A brief note to our new families (and a refresher for those returning!): Head of School letters are meant to offer a glimpse into the conversations and decisions shaping the School. With the exception of my car line letter on Monday, procedural messages with action items will come from teachers, advisors, or divisional communication. One of the great privileges of this role is connecting with our families. If something in my Head of School letters resonates with you, don’t hesitate to reach out. I love generative conversations with families, and I promise to respond.
Dear Wellington Community,
Today we begin Wellington's forty-fifth year. What a joy it is to see our new and returning Jags on campus, all together again!
As I mentioned in my July letter to you, this summer I came across the Wellington Covenant, written by the community in 1987.
THE WELLINGTON COVENANT (1987)
Wellington is a community of students, faculty/staff, parents, and trustees based on mutual responsibility and interdependence. In order to contribute to the achievement of that vision I will strive to:
Thirty-nine years later, I write in the familial spirit of my predecessor and friend David Blanchard, who was the first Head of School to share these words, to recommit myself to this covenant, and to ask the same of each of you. I do so with immense gratitude for a community that loves children deeply, values partnership, and understands that education is both a shared responsibility and a shared joy.
Among the many things that make me proud of Wellington, none stands above the way this community comes together around children: with high expectations, generous hearts, and an unwavering commitment to their growth. May it always be said of Wellington that no community loved children more deeply, partnered more faithfully, showed up for one another more steadfastly, or devoted itself more fully to helping young people thrive and become their very best selves. At the center of all that we do at Wellington are our Mission and Values.
Educational Excellence in Changing Landscapes
Wellington’s founders began the School with a simple question: How can school be better? More importantly, they embedded in Wellington a habit of continually revisiting that question as teachers, students, and school leaders reimagine the School for each new generation.
The answers explain why Wellington is recognized nationally for its forward-thinking approach to education: engagement as our North Star; outstanding teachers with the autonomy and support to teach well; intellectually curious students whose time and attention we protect; a pragmatic yet steadfast approach to innovation; an intentionally diverse community with the courage to embrace difference and see beyond singular narratives; and graduates with the confidence and capacity to contribute meaningfully to the world.
This is our definition of educational excellence. Wellington teaches foundational knowledge and skills exceptionally well while creating meaningful opportunities for students to apply their learning through inquiry, problem-solving, collaboration, and authentic real-world experiences. We teach students how to think, not what to think, through work that is both demanding and deeply engaging. We ground instruction in evidence about how students learn and in a deep understanding of each child as an individual, personalizing learning to their strengths, interests, and readiness. Our ambition is not simply to prepare students for college, but to make their years at Wellington the most meaningful and formative educational experience of their lives.
True to our entrepreneurial roots, we remain deeply curious and ambitious about what education can and should be. We exercise sound judgment about technology: we embrace it when it meaningfully strengthens or personalizes learning and set it aside when it does not, recognizing that human connection, deep thinking, and many of the most important aspects of education require no technology at all.
This year, as we begin again for the forty-fifth time, we return to that enduring question: How can school be better? I want us to explore it through a specific lens: What does it mean to be well educated for tomorrow's world?
The trustees and faculty who drafted our Objectives in 1989 were answering that question for their time. Since then, Wellington has answered it every year through the program we offer and the way we offer it, and through what we require, what we teach, what we assess, and what we celebrate.
For centuries, schools have relied on essays, tests, projects, and problem sets as evidence of an educated mind. No one confused those things with learning itself. We accepted them as useful proxies because producing them required sustained thinking, judgment, communication, and understanding. In just a few years, artificial intelligence has unsettled much of that arrangement. Many, though certainly not all, of the products that once demonstrated learning can now be produced with technological assistance.
That presents an important question: as traditional evidence of learning is changing, what knowledge, skills, habits of mind, and character traits should schools cultivate and measure? This is precisely the kind of question Wellington was built to answer. Our work this year is straightforward: to articulate, with clarity and conviction, what a Wellington education should produce in its graduates and determine how our curriculum, assessments, and use of emerging technologies can best support that vision.
This work has already begun:
- Last week our faculty spent a full day with Ian Kelleher, co-author of Neuroteach, and Tia Henteleff, author of As We Begin, exploring what the science of learning asks of classrooms and how Wellington can continue to align its practice with that research.
