What’s in a name?
Independent schools use many different names and titles than public schools. Generally they can be distinguished as private or non-public, and many use the term independent. Others will use the terms Christian or parochial, and we are both because we are a school in the Christian faith and we are a parish school so we are parochial. We use the term independent to define Mead Hall because we associate with and are accredited by a regional independent school association, which require high standards of academics and governance. We are members of and accredited by the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS).
We also use different terms for our administration. For the school principal we use Head of School. The more traditional name is headmaster, the title used in the past at both Mead Hall and Aiken Prep, and we use this from time to time. Headmaster comes from a time in England when all of the teachers were referred to as master, because they were masters in their subject, and the headmaster was the leader of all the teachers. These days in the UK the term headteacher is often used instead.
We also have division heads at Mead Hall, educational leaders for each school, the Head of Lower School, Head of Middle School and Head of Upper School. Until two years ago Mead Hall referred to these educational leaders as directors, but the term head is commonly used in independent schools and denotes the responsibility these teachers have in leading a team of teachers. These titles are often colloquially phrased as Lower School Head, etc. We also have several other administrators at the school who are mostly referred to as directors. A visible exception is the Chaplain, which is typically a Christian minister to an institution or the military.
Lastly, we have some new names for our youngest grades in the Lower School, 3K has become PS (preschool), 4K has become PK (pre-kindergarten) and K (kindergarten), which are fairly common designations for these levels of school. We believe it is important not to define the students by their age in our foundation years programs, because students develop at different paces and may need to be assigned to a class that does not match their age. I spent the first six years of teaching in a boys school where many of the students would begin at age 6 because in their younger years boys are developmentally behind girls and are often not ready for kindergarten. When any student advances through school grades ahead of their readiness it can severely affect their ability to learn and succeed academically. Kindergarten, by the way, was a German pedagogical invention based on the theory that children should begin their learning journey at a very young age.
May God bless all of our students and all of us each day.
Frank Sawyer
