Until Mr. Boyden retired in 1968, even the little lights of Greenfield were off limits to the boys at Deerfield Academy. Only 35 years later, Deerfield's doors have opened to students, faculty, and graduates for work and study on four other continents. Undreamed of 100 years ago, the school's international programs would please Mr. Boyden nevertheless, as they reflect the principles at the heart of his school. He would be gratified to read the catalogue pages that list 14 opportunities for international study, from an English course that includes two weeks of seminars in Cambridge, England, to a term's enrollment at the Wanganui Collegiate School on the North Island of New Zealand. And he would quickly notice that his familiar village has become a global one, owing not only to scholars from abroad, but also to an exodus of academy students into the wider world.

Taking oneself around the globe from Deerfield entails taking some of Deerfield too, as Eric Widmer's fall letter testified. Alluding to "its idealism, its democracy and its commitment to human decency," the headmaster told of the plan by King Abdullah II '80 to establish in Jordan a school just like Deerfield. This undertaking is not exactly the sort of thing described in the current catalogue, but it reflects the way the school influenced its members in other lands long before present programs were in place. Rick Barton '67, for example, recounted how he "took Deerfield to the ends of the earth" in his talk for one of the academy's bicentennial celebrations.

Barton, at that time director of the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives, spoke of the "Deerfield paradigm" as a model he had taken from Mr. Boyden's close-knit campus into his international work, and how he had employed it to encourage growth within deprived communities. He emphasized three qualities of that paradigm: the sense of direction or vision that puts individuals first; the team-building that empowers local people; and the constant communication that makes for role modeling and keeps leaders in touch with citizens. In the '60s, the daylong learning at Deerfield reinforced people's ties to each other, as they worked and interacted in settings all around the campus, just as they do today.

Now teaching at Princeton and serving as a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Barton is working on issues of post-conflict reconstruction. He says that he has come to see communication as even more important. In building communities, as at Deerfield, communication reinforces core values. A sense of community engenders greater responsibility and obligation among its members, and helps people find enjoyment in work. Mr. Boyden drew everyone together at meetings and sings, and recognized the achievements of each student equally: lowly third team goalie, head of an obscure club, or varsity quarterback. In the same way, international assistance must emphasize that every individual is valuable. At Deerfield or out in the world, people who know they are important discover that contributing to community is not martyrdom and that learning is pleasurable.

Experiences of recent graduates and current students echo these insights. The expansion of opportunities in this decade stemmed in part from an independent schools conference that Assistant Headmaster and Director of College Advising Martha Lyman attended in 1994. There she met Peter Pelham, founder and director of the Global Connections Foundation, and Malcolm McKenzie, then head of Maru a Pula School in Botswana and later Deerfield's bicentennial fellow and co-chair with Lyman of the Global Connections IV conference in June, 2000. The foundation presents annual seminars on educational topics and furnishes a forum for school administrators from many countries to share ideas, programs, and people throughout the year. Soon after meeting McKenzie, Lyman visited him in Botswana and dined with David Matthews at Tiger Kloof, his school in South Africa. Those early encounters resulted in student exchanges and openings for young graduates to serve as teaching assistants in those countries.

A cultural exchange that was purely for fun came about in April 2002, when the headmaster of Maru a Pula brought its marimba band to perform and conduct a workshop at Deerfield. Eight or nine performers on the gourd-based instruments were joined by Deerfield percussionists. Many others participated in the music making, the musicians sold a quantity of CDs, and one senior decided to take a "gap" year before college in order to travel to Botswana to learn marimba.

Allie Stielau '00, now a Yale sophomore, has written eloquently of her six months as a volunteer at Tiger Kloof Educational Institution in the North-West province of South Africa, the school David and Hilary Matthews founded and were leading at that time. Her two initial adjustments were to the dry landscape and the hot climate and to finding herself in a tiny minority, both in diametric contrast to her situation at home. She soon learned, however, that there weren't many differences between herself and her students, some of whom were older than she. "Being the only different one makes a person shut up and listen, because she has no one to cling to. There is no 'we' any longer and so the tiny little 'I' gets crushed and reshaped until it sees the world differently than it ever did before."

Discipline was a serious problem, partly because of her youth, and also because of cultural norms that did not call for the rigorous academic expectations she had known. She wrote to her teachers of what "I most took for granted at Deerfield: the ethos of study, the ethos of work, the ethos of determination, the ethos of taking joy in learning. This has made me realize how precious high school was for me. Thank you for making Deerfield the kind of school where the ethos of learning sprouts in every corner. Sitting here now, I think of Deerfield as though it had sprung from some medieval fairy tale: a small green kingdom set at the foot of hills, its coffers filled with gold."

Ninth graders at Geelong Grammar School in Australia spend their school year at Timbertop, an outdoor-based campus in the High Country of Victoria. Owing to another of Lyman's Global Connections friendships, Geelong offers teaching assistant positions there to recent Deerfield graduates. Don Mitchell '01 returned from Timbertop just in time to start his freshman year at Williams College in September. Describing it as "an experience I could never have fathomed," Don was in charge of 30 adolescents, teaching, sharing, running, hiking, doing night supervision, all in an isolated environment.

