Parents Weekend in Review

This weekend, the Academy enjoyed yet another successful family weekend—interactive and engaging classes, tasty food, a generally well behaved campus—and most parents left pleased and satisfied that their children were not only receiving an excellent education, but also enjoying the more subtle amenities offered by a high school as large and wealthy as Exeter. Yes, the traffic at D-Hall was irritating. Yes, the campus was extremely active and busy; but overall, Exeter left an overwhelmingly positive impression on parents and families.My question is: was the portrayal accurate? This is not to say that Exeter doesn’t warrant a positive impression; I simply wonder if we don’t leave a different impression of school logistics than the reality of day-to-day life. And, if so, does Exeter have an obligation to pursue a more realistic depiction of the school in future years? Allow me to substantiate these observations.Let’s start with the food. A common gripe Exonians have is that, when parents visit for family weekend, the dining hall makes an effort to prepare higher quality food, serve a greater variety of options and offer dishes not seen the rest of the year. It’s gotten to the point that it’s almost a family weekend tradition for preps to complain to their parents in obnoxiously loud voices in the middle of the dining hall that the food isn’t always this good. They say that dining hall prepares it specially just to trick the parents into thinking their kids are spoiled on a daily basis with Seafood Newburg, tender pork loin and a medley of desserts ranging from snicker doodles to cakes.While clearly exaggerated to prove a point, there is some validity to these complaints. How often do I get to enjoy lobsters claws and clams in my soup the rest of the year? When else does dining hall serve both sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies on the same day? And what was up with the soup and bread station in the middle of agora? The food parents’ during weekend isn’t representative of the rest of the year, but does it have to be? D-Hall can certainly defend itself by saying that parents are guests and deserve something special. If you host dinner guests, you’ll make (I hope) an effort to cook a fancy meal and perhaps even set up an array of snacks on your dining room table. By the same thinking, dining hall could be entitled to prepare a more elaborate meal. While that logic makes sense, the meals of family weekend are not true to our experiences.What about classes? Parents don’t come to parents weekend for the food. They come to experience the classes, meet teachers and observe the Harkness method first hand. Over the last three years, I’ve noticed a surprising—if not astounding—number of unique presentations in my classes during parents weekend. For example, one year, my teacher, in Spanish class, discussed (in English) the evolving process that leads to several obsolete and now extinct Spanish letters, such as "ll" and "ch." I remember my mom telling me how interesting the class was for her and commending his ability to include the parents that don’t speak Spanish by explaining the history of the Spanish alphabet—it’s still relevant to Spanish, yet in English, and thus accessible to parents. While this doesn’t represent the average class the rest of the year, perhaps it’s more beneficial than another year where my class spoke entirely in Spanish and at several points throughout the class I caught a few of the parents dozing.So, naturally, I wonder what the goal of family weekend is for the Academy. Is it to give the parents an accurate representation of daily life here at Exeter? Is it to entertain the parents and display the best of what the Academy has to offer? To what extent should the Academy objectively depict the school? Keep in mind that Exeter teachers, administration and dining hall workers aren’t the only ones trying to make the best impression possible. Students, too, put on a show for parents weekend. Students who usually remain quietly reserved at the table suddenly blossom into full-fledged participants in class, only to recede again after the weekend ends.I suggest that the administration reconsider its position on family weekend. Perhaps no change will be considered the best change, but they need to mull over the goals and implications of the weekend. Exeter needs a standard; that is to say, we either need to decide to commit fully to creating an accurate portrayal of parents weekend—no fancy meals, no special classes, no extra services—or we need to instruct teachers to plan lessons so as to create an interactive class with parents. If we want to create the most positive impression possible for parents, there are more ways we could achieve that goal. If not, we should cut back on the weekends’ benefits and show the school the way it really is the rest of the year.