From Hilltop to Home
You know your child best and your perspective is often the most telling, but if some of my advice can be helpful to you—in managing their and your transition to boarding school life and potentially setting your minds at ease during times of the year that can be challenging—then I am happy to be of service.
Ryan M. Pagotto, Associate Head of School
Dear families,
As head of Blair's student life office, it is my pleasure to be involved in many aspects of our students’ lives and to serve as a day-to-day resource for them and for parents. In addition to providing support to students, many of whom are our advisees, my colleagues and I also work closely with housemasters, advisors, coaches and teachers to ensure that residential life at Blair runs smoothly and to identify and manage any challenges proactively. Our work runs the gamut from planning community events, organizing campus clubs and activities, and sponsoring leadership opportunities to planning global travel during school breaks, supporting campus spiritual life, and encouraging student health and wellness.
Given that 80 percent of our students live here on campus, one of my most important roles is to keep parents abreast of what is happening in their child's life at Blair. To that end, I began writing a monthly e-newsletter, From Hilltop to Home, a few years ago, with the aim of providing parents with perspective and counsel based on my 22 years of working with high school students as a teacher, coach, houseparent and dean. While my four children are not yet of high school age—our oldest is 14—and I acknowledge that, unlike you, I have not yet navigated the teenage years with my own children, I’ve been through the boarding school cycle many times now and have seen virtually every challenge that an adolescent can face.
You know your child best and your perspective is often the most telling, but if some of my advice can be helpful to you—in managing their and your transition to boarding school life and potentially setting your minds at ease during times of the year that can be challenging—then I am happy to be of service.
From these letters, as well as the rest of the website, I hope you gain a strong sense of how expertly Blair balances academic rigor with the strong relationships that are the foundation of our genuinely kind and caring community. We are deeply rooted in tradition but also committed to offering our students with a forward-thinking education, providing them with the skills that will help them succeed in life.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to sharing my insights with you as the year progresses!
Warm regards,
Ryan M. Pagotto
Associate Head of School
Read the Latest Issue
Two admission Revisit Days, the 10th Annual Day of Giving, an alumnus and now practicing architect delivering an excellent Society of Skeptics talk, classes, lots of victories over the Peddie School in spring competitions and 106 Blair students performing on the most renowned stage in the world. Just a typical spring week at Blair!
I write to you from a snow-covered campus following three action-packed weeks of winter at Blair. The temperature warmed this weekend to a balmy 33 degrees, which was a welcome relief from the subzero temperatures we have endured the last couple of weeks. Our students have been resilient in the face of the frosty weather, and I especially tip my hat to those students from typically warm climates. When a student from Florida asked me how long this was going to last, I responded that it was only 40 degrees and snowing in [northern] Florida at the time, and he quickly replied, “That’s 38 degrees warmer than it is in Blairstown, Mr. Pagotto!”