TOADTalk: Growing Up Gavin

During the course of a year at Thacher, students and faculty members learn about each other in a thousand different ways, times, and contexts: around the breakfast or formal dinner table, in a sunshiny moment on the Pergola or a sunset shared on a trail, at the whiteboard in a classroom, lab, studio or seminar circle, at practices and games and rehearsals, at coffeehouses and Open Houses, in dorm common rooms, and in Suburbans on highways or back roads on the way to community service projects, field trips, cultural excursions, or athletic events. Then there’s each faculty member’s TOADTalk. Monday morning’s all-School Assembly begins with whatever the Teacher On Active Duty wishes to share—a reflection, a story or song, a demonstration of some sort, or a simple poem. In this way, every week of the school year, the community gains a new window into the mind or heart or spirit of one of our own. Theana Hancock Snyder, who spoke this week on the value of growing up in a community like Thacher's, is an 11-year member of the Mathematics Department, advises sophomore girls, coaches girls' track, and, with her husband Aaron and son Gavin, lives in Los Padres Dormitory.

When I went to college, I realized that I’d had a very different experience growing up from my friends. Part of that was because I grew up in Hawaii, but mostly it was because I grew up as a faculty child on the campus of a private boarding school. While Mr. Snyder was spending his time in downtown Boston learning how to climb chain link fences quickly and efficiently, I was spending my time riding bikes around a campus much like Thacher’s.

The school my dad taught at was a kindergarten-12^th grade school, which I attended for all 13 years of my schooling. There was a boarding portion beginning in 6th grade. I spent many a summer riding my bike through the classroom buildings. I loved knowing all of my teachers before having them in class. I distinctly remember my first day of kindergarten—everyone else was crying, but I blithely said goodbye to my mom because my kindergarten teacher was the headmaster’s wife and I’d known her for most of my life. I remember thinking, “But you guys, this is Mrs. Tooman! She’s so fun”!

I had so many older students that I looked up to while growing up. By the time I was in middle school, I knew the first and last names of most everyone in high school. My family lived off campus, so I wasn’t around the school buildings as much as most faculty children are here. We didn’t attend formal dinner, but rather picked up “take out” dinners from the dining hall. In high school, my brother and I would call my mom to tell her that she’d have to cook dinner when the dining hall was serving meatloaf and brussels sprouts.

But even though we lived off campus, I still felt that I really knew everyone in the school community. In Hawaii, rather than calling an adult that you know by their first name (or more formally by Mr. or Ms.), you call them Auntie or Uncle. I remember showing someone around my school at some point, and at the end of the tour, she said, “Are you related to everyone here?” When I first began high school, I was tiny—and I was always hungry. The woman who ran the kitchen, Auntie June, was always there to help me out with a bag of chips or a sandwich when I got hungry. Mostly, what I reveled in was being a part of a community. Having people who knew me and cared about me was important to me, and at school I was surrounded by people who had known me for most of my life.

Our son Gavin is lucky to have a similar place to grow up. But I think he’s even luckier, because we live on campus, and thus he has more time to interact with the people here.

For instance, there’s the pack of sophomore boys who live right outside our front door. Momo was the third name that Gavin learned (right after Mom and Dad). This was for two reasons—1) because Momo is just as easy to say as Mama, and 2) because honestly, Momo is Gavin’s best friend. Gavin even named a goldfish after him. He named the other goldfish Leila, after his grandmother. Obviously, Mr. Snyder and I had no input in this decision.

Most children Gavin’s age see a limited number of people on a regular day—their parents, their babysitter or daycare provider, possibly their grandparents. Gavin sees hundreds of familiar people in a day…at the dining hall, at Assembly, at athletic events, and on adventures around campus. He knows a huge number of names just because of the number of people we run into daily. It seems that every day he learns a new name. His babysitter says that Gavin introduces her to people all the time. As a result, Gavin is comfortable seeing people, and he sees most people as his friends. All of his life, he’s gotten quite a bit of attention just for living—most everyone he passes on a day to day basis says hello, calls him by name and gives him pound or interacts with him in some why. So, he’s quite friendly in return. The other day, we were at a stoplight waiting for the light to turn green. I looked over my shoulder and the driver of the car in the next lane and one car back was waving—because Gavin had seen her and decided to say hi.

Gavin has yet to be in a situation where people do not share their food with him. Ms. Sawyer Mulligan carries raisins in her backpack so that she can share them with Gavin at Assembly. He regularly begs breakfast off of the Sohns, he’s gotten pieces of banana from Mr. Fagan, begged a piece of chocolcate-chip waffle from an alum the other weekend, Madeline Taylor shares gummy bears with him, and Cooper Penner has peels numerous oranges for him.

I wanted to end my talk by saying thank you. Thank you for taking the time to stop what you are doing and say hi to Gavin. The amazing part about growing up on a boarding school campus isn’t necessarily the place itself, but is the individual people that become part of your extended family.

So thank you for being so nice to my son.