Why I Give
by Fraser Coffeen (Administrative Director)
Middle School was not the easiest time for me.
I was figuring out who I was (what middle schooler isn’t?), but I did know one thing – I liked learning. And I cared about doing well in school. Sadly, caring about school was not the path to being “cool” and well liked in my large public middle school, and so I didn’t fit in.
That changed when I visited the local independent school. My parents sent me for a shadow day to see what I thought about changing paths for high school. I loved it. There were so many options, so much thought, so many welcoming kids, and, most importantly to me, there was a palpable love of learning. Here, caring about school was the cool thing.
There was also tuition. And a high tuition – higher than my family could make work.
Undeterred, my parents explored their options and signed me up for a scholarship challenge. Between funds received from that scholarship and funds from tuition assistance, that tuition price came down and I enrolled. I can say with all confidence that it changed my life. Those teachers and that environment changed my life.
Thirty years later, I’m still in school, but in a much different role. In my role as the Administrative Director, I think about my own school experience very differently, because what I understand now and didn’t know then is that the school’s decision to offer me scholarship funding and tuition assistance was not made lightly. Schools are made up of educators, and educators want nothing more than to educate. They want to educate everyone they can – to reach every single child that comes before them. And yet schools are also businesses, which means they have faculties and administrations to pay, bills to pay, financial obligations to meet. Independent schools - like the one I went to, like CWS - do all of this with no outside government assistance, relying solely on the generosity of their own communities.
Today I am an educator. But I also manage the business side of our school. I know that for my high school to have accepted me means there were generous individuals in the community making that happen, individuals who donated to the school, allowing them to extend that financial support to me. I’ll never know exactly who those individuals were and they’ll maybe never know the impact their donations had on me, but, without them, that school couldn’t have made me the offer they did, and I couldn’t have received the education I did.
This week is Giving Tuesday. For me, it’s an important day, because it gives me the opportunity to make that same impact for students today.
So, I give to provide that opportunity for students.
I give to pay it forward.
I give to say thank you to those who gave to me.
And I give because I believe in the Chicago Waldorf School education and the change it can make.
I hope you’ll join me and give this Giving Tuesday.
