Today, we’re excited to introduce to our community our new Dean of Students Alex Funnell. Alex has lived all over the world (most recently working at an independent school in Jordan) and has come to Stone to serve as the “lead designer” for our student’s experience. While Alex’s immediate responsibilities include bolstering our social and emotional support systems and programming, working closely with our Grade Level Deans and House leaders, and collaborating with our student leadership teams, he is also working to more fully design our experiential education programming. Here, Alex shares a little of his background as well as his orientation to “big experiences” – the kind of transformative experience which you can never completely be prepared for.

To the best of my memory, I always wanted to be an adventurer. At the time, I had no idea what that meant, nor did I know how one would become such. In my experience, “school” never offered intentional “adventurism” and it also did not create any form of curriculum around the title either. Those feelings intensified during a high school advanced placement biology class while sitting in-front of Jean Michel Cousteau, son of the famous ocean explorer Jacque Cousteau. I wanted to quit school immediately and have him take me under his wing and just do the work rather than sit there and read about it. Although I tried, through various emails and correspondences to make that a reality, none of them panned out. Much later on, and towards the end of college, this article in National Geographic about the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) left me with the feeling of “I can do that!”. The Divide is a 2400 mile, off-pavement route, stretching from the Canadian Border to the Mexican Border and…well, I did it.

With this epic choice and all of those that have followed, I have never been fully prepared. Being prepared is impossible, but having confidence in the fact that I can take care of anything, if and when it arises, comes from previous experience.

In search of experiences which compel me to grow physically and mentally, experiences which are increasingly larger in scale, I have continued the practice of challenging myself every three years. After the GDMBR (see here for a documentary trailer for those that race it!) I summited Kilimanjaro, cycled from Hanio to Ho Chi Minh City and most recently, trekked to Everest Base Camp. None of those adventures were for the sake of building my own personal resume, each were in pursuit of the small moments of trail magic that happen along the way. In those moments, I can’t say that I was fully prepared, and yet my comfort zone was stretched through osmosis and reflection, and because it was I filled my own cup.

So what does this mean for me as I begin my career here at Stone as its first ever Dean of Students? Why do I find myself comfortable in situations where others may not be, and how do I create experiential opportunities for our students to learn by doing in a setting that is so Stone? These experiences require a myriad of soft skills, ones that can be forged from moments where we allow ourselves to take small steps, with safe but healthy amounts of risk, outside of our comfort zones. My intention is to use those experiences and that “orientation to growth” to provide our community with experiences which allow for the creation of new skills, new attitudes and new ways of thinking about the world around us.

I have only experienced Stone, abuzz, for a couple of weeks. Yet, each day, I have left the school immensely proud, tired and intrigued by the willingness of our students to search for solutions to complex problems. Less than a week at Stone is more than most weeks in other moments of my life and yet the transition to Stone has been even better than I expected. I knew that this experience would be different to others in my educational career, a difference that I was actually looking forward to and one that I actively discussed with Abby and Mike before landing in Lancaster. Now, in addition to supporting the “learning” of every student at Stone, my hope is to turn my own story into experiential moments of intentional insight for our students, so that they may transition on to make the world a measurably better place.

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You Will Never Be Fully Prepared