St. Margaret's School Headmistress Margaret Robinson Broad
Sabbatical Scrapbook: October 13, 2000 - January 4, 2001

Sabbatical Plans presented to the Board of Governors, March, 2000

Thank you for this extraordinary opportunity! Already this year, we realize how important this three-month period away is for St. Margaret's. Planning for my absence has forced us to look differently at how we work together, to be sure all of our systems work, and to deliberately acknowledge my roles in all of this. This has been productive and healthy. Planning how I will spend this time has been an exciting and thought-provoking challenge.

I have three goals for these three months:

Spend extended time with my family doing things we love to do

Establish connections with more schools in the Queen Margaret of Scotland Girls' Schools Association, specifically two in New Zealand and one in Australia

Take time to write about St. Margaret's and my life and work over these last twenty years.

To connect with our sister schools, I will spend three to seven days in each of the three schools, staying with the Headmistresses in their homes. My longest visit will be at SMS-Berwick, near Melbourne, where we already have a well established tenth grade exchange. In each school, we will be considering opportunities for faculty and student exchanges.

Writing will be the link that ties all of this together. This summer I have been accepted to a short course offered by NAIS for school heads who write. Twelve of us will work intensively with published colleagues to explore how to use the richness of the lives we lead in schools in our writing. In the middle of my sabbatical, I will have three full weeks alone in Australia to build on this experience and work on a writing project that I have been playing with for some time. Recently a short article I wrote for the National Association of Episcopal Schools was reprinted in a pamphlet. I'm interested to consider how my writing might be used both in the school and the larger school world.

Thank you for this incredible opportunity. I look forward to working with you to provide such opportunities for others who have devoted their lives to our school.

Margaret R. Broad
Head of School

Sabbatical Scrapbook - Page 2

Leaving Home So quickly the lightness caught my attention. Twelve years of caring for a school and each person in it, knowing that each day, whatever happened, it would soon find its way back to me for a decision or a reflection. Twelve years of accepting this responsibility, keenly feeling its weight. I was stunned at how quickly it lifted. It is the right time to go. The school is the one we have always wanted to have - the right students and faculty, an amazingly talented cabinet, a board that knows us well and wants what is best for the school, enough people, enough good ideas, a great plan and preparation, everything in place. The time spent we've spent with our organizational consultants has strengthened our administrative cabinet. They are moving us toward solid interdependence, and, if I feel a little on the outside sometimes, that's not all bad; it may be where I need to be.

Sailing in French Polynesia: A Dream Come True! Tahiti by the light of a full harvest moon. We landed at five in the morning, amazingly refreshed after the long flight's sleep. I can barely contain my glee. Dreams really do come true, and this has been my dream for as long as I can remember, but the reality is even better than the dream! We are all here, all three of us joyously enjoying the first new country we've ever all experienced together. And then we add Em and Kathy Hughes, wonderful friends, ready to share the adventure, too. Is this how I imagined it would be? Absolutely not, for I could never have imagined the glee, the peace, how quickly I would be finally living for today, with no drifting thoughts either backward or forward. Peace at last, but one of such a different quality that it has earned this title: every day a celebration. As we wait to go to the poolside restaurant for our first meal, my sense is that the time frame may be shortening, every moment a celebration. Heaven right here and now.

Bora Bora on the Horizon This is it! This is the dream I've always had of sailing to Bora Bora, but the reality is EVEN BETTER! It is a perfect day, clear sky, 15-20 knot winds, small swell, but best of all, Ben at the helm and loving it, David beside him imparting sailing lore and tips. Watching Ben winching up our huge mainsail, we see him for who he is today, glad to have these glimpses of him now that his life is largely elsewhere. I continue to marvel at how strongly the old habits come back when the three of us are together. I suspect it is like this with all families. I am just so grateful we had time to build strong rhythms that are comfortable for each of us. We navigate back along Tahaa until we reach the pass that will set us toward Bora Bora. If this is ocean sailing, let's do more! This is a perfect sail, goose-winged with following seas, a long ocean swell that is gentle, soothing, not at all threatening. We follow another catamaran, but they turn toward the reef while we hold our steady course. In the end, we were right! The frustration, if you could call this wonderful sailing that, is that you can see this high island from such a distance, but you have to go quite a way around the island before reaching the only pass. In all, it has been a six-hour passage, one hour from the marina to the pass, four hours across, another hour once inside.