- This fall, Shelley Brown, Assistant Head of School for Academics, and Trustee Sophia Mohr ’91, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer at COTA, will convene an AI Task Force. Its purpose is not simply to help students use AI but to rigorously examine the practical questions that arise in real classrooms and determine whether what we ask students to do continues to build the minds we say we are building. Our aim is to understand what students need to know, understand, and be able to do in a world where AI is changing how people work, create, solve problems, and lead.
- Throughout the year, we will engage faculty, students, parents, alumni, trustees, and outside experts in this conversation. I will share what we are learning along the way. In the spring, we will publish the result: a clear statement of what it means to be well educated at Wellington and an accompanying roadmap for how the School will continue to realize that vision in an age of AI.
Welcome Anew and Welcome Back!
A warm Wellington welcome to our 107 new students — 66 in Early Childhood and Lower School, 23 in Middle School, and 18 in Upper School. We are glad these families chose Wellington.
To our 630 returning students and families, welcome back — and a particular welcome to the 55 members of the Class of 2027, beginning a milestone year we cannot wait to share with them.
Wellington opens with 737 students: 305 in Early Childhood and Lower School, 223 in Middle School, and 209 in Upper School. With a 7:1 ratio, average class size holds at under 18 in ECLS (with much smaller groups for math and literacy, and lead teachers plus learning guides in classrooms), and under 16 in MS and US.
A special welcome back to our faculty and staff. Watching this group prepare over the past weeks has been a source of great pride, and I am grateful beyond measure to work for Wellington alongside them. We also welcome 18 new faculty, staff, and administrators. I look forward to your meeting them and seeing the difference they are already making.
Click here to read about our newest faculty and staff members.
Head of School 2026-27 Areas of Focus
So here we are, Jags, at the doorstep of a new school year. As we tell all our students, from Lower to Upper School, goals need a solid plan and clear outline. To guide me in leading us through another year of excellent learning, I develop my own outline with the Board of Trustees. It has become a custom of mine to share my Head of School priorities in this first-day letter, and I will report on progress in each area at the State of the School in February and again in June.
1. Lead progress on A Bold Leap: 2032. Advance the Strategic Plan, the Campus Master Plan, and the philanthropic support that makes our ambitions possible, providing an honest public account of where we stand.
2. Help Wellington's faculty and staff do their best work. Strengthen leadership across the School, build teams that work well together, supply resources and remove obstacles, and be useful to the people who carry out the School’s Mission.
3. Lead our thinking on what it means to be well educated. Convene the inquiry described above and bring it to a conclusion: a clear account of Wellington's educational excellence, and a roadmap that holds fast to our enduring aims, names plainly where we must evolve, and prepares students to contribute meaningfully to tomorrow's world.
4. Be present. Show up in the daily life of the School. Listen well. Understand the experiences of the people here and the teaching and learning happening across our divisions. Celebrate what students and colleagues accomplish, and help make Wellington a place where every person feels known, and a primary community in which everyone engages and belongs.
5. Run the School well. Decide thoughtfully and hold high expectations. Strengthen the systems, operations, and communications the School depends on. Tell our story clearly, steward our resources wisely, and reflect in the small details the excellence we seek in the large ones.
School Handbook
The School Handbook is where our community expectations live — student and family responsibilities, policies and procedures, and details about our program and services. Please read it. By enrolling at Wellington, you agree to uphold the policies described within it. Thank you for your partnership.
Safety and A Note on Patience
The safety, physical and psychological, of our students and educators is my highest priority, and much of it rests on protocols we keep daily. One of those is car line. A separate communication on Monday laid out the procedures for each division. I ask for your patience; it always takes a few weeks for everyone to ease back in. Our building-entry procedures are on the back-to-school webpage.
I always say, safety takes all of us. With questions or concerns, please reach out to Director of Safety and Security Don Stanko, to your division head, to Assistant Head of School for Operations Lindsey Smith, or to me.
I cannot wait to see you all in car line, at performances, at WPA events, on sidelines, in the hallway, and everywhere in between.
Thanks for all you do for our Wellington community, and… Go, Jags!
Eliza McLaren
Head of School