Catherine Hart '06, Jake Nichols '09, and Alexandra Vaughan '06

"Meals are congregators. They bring people out. It's all about what gives value to the human family. It's this idea of bonding. What's more beautiful than a meal that you share [with people], whether they're very different from you or like you? It's what brings you together."

It seems as though Margarita Curtis, the new head of school, and Deerfield agree on arguably the most important parts of life: food and conversation.

Indeed, on her first official visit to Deerfield since her appointment, Dr. Curtis was treated to the best meal the Deerfield dining hall can produce: Christmas dinner. She was also given the opportunity to converse with various members of the community, ranging from Headmaster Eric Widmer to Student Council. She also met with three members of The Scroll. Here is the summary of the interview.

After a year of careful planning for the conference, school will carry on as usual but with slightly shortened class days. All the delegates will be staying in either the volunteer boarders' rooms or day students' houses. There will also be shuttles to the Red Roof Inn for faculty and Round Square executives. Deerfield students will have a chance to meet the foreign students during evening socials.

After a selection process that she described as "rigorous and thoughtful," she is exhilarated at the prospect of working at a school that impressed her with its "openness and confidence."

"At first, people who know me well had said 'Deerfield will never pick you,'" she said, "and that goes to show that you should always do your own research and your own thinking, because only you can tell what's right for you."

Dr. Curtis seems ready to take on her new position, and she has "real optimism for this institution."

One of her main goals for her tenure is to reexamine our curriculum.

"The tendency in all schools now is that we have grown, we've expanded, but in a very fragmented way. We have to determine what our core is. What do we want to accomplish well?'

Dr. Curtis will try to answer these questions through a combination of discussions both inside and outside Deerfield. 'This conversation is so pertinent to almost any school," she said, "not only in the boarding school world, but to every secondary school in America."

"We can't keep adding," she said, "Deerfield must be intentional." To find where our central values lie, she said we need to keep "consolidating" and "rethinking" the way we teach.

She hopes to be able to work with the heads of our sister schools to solve these issues.

She will use the same method of conversation to resolve day-to-day issues on campus.

Conversation in an intellectual community is one of her passions, and one of the reasons she decided to become a teacher. Although she may have seemed formal at the all-school interview, she was open and at-ease during the interview and willing to "address the hot issues."

She said she hopes to "begin with a dialogue" with those who disagreed with her appointment. She wants the conversation to be "explicit enough to find out what concerned them," and then try to appease their doubts through conversation. "I would love to hear what it is about me that gives them pause," she said.

In our conversation, she also mentioned the importance of her family in what was a difficult decision to become a candidate for the position. She said that her kids "kept me humble, but were also my biggest fans."

One of the main obstacles for her was the fact that her husband has a medical practice in North Andover, Massachusetts. She wasn't sure that she could have been as happy with the results if she did not have his support. "If this is something that you really want to do for the last fifteen years of your professional life," her husband said, "then go for it."

"It became a family affair," she laughed, "They all had advice for me. You know 'Mom, make sure you mention this,' 'Mom, don't forget to say this,' interviewing me over the phone. At one point, I had to say 'Guys, I can handle this just fine."

As for now, she will follow Mr. Widmer's advice and "enjoy the job" and rely on her "moral compass" to navigate through the next months. Although she was reticent to promise that she would know every student's name at the school meeting, sources say that she is already getting a head start.

Nora Caplan-Bricker '08, Jackie Fleishman '07, Charlotte Parker '08, and Christie Schnurr '07 contributed to this article.

As published in the December 12, 2005 issue of the Deerfield Scroll, the monthly newspaper of Deerfield Academy.