Mr. ecker Farewell

Gym Drill & Trail Mix: A Reflection on 7 Years at BMS

  In the spring of 2015, I began looking for a school where I could share some of my other interests together with my work as a math teacher. One evening, my wife showed me a job posting she’d found online. She had a strange look on her face and could barely speak, as she gestured to what was on our computer screen: an article from Mawrginalia at this place called The Bryn Mawr School that happened to be hiring.

  I quickly realized why she was overcome. What was this place where a group of students with no prior experience, put together a team to dive in headfirst and compete in highly technical challenges? What kind of school has an alien for a mascot with a pun for its name? The more I read, the more it seemed the school must be from another planet. I would soon discover this was, indeed, the case.

  I tend to get strong feelings about people, locations, and situations. Facts are crucial, but I rely much more on my intuition than you might think to make decisions. This approach rarely leads me astray and after spending seven hours at Bryn Mawr for my interview, I knew it was the place for me. I had a phone interview scheduled the same day at a nearby school, but I canceled it upon returning home. I probably should have done my due diligence, following through with the second meeting to have options, but I believed in what I saw that day.

  From my campus tour by Laura Dennick ‘16 who’d attended Bryn Mawr since she was 18 months old, to the inspiring, welcoming, enthusiastic students who were so engaged during the accidentally way-too-easy lesson on logarithms I taught, to the time spent with bright and conscientious faculty who would become my coworkers, the attention to detail put into my visit and the level of care I received meant a great deal to me. It was not a tough decision to join a community where these qualities were authentic and prioritized. Anyone can put on a good show, but my intuition told me these traits were genuine at BMS. Many thoughts and questions ran through my mind on the way home, but chiefly among them I remember how honored I would be to be able to work with all those people — students, faculty, and staff alike.

  It’s human nature to take things for granted sometimes. Yet repeatedly I’ve seen how the attributes I sensed that day are deeply woven into our school’s culture, so ultimately they can be counted on. You see evidence of this inexplicable, intangible character where you might least expect it, in places that are seemingly random, but this is because it appears everywhere. Yes, we are intense when playing Blammo, but are generally good-natured upon getting tagged. Students part company in the hallway with a genuine, “Have fun in History!” The examples go on and on, but it is a rare and beautiful thing to see older students pass established values down to younger students, who become bearers of these traditions over time. If someone is struggling, we lift them up. The same happens with seasoned faculty and new teachers.

  I am about to finish my seventh year as an Upper School teacher at Bryn Mawr, and my impression that there’s no other school like it hasn’t changed. No school is perfect, every institution should continue to reach, learn, and grow, but we are united by our purpose and the motivation behind our decisions. If one person has a dream, others will help make it happen, be it students or staff.

  I’m so thankful to have become involved with the Robotics team I had read about prior to teaching at BMS. I witness students flying out of their comfort zones on a regular basis and collaborating to achieve remarkable results. Only at Bryn Mawr would a group of students miss curfew during retreat because they were working on physics for their robot. Only at Bryn Mawr would a student grab a reciprocating saw they had never used before to trim down a bar of aluminum in front of a Naval Commander in full dress uniform. Every day, all over campus, I see students that are brave, resilient, creative, problem solvers whose sense of humor, energy, and ingenuity is exciting to be around.

This tendency of Bryn Mawr students to fully put themselves into whatever they do, individually or collectively, is a big part of what I think defines them. Students in my classes and others have made impressive videos for assignments, going far beyond what could have been a quick project that met the requirements. They have launched clubs like Surprise Club to bring joy to others or SNAC to rally students behind ideas. Some students are three-season athletes (an incredible time commitment) while keeping it together academically. Others shine artistically and creatively in galleries or on the stage as well as in the classroom. Still others enjoy immersing themselves with a singular focus providing us with fascinating Edith Hamilton presentations. The innumerable combinations of interests, personalities, and skills that exist across the student body of Bryn Mawr at any given time will leave my mind reeling for quite some time.

  What I respect the most is that, by and large, Mawrtians cooperate with each other in addition to competing. Students want to excel but also want their classmates to do well; they are sincerely glad when others succeed, instead of solely being out for themselves. At athletic events, we cheer for our own team and don’t resort to jabs at our opponents. Not everything runs entirely smoothly, but I feel in general there is a desire to make things better, to build up instead of tear down. Students notice if someone is having a hard time and needs a friend. People don’t laugh if someone gets hurt, because their first instinct is to help. I see BMS students using social media, but there is also interest in making tangible memories together offline: real experiences that will stay with them, through shared achievements, activities like Model Congress, or special nights like dances.

  Day to day, season to season, you never know what’s going to happen at Bryn Mawr. Members of the golf team take turns bringing “trail mix” to matches for everyone to enjoy. This is no pre-packaged trail mix. As unique as the students themselves, I used quotation marks above because it is trail mix in name only at this point. The recipe of each is sometimes comical, reliably different each time, complex, interesting, and willing to take a risk. No two are alike but these commonalities exist between each batch. I would never have guessed that sour patch kids would be mixed with veggie sticks or Fruit Loops would combine with popcorn. Should you eat each ingredient separately, or combine them for a “flavor journey” as was recently suggested? The same as how you make the trail mix, how it should be eaten is up to interpretation. It is at once serious and hilarious, heartfelt and lighthearted. This is who Mawrtians are to me, this is what Mawrtians do.

  Not every school makes time to get together as a group each day as we do for Convocation. I don’t remember what the topic was of the first Convocation speech I saw because I was so blown away to see the event in action. The chaos as hundreds of people arrive to take their seats, followed by the crowd knowing what to do and when to do it, all led by students was pretty wild to see. Each speech is as individual as the student giving it. Each student has the attention of the entire school, and the community has the chance to learn something new about the student and their topic almost every day. Convocation is a hallmark of who we are as a community, and I will truly miss it.

  And then there’s Gym Drill. There aren’t many experiences in life that you can’t summarize for someone who’s unfamiliar; where the best course of action is just to laugh, “I can’t explain, you just have to see it for yourself.” Certainly, you could talk about the alumni gathering on campus, the banner march and its symbolism. You could tell of the sashes, the cultural dances by grade (not to mention the wooden swords!), the speeches, the whole Upper School moving in unison. The cups, the stars, the bars. You could describe all of this and more, but nothing you could portray is the same as being in the audience. I will never know what it’s like to be a student who becomes part of something so powerful and meaningful for everyone involved. I have nothing but admiration for the amount of courage and commitment it takes to do that even with everything else going on in life and the world. I cried at the first Gym Drill I attended and surely I will cry at the last. I am so proud of our students, and I believe in what they are capable of more than I know how to express. They have done and will do, amazing things.

  None of us will be at Bryn Mawr forever. Students will graduate. Faculty and staff will retire or leave for other reasons. Yet we can always return. We had some hard times due to the pandemic but that is not what I will remember after I leave here. I will remember that it turns out it’s been you teaching me all along. The whole here is greater than the sum of its parts; it is our enduring reality, our funny little planet. This is our Bryn Mawr.