifices that they made to ensure that my brother, sister and I had the best possible education. They both worked long hours, drove cars more miles, took fewer vacations, considered chipped beef on toast a delicacy and generally lived frugally in order to send the three of us to the best available day school, boarding schools and expensive colleges. There were challenges, but the one thing that would never be compromised was getting a good education.

Sometimes we don't stop and reflect enough, but this weekend helped me refocus on why this is so important. Thanks again Mom and Dad for all of your love and support, for the thousands of wonderful memories, and for insisting that he three of us had the best education.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

As another thunderstorm rumbles through...!

If water is one of our most precious resources (as we know it is), Mother Nature has been incredibly generous to us over the last five weeks. I just don't know if I can convince our great grounds team who have kept the campus and golf course looking beautiful despite having to work most days in their rain gear. Thanks team!