Putney Post is our alumni magazine, published once a quarter throughout the school year.
Featured Editions
Before you read this issue, close your eyes and think of the barn—the smell of hay and manure, the sounds of animals and of work, the cows’ liquid eyes. Put yourself there if you can, and ask, “What’s my barn story?” We hope you’ll think about it. We hope you’ll share your story with a friend. In this issue, we endeavor to capture the reach of The Putney School’s barn in both scope and depth: China, California, the New York Times, the school’s fiber arts studio, science labs, and history classrooms, even a bright pink sweater from The Gap.
Putney people frequently ask how the school responds to the important topics our society wrestles with. Equity and inclusion, climate change, rising tuition costs, and more. In the last year, the questions have centered, overwhelmingly, on artificial intelligence and the recent explosion of ChatGPT and its ilk. What on earth will we do about this? How do we teach our students to use technology responsibly? Is it an asset or a threat? In this issue, we dive into that question.
We have a lot of alumni who graduate into the world and live lives guided by their love for and connection to the natural world. In this issue, we meet a small handful of them, including siblings Rayna ’93 and Soren deNiord ’96, landscape architects whose work centers around ecological resiliency; Clara Rowe ’07, CEO of Restor, a mapping and open data platform that supports, promotes, and connects a multitude of environmental causes; and soon, Henry Stephenson-Ryan ’23, whose work understanding the population dynamics and ecosystems of the forests that surround the campus will reverberate for decades to come.
In this issue we explore the concept of growth through a few lenses. We meet Putney’s new head of school, Danny O’Brien. We check in on the literal growth of this little school in the form of two new dormitories. We witness the growth of our students through their work growing our food. We reflect on the life and work of longtime Putney faculty Brian Cohen, who helped students grow into artists as he honed his own skills and pursued his artistic passions.
In this issue, we intentionally slow down, slice the Putney cake to show you its layers. As we publicly launch our next campaign, Sing it Forward: A Campaign for Putney’s Future, we tell stories of timeless student experiences rooted in nature, in art and exploration. And we take one last time with Emily, whose steady presence has grounded our work.
At Putney, we teach failure. We teach for failure. We teach about failing often, and well. There is, as you will learn reading this issue’s stories, more to learn there than there is in straightforward success. This issue’s theme—Drive—captures the energy that sees people through challenging situations, “failures,” and creative dilemmas.
Amid the chaos, fear, and sadness that the pandemic brought, the single thread—the siren—of racial injustice rests at the heart of that pain, and 2020 illuminated the absolutely non-negotiable truth that we, Putney—the institution and its people—must commit to change.
We were willing to take the risk of addressing a big topic and maybe not getting it quite right—whether by leaving out something obvious, or being too fluffy, or being too serious. Still. Democracy. Yes
What does it mean to be the alumni of a school? Does it make you kindred with the other alumni? Does it mean you forever have another home, regardless of the many changes in staff that occur? Can a school know you? Love you?