Both, And: Meg Kenny and the Art of Being More than One Thing

I am sitting with Meg Kenny, and for a moment we are not in her Founders Hall office any longer. We are in Arlington, Massachusetts, and it is the 1970s. We are in a finished basement playroom that is outfitted as a schoolhouse—desks, books, chalkboard, paper, pens and pencils—and Meg and her sisters are completely immersed in playing school. She and her sisters take turns being teacher and student, creating lessons and activities. Taking after their mother and grandmother, who both spent time as teachers, the sisters embrace the culture of teaching and learning.

Then we are outside on a street, lined with sidewalks, dotted with houses, and Meg and dozens of other kids are out playing street hockey, wiffle ball, kick the can. Meg plays hard, and loves going to Red Sox games with all the neighborhood kids. 

“Growing up, I was comfortable in both worlds; I loved school, and playing school . . . and I loved being out in our neighborhood.”

Like so many of us, Meg Kenny was more than one thing for as long as she can remember. The goldenrod and lime tint of the ’70s recedes, and the slate gray and navy present comes back into focus, and Meg is sitting across from me as Burr and Burton’s first woman Associate Head of School. She is headed into her 27th school year at BBA. 

Hired as a social studies teacher in 1998, Meg became the social studies department head within a few years, and in 2010 she was appointed dean of faculty, succeeding John Wright, who retired that year. In 2012, Headmaster Mark Tashjian named her Assistant Headmaster, replacing Steve Houghton who retired after 31 years. A few years later, her title shifted to “Associate” Head of School, acknowledging her critical role in running the daily operations: “Meg is the leader of our educational program. She’s a thought leader, she’s a people leader, she’s a kid leader—and so in all things day-to-day, she’s in command.”

Meg is known for being in command, for creating the very solid foundation on which faculty and staff create meaningful learning experiences for students. She works hard behind the scenes to guide the processes—sometimes nearly invisibly—that lead to progress at Burr and Burton. Meg is a person you go to to get things done.

She is also a definitive figure in fostering and promoting the culture of care that is the very hallmark of Burr and Burton. Academic Dean Jen Hyatt, who has worked with Meg for nearly 20 years, says, “This place has an authentic feeling of care and community, and that is something Meg creates intentionally. The fact that she cares so deeply about people is one of her greatest strengths.”

She is both a strategic leader and an empathic one—and if that feels like a dichotomy, Meg’s leadership demonstrates that it’s a false one. It is possible to be both, and; it is possible to be more than one thing. 

In Arlington, Meg, her sisters, and the kids on her street, walked to their neighborhood school. Early on, they also walked home for lunch, but then the school built a cafeteria, and the kids stayed there for lunch. 

Meg reflects, “I loved my elementary school. It was a place where I felt known. There was so much love, care and nurturing. I can name all the teachers I had each year, and I can remember all these defining opportunities: the third grade Revolutionary War project I presented to the principal, my 5th grade classroom leadership role, our 6th grade camping trip.”

In middle school, she attended a progressive program that is multi-age and integrated subject areas thematically. Meg credits this program with making connections that became an essential foundation for her learning to come.

From there, she says, “It was a funny transition” to the very structured local parochial high school where there were high standards for both academics and character. She recalls, “There were really high expectations for everyone . . . I was exposed to ideas and had to think critically. No one was telling me what to think.” 

She pauses, “I was always a little meta—thinking about the way my teachers were teaching my classes. I was always noticing what helped me learn, and also what didn’t . . . ”

“Those points in my own education really translated in my own teaching career in terms of the importance of seeing all kids as capable, and of meeting individual needs so each student can make the most of their education.”

In college at Saint Michael’s in Burlington, Meg studied economics and decided to write her senior thesis on the economics of education. “I ended up going down this rabbit hole of the history and theory of public education. I really began to wrestle with—what is education really about? Is it about developing citizens? Productive workers? Or, is it about community? Is it about care? Is it about opportunity?”

Though she had initially resisted her family legacy, Meg realized that she did want to teach. She enrolled in an evening graduate program to become certified. Her graduate work included the keys to unlocking all the pedagogical choices she had been fascinated with throughout her childhood.

While in graduate school, Meg made another very important discovery—one that would impact her leadership and a generation of colleagues and students at Burr and Burton. 

In high school, Meg had learned about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development and the cognitive development behind those stages. Now she is reading educational philosophers like Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings who have a slightly different take on things: “[They introduced the idea that] women make ethical and moral decisions based on relationships. That hit me really hard. I thought, that’s what I do . . . that was the first time I heard the term ethic of care.”

For Meg, on the precipice of a career in education, this was a groundbreaking concept: “That helped me see my ethic of care as a superpower. It gave me power. It allowed me to see how my deep care for others, my focus on relationships, my attentiveness—was a strength.”

She pauses, “It wasn’t a strategy; it’s just who I was.” 

“I think it’s the same for BBA. We say, Burr and Burton is a place of care. That’s not a strategy; that’s just who we are.”