Rotorua, New Zealand Another dawn arrival, but where are we? This looks exactly like England, from the signs to the things they are selling in the airport, the way the people look, talk, and dress. But not today's hurry, hurry, cosmopolitan England, more like a pre-Beatles era, when the country was just beginning to make its mark on the popular international scene. While David sleeps, I drive, and Ben and I marvel at the landscape, so many greens cover the gently rolling hills, not unlike the Cotswolds where he was born. Strange trees, both tropical and northern, yellow gorse covering the humpy hills as we approach the volcanic areas, suddenly we are in Fitzgerald's glade all dark and dense with just enough room for this two lane road. I'm glad I didn't sleep through this! We recall the separately evolved ecosystem of this southern hemisphere island with its own native plants and those the colonists have brought. We see wooly sheep with spring lambs, horses in blue coats, deer with antlers being farmed, even ostriches. Why are there so few people here? This is a comfortable, magical land. I think they try to keep them out! Seriously tired we finally reach Rotorua, but now it's time to explore. We arrive at Waimangu late in the afternoon, still sleepy, but ready for a walk into this amazing landscape. This is a perfect introduction to this strange land of steaming earth and incandescent pools of varying greens.

Queen Margaret College, Wellington, New Zealand Queen Margaret College Headmistress Ann Mildenhall checks that her students' school uniforms conform to the dress code. A day at school after two weeks away takes some getting used to, but Ann has kept her calendar open; and it is glorious to be on the observing side. The original college building is magnificent, soaring ceilings, regal staircases, a central timbered entrance hall. The rest of the facility is only 12 years old, purpose built with carpeted ramps leading between levels, each division distinctive and colorful. We end this full day with dinner with Ann and her three top staff and their husbands at the Wellington Club; even the Duke of Edinburgh is a member here! It is great food and wonderful company. I need to spoil my staff a little more!

St. Margaret's College, Christchurch, New Zealand One last morning in school. Today I processed into the chapel with Headmistress Claudia Wysoki. There I spoke of actual and spiritual gifts, and left a St. Margaret's bear behind. This round wooden chapel carpeted in red gives an amazing sense of close community even with all 650 students in the congregation. Here is a wonderful multi purpose space with stepped seating made up of moveable, padded seats for two or three arrayed in a semicircle. Theatre lights and excellent acoustics complete this inspiring space. Although they have holes to support an altar rail, they've left it off to convey inclusiveness, and it works. Together surrounded by music and voices, led by their young American woman chaplain, we experience its intimacy and celebrate the spiritual ties that link us and our schools.

Byron Bay, Australia - A Silent, Seaside Retreat My first impressions are all sensory. The steady background roar that can only be the sea, the sweet heavy fragrance of tropical flowers after the brief storm that forced me to stop and wait, the slip of mossy stone steps as I climb to the dark front door, its leaded glass windows an invitation to discover my new home, the musty damp of a closed wooden seaside house, the spring of dark hardwood floors under my heavy, damp hiking boots, the fresh, cool breeze as I open the French doors off of what will be my bedroom and catch my first glimpse of the great Southern Ocean, a line of surf moonlit above the trees and beneath the distant horizon. Perfect. I explore, as I've done in so many rented homes around the world, always happiest in those where water is in sight - the high hilltop views in St. Barts, the pool near Avignon, the Mediterranean from France or Italy, Lake Annecy, our very own Rappahannock River from my office or our home. This house is a mixture of old-fashioned cottage modernized with glass, tile, and chandlery brass. I'm ready to move in, unpack, make this space mine, but not tonight. A bowl of oatmeal and honey to make up for my missed dinner, a glass of water, a new book, that's all I can manage tonight. I leave the doors open when I settle into the bed, down comforted, curious to know just where the sun will rise, happy to feel the night air fill the room, the sea echoes drowning other noises, permitting no intrusions.

One Visitor to Byron Bay, Susan Yates, SMS 84, Now Living in Singapore I have written that Susan was the teenager I once was, and here she is the international career woman I went on to be - the same intensity of focus, the same passion overruling balance, but what she's got right is the ability to negotiate the world on her own, which is so late coming to me now, but then what I've got right is the ability to negotiate it while including a family. Each of us carries our sorrows and our satisfactions. Tonight we celebrate my last night, Susan's birthday tomorrow. We both dress up for the first time after our four beach days. It feels good to actually try again after all of this time unobserved. I've selected what I think is the best restaurant, certainly the perfect location tucked in the corner of Watego's Bay, Rae's, a small luxury hotel with a terrace dining room. We sit on the blue covered chairs and overlook the water just as the sun turns the sky a rosy pink. The menu is both elegant and surprising-Susan tries 'bug' a cross between lobster and crab, from Moreton Bay. I have a perfect fish dish. The waiter looks like a younger Sting, all helpful and fun. Five couples dining, we enjoy this treat. This was the perfect ending to this perfect time.

Continue to Sabbatical Scrapbook - Page 2

To email Margaret: margaret@sms.org