Head Search Announcement

February 21, 2008

Dear Canterbury Parents and Friends,

The Trustees of Canterbury School are very pleased to announce that on July 1 of this year Burns Jones will become Canterbury’s Head of School.

All of our trustees and all of the members of our Search Committee have agreed wholeheartedly in selecting Burns Jones to lead Canterbury. All of us believe that Burns has unique strength of character, a firm spiritual grounding, and proven leadership and communication skills that will make him very successful here. We have observed that Burns feels a calling to educate children and is passionate about education. We believe that he feels particularly called to and compatible with Canterbury, our people, and our mission. We see energy and enthusiasm in Burns’ response to Canterbury, and we are excited for the future of our School.

Burns has impressive credentials, both as a teacher and as an independent school administrator. He is currently Head of the Intermediate/Middle School at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, an excellent independent K-12 Episcopal day school in Columbia, SC, where he also teaches and coaches.

Before moving to Heathwood Hall, Burns taught Advanced Placement Language and Composition, coached soccer and golf, and served as Director of Advancement at Christ School, an Episcopal school for boys in Arden, NC. A graduate of The University of the South (Sewanee) and the University of South Carolina School of Law, Burns has earned a Master of Arts degree from Middlebury College in Vermont. He is also an attorney who practiced law for two years in Columbia before becoming an educator. He is a native of South Carolina and the son of an Episcopal priest. More information about Burns can be found on Canterbury’s website, http://www.canterburysch.org.

Burns has come to Canterbury as the result of a national search process. Our twelve-member search committee composed of trustees, parents, and faculty members deserves the greatest thanks for their dedication and hard work over many months. The committee, led by Knox Barker and David Brown, was advised and assisted by the Rev. Peter Cheney, who is currently serving as Interim Head of St. Richards School in Indianapolis and who served for many years as Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools. All of these, as well as Canterbury’s faculty, parents, students, trustees, and former trustees, have worked together to identify and select Burns Jones as our next Head of School. It has been a thorough and rewarding process.

As enthusiastic as we are about Burns, we are equally pleased to welcome to the Canterbury family Burns’ wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Wyatt, who is two years old.  Please join us all in welcoming Burns, Elizabeth, and Wyatt to Greensboro and to Canterbury.

Sincerely yours,

Ed Winslow
President, Board of Trustees

Burns Jones

Burns Jones is a native of South Carolina and the eldest son of an Episcopal priest. His parents have retired to Sylva in western North Carolina and his three siblings live in and around Asheville, NC.   Burns graduated from The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, earned a law degree from USC in Columbia, and has an MA in English from Middlebury College in Vermont. His professional experience includes teaching, practice in a corporate litigation law firm, and several years as Director of Advancement for Christ School in Arden, NC. He is currently the Intermediate/Middle School Director at Heathwood Hall, an Episcopal K-12 school in Columbia, SC. Burns and his wife, Elizabeth, (who is a Sewanee graduate and an Alabama native) have a son, Wyatt, who is two years old.  Burns will formally join Canterbury as Head of School July 1, 2008, but he and his family expect to visit Canterbury and Greensboro several times during the spring. Please take advantage of upcoming opportunities to introduce yourself to Burns and Elizabeth and to make them feel at home in our community.

Burns Jones Resume

Personal Statement of Burns Jones

By Burns Jones

I am the product of large schools. To put things into perspective, athletes at my high school regularly advance to play professional sports. I enrolled in Honors Biology with thirty other students, and I tried out for the varsity soccer team with fifty other players. My college counselor managed over one hundred seniors. At certain times during the day, the school’s library had to close its doors in order to accommodate the needs of the student body. Average academic effort often yielded exceptional results. For graduation exercises, the school rented a university coliseum because the buildings on campus were too small to accommodate the entire senior class. Students could not help but become lost in this environment, and they did.

Fortunately, I am also the product of a small university; a school that closely monitored issues like student-faculty ratio, class size, and attrition. The faculty, while placing great demands upon the students, labored to ensure each student’s welfare and success. The faculty compelled the students to consider tough intellectual and ethical issues and to draw conclusions based upon investigation and deliberation. An “A” was well earned. I enrolled in a senior English seminar with five other students, and I developed a relationship with my professors that endure to this day. Students could not hide, and they flourished under the scrutiny.

After attending law school at a large university and practicing for a few years, I realized that I belonged in an academic setting. Thus, I left the legal profession and moved to a boarding school, where I taught English and served as the Director of Advancement. What impressed me about this experience was the ability of a school to approximate the academic rigor that I encountered in college. The teachers knew the students by name and demanded time with them outside of class. This attention, in turn, allowed the teachers to evaluate and address the attributes and limitations of each student. But more importantly, the intimacy of this environment fostered a rapport between the faculty and students that catalyzed intellectual curiosity and academic achievement.

