History

A new chapter.

"I am honored and excited to be named the next Head of George School. I appreciate the authentic conversations I have had with community members and look forward to continuing those conversations as I learn more about the history and traditions that make George School a very special community."

“Heraclitus said we can’t step in the same river twice. Yet his observation captures a paradox. In change, there is also permanence. George School has managed that paradox incredibly well for generations. And we will do so long into the future.”

“I have been very much aware, in my role as head of school, of how different and how powerful the Quaker decision-making process is.” Nancy’s leadership has placed George School in an exceptionally good position to fulfill its mission “to develop citizen scholars cheerfully committed to openness in the pursuit of truth, to service and peace, and to the faithful stewardship of the earth.”

“George School students care for one another and live on this land in a way that says not, ‘This land belongs to me,’ but ‘I belong to this land along with everyone else, and I want to learn about how to share it.’”

“The school has been brought through [a turbulent period] clearly and unapologetically, undeviating in its meaning and purpose to be a Quaker school.”

When he was hired as a full-time Math teacher in 1949, James Tempest embarked on a life-long commitment to serve George School in whatever capacity the school needed until his retirement in 1976. Upon Richard McFeely's retirement, that commitment led him to be interim head of school until Eric Curtis was hired to fill the role. James was the driving force behind the change to a flexible modular schedule that permitted a “lively and changing curriculum” that included courses in ecology and foreign affairs (taught by a visiting diplomat) and allowed team teaching in history and a new approach to religious studies.    

“We cannot think only of academic subjects. Our concern at George School must genuinely be with the moral, social, and personal values of students.”

“George School appeals to people whose demand upon a school is more specifically educational, who want their children to have, during adolescence, an intellectual, aesthetic, cultural experience of a high standard of excellence, but adapted to the needs of that period of life.”

“Give Mother Nature a chance and she will do more honest teaching in a week than the textbook and the ritualized teacher can do in a year.”

George Maris believed strongly that enrollment should be kept small. "If there can be no intimate relation between pupils and teachers, one of the most important objects of a boarding school — the formation of character — is seriously interfered with."