As you may be aware, in each of the past few years I have been hosting a One Book, One Community evening event centered around a parenting and/or education topic. This year we have adopting Enhancing the Student Experience as one of our long-term district goals. These goals focus on improving student wellness through the fostering of a safe and supportive learning environment within a broader school community. As one method of engaging this broader community, we recently had over 300 community members come to discuss Frank Bruni’s bestselling book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. We are excited to announce that Kate Fagan author of NY Time bestseller What Made Maddy Run will be speaking in the high school auditorium on January 29 at 7 pm. This is the excerpt from Amazon:
From noted ESPN commentator and journalist Kate Fagan, the heartbreaking and vital story of college athlete Madison Holleran, whose death by suicide rocked the University of Pennsylvania campus and whose life reveals with haunting detail and uncommon understanding the struggle of young people suffering from mental illness today.
If you scrolled through the Instagram feed of 19-year-old Maddy Holleran, you would see a perfect life: a freshman at an Ivy League school, recruited for the track team, who was also beautiful, popular, and fiercely intelligent. This was a girl who succeeded at everything she tried and who was only getting started.
But when Maddy began her long-awaited college career, her parents noticed something changed. Previously indefatigable Maddy became withdrawn, and her thoughts centered on how she could change her life. In spite of thousands of hours of practice and study, she contemplated transferring from the school that had once been her dream. When Maddy’s dad, Jim, dropped her off for the first day of spring semester, she held him a second longer than usual. That would be the last time Jim would see his daughter.
I hope you find time to read this important book and to join us on January 29 to hear Kate Fagan speak to our community. Please feel free to share this invitation with other members of the Ramsey community. We are hopeful that our students’ experiences will be enhanced as a result of our community engaging in these important discussions.
Sincerely,
Dr. Matthew J. Murphy, Superintendent of Schools
