The Spirit of North Woods: Reflections from Our Annual Camping Trip

When does a school become a school––which at Waring means something more than tests and books and deadlines?

Is it on an early Tuesday morning in September, when students arrive on campus in Beverly, dragging suitcases and sleeping bags behind them, wondering what it will feel like to spend the next four days away from home?

Is it hours later, when they arrive at North Woods Camp in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and eat lunch in their tutorial advisory groups, asking tentatively, “How was your summer?”

Is it working together to build campfires––and then debating the best way to roast marshmallows?

Is it organizing a Dolly Parton tribute?
Using the summer reading to talk about ego, justice, and suffering?
Wiping down tables in the Dining Hall?

Is it playing soccer? Auditioning for a play? Sketching? Writing? Hiking? Swimming? Learning to capsize and then right canoes?

Or is it on the final morning of the trip, when the Senior Class plans and then leads the whole school in games they design: trivia, basketball, plans for world domination, general hijinks.

This year, those games lasted several hours. Students kept track of time. Moved from place to place. Worked together in small groups and then as a whole community, 170 sixth-through-twelfth graders organizing themselves on the North Woods quad.

The adults…looked on. They were barely needed.

In this moment, the answer was obvious:

A school becomes a school when it belongs to its students. At least at Waring.

So here’s to all the ways the school will belong to its students this year. Let the games begin.