Why Human Connection Is Our Greatest Classroom

I hope this first Peaks Post of the 2026-27 school year finds you all enjoying a wonderful midsummer wherever you find yourselves this August.

At Seven Peaks, we’re hard at work preparing for the first day of school on September 9, a remarkably late start this year. Our communication for the new year begins now, and we’ll be following up weekly, providing updates and key information so that we can all get off to a wonderful, smooth start when the first day finally comes around.

Lessons from the White Mountains

A few weeks ago, I was in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with a small group of middle and high school boys, helping a friend lead them on an eight-day adventure backpacking, climbing, camping, and learning about leadership.

This was a wonderful time to disconnect and focus on forming significant relationships, free from the demands of technology, and giving us time to focus on challenging lessons that arose as we navigated a wide variety of demanding situations. We had a ton of fun, too, swimming in lakes and rivers, climbing peaks, and sleeping in some wild places.

Coming back to Seven Peaks and preparing for the new school year, I find that I am more committed than ever to preparing our students for the challenges of the future. Essential to that work of preparation is developing those key human skills that need to be formed in relationships with peers, mentors, teachers, parents, and family, the people we live our lives with. What struck me about my time in New Hampshire was the way the quality of those relationships improves when they are not mediated through various devices.

Escaping the Attention Economy

My vision for Seven Peaks is that it would be a place where we are developing the uniquely human skills our students need to thrive in an uncertain future. Those skills are developed first when students are deeply engaged with the people around them.

That’s why our use of technology is always purposeful and designed to meet a particular end, not simply for convenience. Critical thinking skills, for example, are developed through sustained engagement with people and ideas, not through technology platforms designed for efficiency.

Like the woods and peaks of the White Mountains, I want Seven Peaks School to be a place where relationships are formed that develop the traits our students can only gain through time spent in a community free from the unnecessary distractions of a world that is rapidly changing around us and aggressively competing for our attention.

Social critics have been calling this aspect of our new world the "attention economy," and mountains and forests are remarkably free from it.

In his book The Siren's Call, Chris Hayes asks, "What if we had places free from commercial imperatives altogether? The overwhelming majority of time we spend online is on platforms or spaces that are actively attempting to commodify or commercialize our attention."

Kids need access to places, especially schools, that make time and space for learning and relationships free from the pressures of the attention economy. When they inevitably enter those digital spaces, they will do so as intelligent, critical thinkers. As critical thinkers, they will be able to engage creatively with the problems they encounter and consider their place in the world through an ethical lens.

A Shared Commitment for the Year Ahead

Back in New Hampshire, I was able to download the maps we needed on my phone, but other than that, and maybe for a few pictures, the phone was useless. The kids didn’t bring theirs, and mine stayed in my pack most of the time. We carried a paper map that proved just as useful, though it required the skill of locating our little group within the landscape.

Those eight days were a refreshing opportunity to experience life without distractions and focus on what was real: the granite, the forests, and the water around us. Having spent that time in that way, we all came away better prepared to face the challenges of the world we live in every day.

As we begin a new school year, let’s all commit to making space in our lives that is free from attention monopolizing devices and open to genuine human engagement with one another. I know we’ll be doing that at Seven Peaks from the first day of school until the last.