It wasn’t a strategy, but it was the awareness she began to build her career on. Meg lights up when she talks about her early days teaching at Shelburne Community School. There, with cooperating teacher Dick Carlson and the support of graduate professor Susan Kuntz and mentor Carol Smith, she began to practice and hone her student-centered teaching philosophy. Encouraged to apply for an unexpected opening, Meg quickly became a full-time teacher focused on identifying learners’ specific needs; she helped her students set individual goals and focused on process, progress, and product. She recalls the questions they explored, “What does a high-quality process look like in terms of revision or iteration or trying again? What does a high-quality product look like?”

Before long, leadership opportunities arose. She became the leader of her middle school team and participated in extensive professional development around student-centered learning and assessment. Then she became part of a group that taught teachers at Middle School Institutes in Vermont and nationally. 

She is sincere in crediting her mentors for her path to leadership, “There were leaders in the school who saw something in me that I think I didn't even know was there, and then gave me an opportunity.” She continues, explaining that leadership was not a foregone conclusion: “Truly, I was not putting myself out there as an adolescent or even in college. I was in the background, observing, thinking. Certain people saw qualities in me that I didn’t see in myself. Then, I started to see it too.”

“I really hope that I’m doing the same and passing that on and seeing the strengths in those around me.” 

Arriving at Burr and Burton in 2008, Mark Tashjian was another leader who wanted Meg on his team. Meg had been teaching at Burr and Burton for ten years already, and Mark recalls, “She was the chair of the social studies department; then she became the dean of faculty, and she was great at that—she’s very empathic, and she’s also very strong.”

When longtime assistant headmaster Steve Houghton retired in 2012, Mark knew that Meg’s leadership strengths would complement his own in important ways: “She and I make a good team. Meg is collaborative throughout the school in a way that builds consensus around decisions—because those decisions are always informed by broader input and ideas.”

Jen Hyatt echoes this sentiment: “Meg is an educator and an administrator. She always makes decisions from a place of what’s best for students. She’s constantly reading, researching, learning and staying informed on best practices. She knows who she is as an educator. She knows what she believes in, and I deeply appreciate that.”

Reflecting, Jen is energized by the positive evolution that has happened at Burr and Burton: “I’m so thankful to have Meg as a thought partner in visioning and growing the academic program. In the 20 years I’ve been here, the academic offerings have expanded and become more integrative—most notably the Success Program, the Mountain Campus, the Farm and Food Studies courses at Hildene, and the faculty collaborations alongside Design and STEM integrationists. Structurally and pedagogically, we’ve shifted to a focus on student engagement, which has created new and authentic learning opportunities for both faculty and students.”

Last spring, Meg’s youngest son, Will, walked across the stage as a graduate of the class of 2024. Her voice did not falter as she called his name, but there was a small pause as she took a moment to give her boy a hug. 

Six years earlier, Meg performed a similar ritual for her eldest son, Jackson, at the Class of 2018 commencement ceremony. The pictures reveal a beaming, if tearful, embrace on a brilliant June day. 

Like the many Burr and Burton faculty and staff who are also parents of students, the coexistence of personal and professional creates both a line to be tended and a source of great community alchemy. 

Her inspiration, in this and other things, is her own mother: “I have to give my mom thanks—she’s just been my champion. She was a teacher, and then a single mom, and then went back to graduate school, earned another master's degree and became a clinical counselor—but she did that and raised me and my siblings”

“She modeled being a professional and a mom. She brought her professional life into our home. I saw and knew the people she relied on as colleagues.”

She continues, “Colleagueship is so important to me. Every place that I’ve stayed for a long time, it’s been because of my colleagues. We spend a lot of time together; we have to feel like we can lean on each other and be supportive.”

For a moment, because I asked, we are talking about Barbie. In director Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film, which stirred a national conversation, the character Gloria launches into an iconic rant about the many paradoxes of being a modern woman. 

At one point in the rant, Gloria says, “You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas. You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people.”

I ask Meg what she thinks of this tension between women and ambition, between caring and leading. Has it been hard?

Then she does something extraordinary: She declines to be defined by the terms presented and instead presents her own: “For me, I just try to be authentic.” She pauses, “Part of that authenticity is continual self-awareness. When I’m assertive I try to be respectful and authentic.

Sometimes when I’m authentic, I show vulnerability and I show emotion, and I don’t back away from that. It’s okay with me to be uncomfortable and move through that.” 

She laughs, “That’s growth though. You’re talking to me at 58. If I think of the arc of my career, I know there were times when I was younger when I would go home and think, I can’t believe that just happened. I don’t like how I handled that. I don’t like that I didn’t speak up.”

“I have become more comfortable.” She pauses. “I try to know and be known to people.”

Contemplating Burr and Burton’s 175 years of educating women, Meg is appreciative of that legacy: “When I learned that history, I was proud of it. That’s a point of pride for me and a lot of others who teach here.” 

“That’s the power in the long history of the school—the importance of the school in the community. It’s so deep; the connections are so many.”

What is the work ahead? 

The answer is also both, and: both education and supporting educators.

“Education today, more than ever, should be about educating for our democracy—more than ever we need citizens who can engage and think critically about the world around them and their role in that world.”

“At the same time, our systems need to change to reflect our commitment to work-life balance, our commitment to supporting families—our commitment to supporting educators, so they can do the best work on behalf of students.”  ✶