Matthew Gould's Back-to-School Night Remarks: The Courage to Try

Good evening! It is my pleasure to welcome everyone here this evening and to officially kick off the 2026-2027 school year. As always, on this evening, I have prepared brief remarks that will be followed by presentations by the teachers in their classrooms about what you can expect in the year ahead.

Looking Ahead

I am really excited about the year ahead! On the school level, we have a lot of exciting work and opportunities on the horizon that we are eager to tackle:

• Next year is Norwood's 75th anniversary year! We are really looking forward to the celebrations, connections, and festivities that lie ahead.
• This current year will be a fun year of planning for the next year and, certainly, if you'd like to be involved, please let Abigail Betts in the Development Office know you're interested.
• This year is also our 10-year reaccreditation visit by representatives from the Association of Independent Maryland Schools. In March, we will be visited by a team of educators from throughout the state, who will affirm our work and help us identify and implement improvements, plans, and priorities for the future. It is a lot of work preparing for this visit, but I am excited to show off our school, and I know that Norwood will shine.
• As you know, we continue to refine our approach to technology, especially in the face of AI and all of the challenges and opportunities it brings. I think we are taking a thoughtful approach as we forge ahead in this new landscape.
• And, of course, this year we will look forward to ensuring a successful experience for all Norwood students.

Redefining Success

As I was thinking about this last point, it occurred to me that this is the time of year when heads of school and principals throughout the DC-area (and, probably, all over the country) are preparing back-to-school night speeches that in some way or another will tackle the concept of success, i.e., how their school will, in some way, ensure success for students.

My speech tonight is also about success, but I want to take a bit of a different angle because I want to talk a bit about setbacks and failure as well, and how success and failure often have an interplay in our students’ lives both inside and outside of school. This whole idea of success vs. failure got me thinking about the idea of risk because, in general, in order to succeed at something in life, you first have to exhibit some risk.

Taking Risks

And let's face it...school is a risky place! Elementary and middle school students take risks on a daily basis. At Norwood, we ask our students to take risks all the time. We ask them to read poetry in front of their peers; we ask them to try really hard math problems; we ask them to compete in athletic contests; we ask them to participate in class plays and music ensembles. But what I’ve noticed about Norwood School students over the course of my 12+ years here is that our students are comfortable with who they are and they are willing to take risks.

And, yes, sometimes in that exploration children come up with the wrong answer or fall short. But what we are trying to impart in our children is that sometimes the journey to an answer is more important than the answer itself. At Norwood, we want children to feel safe to take risks. We also want them to be challenged and sometimes to struggle. Because all these pieces come together in the story of development, in the path toward personhood.

Summer Lessons

One of the great things about summertime, for me, is that I get to downshift, read for pleasure, and catch up on articles, shows, etc. that I don’t have time for during the school year. This summer, I rediscovered a New York Times Magazine article that I love and that I’ve shared at Back-to-School Night before. It is the story of lobster fisherman, John Aldridge, and it is a story I find incredibly compelling both from a human-interest standpoint, but the story also has great thematic tie-ins to education. I apologize if you’ve heard the story before; I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible.

So, the story is this: John Aldridge and his partner, Anthony Sosinski – both lobster fisherman based off Montauk at the tip of Long Island – pushed off in the late afternoon July 23, 2013, for an overnight trip to their fishing grounds. At about 9:00 p.m., Sosinski put the boat on autopilot and goes to bed. Aldridge continues to work on deck, readying traps and lines for the next day’s catch. At approximately 3:00 a.m., Aldridge is removing a heavy canister lid with a box hook…and the handle breaks! Losing his balance, he tumbles backwards and falls right off the back of the boat into the North Atlantic, 40 miles from the shore. Can you imagine? It’s the middle of the night, he’s screaming his head off, hoping his co-pilot will hear him, and the boat rumbles on, leaving him alone in the middle of the ocean!

So, this is a huge problem! But here is the first thematic tie-in to education. Instead of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, he actually broke the problem down into a number of smaller problems, each with bite-size achievable solutions. His first goal was: just stay afloat until sunrise. Remarkably, he ingeniously used his rubber boots (placed them under his armpits) as flotation devices.