"Working with 14-year-olds thrown into extreme situations on a day to day basis, I learned a lot about patience, persistence, and decisions," says Don. "The Timbertop student has an outstanding ability to shed fears and plunge into new things. The changes I have undergone in the past year parellel the changes I witnessed in the students, who became dear friends as well." He expresses his gratitude for the chance to gain such a perspective for his college years and thereafter. Deerfield faculty members have also taught at Geelong. Mark Scandling (English) and Nils Ahbel (math) each spent a recent term there, their counterparts coming to teach at Deerfield.

A separate story could be written for every student who has participated in one of the school's international programs. Just two must serve as indicators of the effects of such an experience.

Olivier Garaud '04 said he "had ideas of China that were blown to the wind" by his four-week stay there in June. His family are no strangers to international travel, as his mother is Taiwanese and his father French, and his brother Paul '02 attended "School Year Abroad in China" during his Deerfield junior year. The journey of a dozen students, led by Xiaofeng Kelly, teacher of Chinese language, and two other faculty members, included a home stay in Beijing, attendance at a Chinese school (in a separate classroom for language study) and two weeks in the provinces, ending in Shanghai. Ms. Kelly successfully urged her entire Chinese II class to go. Other members of the group had completed only Chinese I, but Olivier says that English is surprisingly widespread in China. "Their English, common among even street sellers, was much better than our Chinese, and we never had a communication problem." Asked about knowledge he gained, Olivier says that the removal of misconceptions was far more significant than the wondrous sights of cities and countryside. Ms. Kelly, who grew up in Beijing, had arranged for the group to see parts of the country off the beaten track, and these visits supported their determination to avoid cliché and see things for themselves. But most enlightening was the reality of contemporary China. Olivier cannot stress enough the kindness, generosity and friendliness of his host family, who served lavish Chinese dishes at every meal and put their children on the couch so that Olivier could have their room. It is a sought-after privilege to accommodate an American student, and most host families are relatively well off, even though their apartments are small. The only way Olivier could reciprocate was to help the kids with their English homework. Such an experience, he says, does not "make you more moral, but gives you a real taste of the world. There is nothing like reality to shape a person's beliefs, to destroy stereotypes."

In the 2002 fall term, Hilary Matthews accompanied four students to the Round Square conference at Schule Schloss Salem near Lake Constance in southern Germany. "It is wrong to say you are going to Germany," says Helen Lamphere '03, who attended. "You are going to Round Square, where people come together from all over the world." Qualifications for membership are rigorous; Deerfield is one of only two American schools belonging to the organization, a worldwide association of schools dedicated to an "IDEAL":

internationalism, democracy, environment, adventure, and leadership. The annual conference, to which all 40 members send delegates, takes place in a different country each year: next year in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela will speak. The program includes addresses on global concerns, meetings among groups of students to discuss what their schools might do to confront some of the problems, and many events and projects that promote knowledge of other cultures.

Helen's participation inspired her not only to raise awareness of Round Square on campus, but also to commit herself to international relief work for a year before college. She is particularly interested in a hospice for AIDS patients in Romania, which she learned about from a Scottish friend at the gathering. She found it hard to choose which outcome or activity was most meaningful to her. "I learned about the level of activism in the world. I discussed with young Germans their attitudes about their country's past, while we took a long hike in the Alps, and was struck by their pride in Germany today. I used my French with people who didn't speak English. We had a multicultural night, where each country performed or demonstrated an aspect of its culture. I had to tell myself, I'm dancing with Africans, Indians, Scots, Canadians, Estonians, Jordanians, Japanese, Australians, on and on! This will never happen to me again."

Despite the many offerings now available, this student believes the academy needs still more branching out. The obstacles to expansion of opportunities away from Deerfield are self-evident. During the school year, students are reluctant to break free of their myriad ties on campus, from academic work, to sports, to arts projects, to friends in the dorm. It's hard to leave such a full life. It's extra work, too, for faculty to keep track of students who have been away and to make sure they are up to speed on their return. For a variety of reasons, more girls than boys apply for the school-year offerings, although the numbers are nearly in balance for summer opportunities.

In his letter, Eric Widmer reported that King Abdullah believes Deerfield "prepared him so well for the offices of life, including that of a ruling monarch." "The world looks different from over here," wrote Ali Stielau from Tiger Kloof. That world in fact contains untold offices to be filled by Deerfield graduates. And there is no doubt that some of them will bring to the global domain the understanding of themselves and others, the open eyes and minds, the humility and compassion they gained by choosing one of the school's international opportunities. "There's so much out there," says Helen Lamphere.

Jan Rogers, who has retired from teaching English at Deerfield, co-edited two books, The Transcendent Mirror and Owned by the Land, for the DeerfieldAcademy Press. In June 2000, she was coordinator of the Global Connections IV conference held at Deerfield.