As the upper school community heads for a week long break to celebrate Thanksgiving, Upper School Head Butch Keller reflects upon the last month attributing the beauty of high school to its constant unexpectedness and change. New things are happening every day.

As fall play closed at the beginning of this month, Keller looks ahead to the four student directors working towards Student Directed Showcase. He distinctly remembers wishing Mr. Jeffrey Draper, the fall play director, good luck before the show and hearing from Draper how much the cast had grown not only as individuals but also as a cast. While watching the show, Keller could see that. It was evident that the students had chosen to get absorbed by the process rather than the product. An idea that Keller believes very strongly in.

Many people never thought that the same day of the fall play, the varsity football team would be heading into a championship game. Keller attributes the success of the team not only to the players and the new coaching staff but also the united school spirit that has especially been prevalent this year.

“During the football games, I go and travel to talk to the adults and there is so much energy generated,” he said. “We have a good fan base at football games.”

But as football season comes to a close, Keller, who is also the boys varsity basketball coach, looks forward to the start of winter sports.

Although sports and performing arts can be considered by many as two opposite side of the spectrum, Keller only sees similarities with each one of the students spending lots of time to try to be good at what they are doing or their dedication to stay involved in that activity to maintain that personal balance, a concept that Keller stressed during this year’s open house which hit a record number of 675 guests.

Keller decided that during his opening address at Open House, he would not talk about academics but rather about the student dynamic, school trips, and the focus of the Harker community: the students.

“I am not going to talk about how hard this place can be if you make it that way,” he said. “But for two hours after that opening piece is done and parents go around classes that’s all that will be talked about: how many AP’s and honors classes can you take or even how many kids got into Stanford last year. That’s all about destination. I will try to steer every conversation to balance.”

Having coached basketball for 35 years and going to numerous state championships and tournaments, Keller’s focus is not the destination. He wants students at the Harker community to immerse themselves in the process and enjoy high school. Keller even attributed that many reports say that part of the problem with teenagers is that they are not taking to time to enjoy high school.

With a chuckle, Keller reminisced his own high school experience and promised that he lived both high school and college to the fullest extent.

“To be honest, my grades didn’t matter till I got to graduate school because I had a lot of other things to do,” he said. “I mean I obviously did well enough to get all the degrees I needed but until I got into graduate school I wasn’t concentrating on that A.”

After noticing the body language of the senior class change completely during the week that early college applications were due, he hopes that the senior class, especially, will remember to take time to enjoy themselves, focusing on the journey rather than the destination.

In light of the staged protests at Yale University, the University of Missouri, and many other campuses about racial tensions, Keller hopes that the community at Harker always remembers that communication

Growing up in the South during the late 60s and early 70s — a time of high racial tensions across the nation — Keller recalls his high school transforming from all-white student body to an integrated campus of whites and African Americans. The principal was white and the assistant principal was black.

Although he knew he could talk to both, he was also aware that many could not or were not allowed to. He, likewise, hopes that everyone in the community knows that his door is always open for conversations.

“Even though we are so far beyond that, it is still a part of my makeup,” he said. “I don’t ever want a person to think that because I am tall, because I am white, because I am old that there is a barrier of any kind. “I don’t want people to ever feel that they can’t come and say anything.”

Although Keller knows that he will never be able to make every single person on campus happy, he does hope that he can foster a community of listeners ready to take part in global discussions.