Next, once sunrise came at about 5:30 a.m., his goal was to find a buoy. Now, to most people, the Atlantic Ocean 40 miles south of Montauk is just a big, undifferentiated expanse of waves, but Aldridge knew roughly where he fell overboard. And he knew several lobstermen had trawls nearby. He knew the lobstermen by name, in fact, which leads me to education theme #2: Aldridge drew upon experience and prior knowledge to solve what – to him, at least – was a short-term manageable problem. To make a long story short, by using his knowledge of currents and fishing patterns, Aldridge was ultimately able to find two buoys, affix himself to them, and await rescue, which at 2:46 p.m. – after approximately 12 hours in the North Atlantic – Aldridge was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

To conclude the story, I want to highlight the final theme that I think is an important lesson for education: self-confidence and optimism. This is what Aldridge said about his harrowing experience at sea: “I always felt like I was conditioning myself for that situation. So once you’re in it, it’s like: All right, I can do that, I did it. I had that sense of accomplishment. I mean, thank God I was saved, yes. Thank God they saved me. There’s no better entity than the U.S. Coast Guard to save your ass when you’re on the water. But I felt like I did my part.” Indeed!

Lessons from the Story

So why this long-winded story on Back-to-School Night? Do I want to challenge our students by putting them in the middle of the ocean? Of course not. Do I want them to have challenges anywhere close to this? No, I don’t. But I do like the themes:

• I like the idea of our students solving real-life challenges and being pushed to do so.
• I like the idea of them overcoming reasonable challenges.
• I like the idea of them making connections from one part of their school life and applying it to another.
• I like the idea of developing confidence in our students; giving them the belief that they can conquer anything they put their minds to.
• And, I like the idea of supporting our kids to be optimistic and have a growth mindset.

The World Cup

Another wonderful diversion for me this summer was the World Cup! For those who don’t know me well, I am an avid soccer fan. And, of course, this summer was a soccer fan’s dream. Despite the various controversies that always surround FIFA, it was a wonderful tournament. Stadiums were full. Enthusiasm was high. Scots flooded downtown Boston with their bagpipes and kilts. We all learned something from the Norwegians called the “Viking Row.” And on the sporting side, we had great games, heroic underdog performances from Cape Verde and Democratic Republic of Congo, and a deserving champion in Spain.

But, unfortunately, one lasting memory from this great competition will be the unsportsmanlike behavior by some  members of the Argentine national team at the conclusion of the Final. And when I saw that, I was struck that the metrics of significance such as fairness, regard for others, and a sense of right and good were sacrificed. A lesser casualty, but a casualty, nonetheless, was success, which ties into what I think is a really important aspect of the Norwood School spirit:

• Norwood’s mission emphasizes integrity, honesty, and character.
• We are teaching children to be comfortable with themselves for who they are. At the same time, we are teaching them the skills of persistence and perseverance.

Conclusion

So to wrap up what I know is already a long speech, all of this reminds me of the classic children’s book, The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper. When the Little Blue Engine is asked to pull the car of food and toys up the mountain, it agrees in part because of its past experience of working hard “switching trains in the yard.” The chant, “I think I can, I think I can” reflects determination and confidence based on previous hard work. The chant changes to, “I thought I could, I thought I could” after the challenge is conquered.
While The Little Engine That Could was originally published nearly 100 years ago, its message seems particularly important today as a growing number of adults seek to reduce or eliminate the struggles their children will face. The Little Blue Engine reminds us that it would be a great disservice to our children to teach them to believe “I know I can, I know I can” without allowing them to encounter the struggles required to build the durable self-confidence they will need to face the mountains that await them.

I hope that your children do experience some setbacks this year. But I hope that the lessons embedded in those challenges are profound and lead to great success. All things do come full circle, and all disappointments, in retrospect, are a part of a complex series of synergies to make our children's lives full and rich and happy.

All of this speaks to what I believe helps to make Norwood such a special school. It is a place where children are known and where they are loved. It is a place where they feel safe to take those risks that will, indeed, lead to success through their years at Norwood and beyond.
Thank you for being here. Enjoy the classrooms and teacher presentations. I am looking forward to a great year.