Taking the Long View

By Elon Boms
President, Board of Trustees

When we gather for a State of the School meeting, it’s natural to ask big questions: How are our kids doing? Are they on track? Are we preparing them for what comes next?

Tonight, I want to talk about something that sounds simple, but is actually quite hard—especially in the world we live in now. 

I want to talk about taking the long view of your child’s education. 

We live in a time of instant feedback. Grades are posted immediately. Test scores are compared. Progress is measured in days, hours, sometimes in moments. Achievements are shared by the minute, and the comparisons can leave parents (and our children) feeling many things — capable and successful, struggling and behind, rattled, restless, or perhaps reassured. As parents, it’s easy — almost unavoidable — to zoom in on short-term outcomes. Is my child reading fast enough? Are they where they “should” be in math? Why does this feel hard right now?

But education— real education—doesn’t work that way.

The best education is one that not only enables our children to perform on a test but perform later on in life. The learnings need to seep down deep, to the core of how our children think and operate, and overcome obstacles, and then enjoy desired outcomes. This kind of life-changing education — the kind that you sought out at Foote — works through small, incremental changes over time. Quiet growth. Repetition. Struggle. And then, often when you least expect it, synthesis. Then, the bloom.

I’ve seen this very clearly through my own children’s experiences in Taekwondo. When they first started, progress looked almost invisible. They learned how to stand. How to place their feet. How to move their arms with intention. Low block. Round house kick. The movements were awkward. Slow. Sometimes frustrating. There was no dramatic leap forward after a month or even a year. 

But over time, something remarkable happened.

Those individual movements began to connect. Balance improved. Control emerged. Blue belt and orange belt. Confidence followed. Years later, when they began black-belt training, it suddenly became clear that nothing was wasted. Every repetition mattered. Every imperfect flying side kick mattered. Mastery didn’t arrive all at once; it revealed itself only after years of steady, cumulative effort.

That is what education looks like at its best.

At Foote, your children are learning far more than what shows up on a report card. They are learning how to think, how to persevere, how to collaborate, how to sit with uncertainty, how to recover from mistakes, and how to keep going when something doesn’t click right away.

Those skills don’t announce themselves immediately. You don’t always see them week to week. But they compound.

A child who struggles with writing in second grade may be developing an internal discipline that shows up years later as clarity of thought. A student who finds math difficult in fifth grade may be learning resilience and problem-solving that becomes invaluable in high school and beyond. A quiet student who takes time to find their voice may one day use it with confidence and purpose.

Our job—as parents and as a school community — is to trust the process, even when it feels uncomfortable. Especially when it feels uncomfortable.

Taking the long view doesn’t mean ignoring challenges. It doesn’t mean lowering expectations. It means recognizing that growth is not linear — and that the most meaningful progress often happens beneath the surface.

If you step back and look at your child — not over a semester, but over years — you’ll see it: how they’ve changed, how they’ve matured, how skills that once felt fragile have become second nature.

Foote is uniquely designed to support this kind of growth — intellectual, emotional, and social — at exactly the pace children need. Not rushed. Not forced. But intentional. 

So when things feel slow, or messy, or uncertain, I encourage all of us to pause and remember: mastery takes time. Confidence takes time. Character takes time. And when it finally comes together — just like the black belt — you realize it was never about one moment or one metric. It was about the accumulation of many small steps, taken thoughtfully, over many years.

Thank you for trusting this school, for trusting your children, and for taking the long view with us.