A message from Incoming Headmaster David Colón: I am really looking forward to coming to Wakefield this summer. As I see it, I have two immediate tasks ahead of me. One is to get to know the community — the students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and really everyone who makes our school such an amazing place. My other task is to begin to look ahead at the future of our school. What do we need to do to ensure that the young women and men who enter our school will be successful and make a positive difference in the life of our nation, and indeed the world? This will help Wakefield set some strategic priorities as we move into the next chapter of our history. I'm hoping to combine these two tasks with what I'm calling the signals project. A signal is typically a small or local innovation or disruption that has the potential to grow in scale and geographic distribution. A signal can be a new product, a new practice, a new market strategy, a new policy, or new technology. It can be an event, a local trend, or an organization. It can also be a recently revealed problem or state of affairs. In short, it is something that catches our attention at one scale and in one locale and points to larger implications for other locales or even globally. We all know the world around us is changing. With things such as globalization, online education, Google Glasses, digital textbooks, it's been hard to avoid change over the past few years. But what lies on the horizon? Which ones do people in the Wakefield community view as our most important challenges? What are our core principles that allow us to meaningfully engage with the future and not float from trend to trend? I'd like to ask the entire Wakefield community what it sees as important signals, and collect those in order to help frame the future of the school. Once we've gathered a group of signals, we will be having a series of meetings with the community to start looking at ways we can make sure we are preparing our students as best we can for the future. ---David Colón Please take the time to watch these videos and listen to Incoming Headmaster David Colón talk about why he chose Wakefield and how his family is feeling about making the transition (Part One); introduce his first two projects of learning about the school and collecting signals (Part Two); explain how signals inform the ever-important strategic plan (Part Three); and finally, tell the community how it can submit signals and what the next step is (Part Four). You can read more about the signals project here: www.smore.com/jd5m-wakefield-a-look-ahead. If you have signals to submit, leave a comment on the Smore page, or email them to kprahlad@wakefieldschool.org by March 25. Stay tuned for emails with dates for the next step of face-to-face discussions with David Colón. Dates will be scheduled later in the spring.