BrewsterConnections(PDF) - Brewster Academy

Matt Hoopes, Bobcat Since 1975
Alumni Correspondent
Having been a burned-out administrator of an all-male pre-prep school for 11
years prior to my arrival at Brewster, I was excited by the prospects of teaching
older students and especially looking forward to working with the attentive,
polite female students. To say that I was a tad shell-shocked by the end of the
first day would barely be an exaggeration.
I had been hired as a part-time employee with just two essay composition
courses to teach. By nightfall, however, I’d been awarded the positions of adviser
to the Student Court and to the yearbook. It was explained to me, briefly, that
to be a good teacher at Brewster, one had to be involved in everything and so I
found myself with nights of dormitory supervision as well as weekend duties. The
most distressing lesson of that first day was that I found the female students to
be less than attentive, and not necessarily polite. But it was only the first day,
things would improve.
I settled in and for the next 21 years I thoroughly enjoyed my involvement in
all sorts of extracurricular activities, including advising the Student Council,
the Class Gift Committee, and even helped students set up WBAR, the school’s
short-lived radio station. For more than 12 years I taught all the sophomore
English classes, some years with five sections.
When I arrived in 1975, the Academic Building, the Estabrook Dining Hall, the
Rogers Gymnasium, and the three dorms: Bearce, Brown, and Sargent comprised
all the school facilities. There was a tiny, one-room library, one science lab in
the basement of the Ac, and one small yellow school bus that broke down
regularly while transporting the two varsity and junior varsity teams we had
each season. Each dorm had one phone in the hallway and one black and white
TV in a cramped mini-lounge. The Estabrook kitchen provided a set menu per
meal, no optional choices. In comparison to Brewster today, it might seem like
we suffered, but with 118 students and just 15 faculty and staff members but we
were a small close-knit community in which everyone knew each others’ name
and personality. With so much work to do and with so few to do it, there was a
clear understanding that we all needed to pitch in for the benefit of the school.
Students helped out in the kitchen, in the dorms, and in the classrooms. Special
occasions such as Parents’ Weekend would find all 140 individuals working
toward the goal of preparing the entire campus for the event.
We had no idea that in the next 30 years the school would be transformed by
technology, major curriculum enhancements, and growth of the physical plant.
In that sense, perhaps, one could say ignorance is bliss, yet at the time I was very
content with what Brewster had and what Brewster was.
I think I’m most proud of what the students and I were able to do in the way of
student publication. With blessings from the English chair, the late Peter Friend,
I attempted to establish a journalism program. Admittedly, with no credit given
at first, it was a rough start, and yet when the first issue of our mimeographed
Outcroppings was published, we were off and running. The Browser (first known
as The Students’ Voice) followed the next year. We produced six issues a year,
sometimes with as many as 16 pages, including zinging editorials, often making
the administration
cringe. The two
journalism classes
were busy as they also
produced the yearbook
and the BAPA (Brewster
Academy Publications
and Address) Book –
nine publications a year
with one typewriter
and zero computers.
According to our
yearbook printer in
1995, we were the
only school in New
Hampshire still using
the glue and paste
method of prepping pages. Definitely a change was needed, and I was not the
person to lead that change.
In 1996 with the arrival of computers that I didn’t know how to turn on,
I crossed Main Street and went to work for the Alumni Office. One of my duties
was to organize an event at which alumni who were still in college would return
and hold a meeting with the senior class, detailing the ins and outs of college.
At first these events seemed helpful and instructive, but as they later tended to
focus on the social side of campus life, I was told I no longer needed to organize
them. My position, however, as the alumni correspondent has been helpful in
keeping alums in touch with the school and with each other. I know I’ve certainly
enjoyed working with 37 years worth of alumni!
This is my 16th year of helping former student Beth Hayes ’81 with Reunion
Weekend, and while Beth does the brunt of the organizing and is a whiz at all the
details, she lets me pitch in and I truly love working with the gradually maturing
alums, meeting and getting to know their spouses and children. While it does
take a lot of effort to round up everyone for the three-day event of rehashing
good times and memories, it is so much fun to see all having such a great time,
teasing each other with early nicknames, and simply re-connecting and bonding
with Brewster.
In ending my memory jaunt, I should point out a pleasant twist of fate:
The scary computers that drove me from the classroom are now the friendly
ones that allow me to continue to work for Brewster from a much warmer clime.
Hopefully not all my marbles will roll away, at least not for a few more years, as I
still have more fascinating Hooplas to write.
25 Years by the Numbers:
97 Browsers produced
3,629 Days worked in temperatures above 80 degrees
36,200 Personalized postcards sent to alumni
www.brewsteracademy.org
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