Thus, I come from a varied academic background. I have taught at a boarding school of fewer than two hundred students, and I have studied at a national university of over ten thousand students. Yet, each experience has contributed to my understanding of the responsibility that schools bear.

People often remark that schools “are not the real world,” that life on a campus fails to approximate life outside the school’s borders. Not only do I agree with this assertion, but I also believe that schools maintain a responsibility to ensure that life on campus deviates from “real life.” Elementary, middle, and many high school students are not equipped for life in the real world. They are not prepared for the intellectual, social, and moral obstacles that await them, and schools maintain a responsibility to prepare students to overcome these obstacles. 

Schools fulfill this responsibility by providing a physically and intellectually safe environment, where each student’s presence and differences hold value. Schools must challenge their students in ways in which they have never been challenged and compel their students to try things new and unfamiliar. Schools must prepare students to accept the consequences of their actions and help them recognize that failure often constitutes a condition precedent to success. All schools, regardless of size or cost, bear these responsibilities.

But independent schools and independent school teachers, I feel, have the opportunity to accomplish much more. We have the ability to extend the learning process beyond the classroom and onto the playing field and the stage. We not only motivate and challenge our students, but we also possess the capacity to catch them when they fall. (And anyone who has spent time with kids knows that they will fall.) We maintain an obligation to discuss the tough moral and ethical issues that many schools are hesitant to confront. We are afforded these opportunities because we are not restricted by the limitations of protocol and size that may restrict intellectual growth and personal development in other academic environments.

The consequence of an independent school education stems from the reality that the lessons our students learn endure long after the conclusion of the academic day and persist throughout their lives. Thus, it is the enduring nature of the education that we provide that distinguishes independent schools from others. I do not mean to suggest that public schools cannot accomplish these objectives, but my experience teaches that independent schools impart these values with greater fervor and success than do our public counterparts. We must fulfill these responsibilities in order to satisfy the responsibility that we owe our students and our society, and the earlier that we can impart these lessons the better.

Unfortunately, these objectives are philosophical and difficult to quantify. The tendency is to measure a school’s success through more concrete factors, like test scores and financial resources. But I believe that a school’s ability to attain both empirical and theoretical goals emanates from its capacity to reach and inspire each student.  

Independent school teachers represent the foundation of this effort, and the success of the finest schools resides not in their ability to send students to top secondary schools and colleges, but rather in the inspirational capacity of their faculties. My educational philosophy, I trust, will continue to evolve over time. In fact, I would question any educator who maintains a static approach. But I feel confident that my desire to address the individual needs of students and my desire to help each student recognize the value that he or she has to offer the world will remain at the core of my educational philosophy. Students deserve this attention, and the world is a better place because of it.

A Letter from Peter Cheney

Greetings,

I want to convey my congratulations and joy to all of you in the Canterbury community about the call of Burns Jones to be the next Head of School. I am delighted for the School and excited for Burns and his family.

I use the word ‘call’ very intentionally. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Episcopal schools is their grounding in the empowering love of God, and our commitment to prepare young people for lives of leadership and service. In this spirit, we often hear the concept of vocation discussed in our schools. Vocation comes from a Latin root that most literally means called or summoned. To accept on faith the principle that all human beings are created in God’s image means to me that we are all called in ways unique to each of us not merely to careers in the narrow sense but to callings. In his book, Wishful Thinking, the writer Frederick Buechner refers to vocation as that place God calls us to where our deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. Since my first conversation with the founding leaders of Canterbury in the summer of 1992 and throughout my close association with the school community, the deep and abiding commitment to the divine principle of vocation has been obvious and inspiring to me.

This has never been more evident than over the last six months in the leadership of the Search Committee, the Board of Trustees, and Penny Summers and her colleagues.

And the results of their collective prayers and labor will become more and more evident, I believe, as all of you unite with Burns to move Canterbury into a new and wonderful chapter of its life. Burns brings great skills and abilities to his work with you, and most significant he brings a love of children grounded in an abiding faith and commitment to life as vocation.

It has been an honor and privilege for me to assist the Search Committee and Trustees precisely because the process they followed since August has been as thoughtful, open and transparent as any I have encountered. Countless hours were spent listening, examining and evaluating the state of the school in order best to determine what kind of leader might lead the community most effectively and most hopefully. This vitally important groundwork was integrated with a wide and thorough search to identify the most inspiring and suitable candidates; and finally, the interviewing of numerous leaders and deep background referencing on those most likely to succeed at Canterbury. It was gratifying to me that more than forty people sought candidacy, most of whom are strong and effective educational leaders. Canterbury is widely respected. True, like all of our schools it is very much a human institution with its own particular complexities and challenges at this stage of its life. No one need apologize for this. Rather, I celebrate for and with you that yours is a school that remains humbled by its humanity and poised for an even better future.

Many blessings to you all,
Peter Cheney
Consultant to the Search Committee,
Interim Headmaster, St. Richard's School, Indianapolis