Palmer Trinity School

HEAD OF SCHOOL Dear Friends, As I sit down to read my senior English students' semester exam essays, I feel the familiar anxiety of every good teacher I have known throughout these past twenty-five years: Did I teach them anything? What did they learn? The relationship between student and teacher is so particular, each student is such a profound mystery, each teacher a different personality, it is impossible to predict or control the unfolding of potential inherent in great schools. We live on faith. I must keep in mind the wisdom of Erich Fromm which I have just finished reading with my students. In his 1956 best-seller, The Art of Loving, he wrote, "Education is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities…We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities." My students become my teachers, and together we develop into something better than we were before. That is what I hope to see in their essays. A school is made up of thousands of these particular relationships and potentialities building on one another to make up a whole, and before I read my exams I must share with you a bit about the success of Palmer Trinity this past semester, the greatest of which is the resounding affirmation we received from the Florida Council of Independent Schools during their five-year accreditation visit. Ten top-notch educators from around the state visited for two days in October and went away especially impressed by the quality of our classroom teaching. They reported that our students "speak reverentially about their experiences" at Palmer Trinity, and they pronounced us among the leading Independent schools in Florida. More and more families, largely because of your good reports in the community, are applying for admission. In the early round we have offered seventy-four spots to students from twenty-eight different schools. Almost half of the applicants are siblings or legacies, and all are highly qualified. In college admissions, the class of 2010, comprising eighty-three seniors, has already received 130 early offers of admission to sixty-two different schools including Yale University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, Bucknell, and Washington University. A glance at any one of our electronic newsletters (emailed every two weeks and archived on our website) will detail the thousands of very special opportunities our students have to enrich their lives and their education. Most concretely, we have completed a beautiful new dining room, kitchen upgrades, a maintenance facility and storage space, expanded parking and an additional classroom. In convocations we have heard from visiting artists, politicians, and authors including Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Xavier Cortada, and Jonathan Safran Foer. Our fall athletic season yielded a district championship for the girls' volleyball team, a regional championship for the boys' cross-country team, an individual district champion in boys' golf, and an individual football player selected to the Dade County All-Star Team. Winter sports are off and running with record numbers of participants across the grade levels. The fall drama production, Check Please, was hilarious, and during our recent Lessons and Carols worship service we listened to captivating arrangements of Christmas music composed and performed by our own students as part of their work in Advanced Placement Music Theory. Fromm teaches us that "Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness." Your gifts to Palmer Trinity are your contribution to the aliveness of this great school. They allow the high quality of individual student experiences and collective triumphs to continue and expand. Thank you for the part you have played in actualizing the potential of our students. It is in giving that we receive abundantly. Sincerely, Sean Murphy Head of School 30

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