Returing to the Hilltop - from the George School to St. George's School

Event: Dent Lecture Series at St. George’s School

Date: Thursday 1/30, Friday 1/31 and Saturday 2/1

Kicks of Choice: Pharrell Green boots, AM 90 Sneakerboots

Thoughts captured on Friday, March 14, 2025

One of the things that took place in the midst of me winning the Russell Award was sharing that information with different folks. One of the people I shared the information with was Dr. Kim Bullock, who is at St George's School. St. George's School is my high school alma mater (shout out to the Hilltop). When Kim first noticed "K for the Way" had come out, and then she saw the buzz and the reception the book was receiving, she was really quick about reaching out and saying, “Todd, we need to do something. You came here for your first book, your novel, tor’cha. So we’re going to need you to come here with this book!”

Kim was also really helpful with guidance in helping me to figure out how to move around in the independent, private high school arena. Independent schools are a really small and closed-off niche community, but Kim was really good about helping me spread the word! To put Kim’s influence in perspective (and add onto the synergy of this moment), the way that I wound up at NCAIS was because I got a text message from Kim that said, “THIS has your name on it!” Below her words was a link. No “Hello, Todd.” No, “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening…” NONE of that! Just “This has your name on it! Here's the link.”

The link was to the NCAIS notice.

When I saw what the event was, I immediately engaged in talks with the folks over there. So again, coming back to synergy, Kim was the one who helped to usher in that conversation. So it made all the sense in the world to think about coming up to St. George's and being in dialogue with the SG community about my new book. Kim framed this conversation as a way to restart the Dent Lecture Series on campus. Kim was very clear about the fact that she didn't want this to be a Black History Month event. She has always been clear in saying, “Todd, you are not a Black scholar. You are a scholar of merit and rigor and value, and you happen to be Black!” In independent schools, that's a very different approach to how we think about people and scholars of color. So Kim wanted my book talk to be part of the Dent Lecture Series. It would be the first Dent Lecture at Saint George's since pre-pandemic days. It's an evening lecture series where people congregate in the auditorium. There is a dress code for the lecture, and it becomes an important event that allows students to understand what it means to attend a lecture in the evening. For high school students, when you attend a daytime lecture, it's mostly par for the course – I'm in school, this daytime event is what I'm supposed to do. But as you leave high school and go to college, you'll find that a lot of these lectures and events are in the evening. So there is a particular value, and even a particular etiquette that is involved with knowing the importance of attending evening lectures and events. Kim began to build out the book talk as part of the newly revived Dent Lecture Series. But then, Kim also said, “Todd, we gotta have you DJ an event!” So we came up with a plan for me to DJ lunch in King Hall (King Hall is the campus dining hall – think a smaller version of the dining hall in the Harry Potter movies…). The itinerary quickly became The Dent Lecture, DJing lunch, and then walking through some classes, just to get a sense of what St. George's classrooms look like in 2025.

As Kim and I were solidifying all the details, I saw an SG recap email that had pictures of the Director of the Writing Program at Princeton University, who had come to the Merck Center for Teaching and Learning to discuss writing with SG faculty. The Merck Center is the pedagogy hub on campus, and this year’s theme is focused on the teaching of writing. So I immediately reached out to Kim and said, “Kim, how you gonna have a director of a writing program come to St. George's and do workshops?!? You know that's my wheelhouse, right???” After laughing, Kim thanked me for reminding her about this part of my professional work, and she immediately looped in Dr. Gretchen Boger who is the Director of the Merck Center. We were able to figure out two pedagogy workshops that made sense for faculty at St. George's, and with that, we were off to the races!

As one might imagine, the St. George's of my time and the St. George’s of today are very, very different. To put it in perspective, we thought we had a movement with 16 people of color during my sophomore year (which was our heyday). At the St. George’s of today, I could count 16 people of color in ONE section of the dining room, across three tables! The landscape just looks different. There's a lot of new buildings and a lot of new faculty. There's a lot of new faces, all sorts of faces for students and faculty alike. And I think that is critically important to what quality education looks like in the 21st century.

When I arrived on campus, I had dinner with some of the student leaders on campus. What was once one affinity group during my student years has turned into a group of all the leaders from the various groups and student committees on campus. From there, we went to Dent Lecture Series, which was a great opportunity to explain to students what my journey had been from St. George's through to the publication of "K for the Way," and being named the 58th recipient of the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Field of English. I was able to engage with students during the Q and A session, then talk with a variety of folks as I signed books. There were some teachers there who I knew. There were even students who were the children of some of my classmates (shout out to Andrew Gaynor '93, who made the trip in to hear the lecture).

I arrived on campus bright and early the next day (8:30am for the college professor hits different, for real) and made my way over to the Merck Teaching and Learning Center; we had the writing pedagogy workshop set up in the morning and the afternoon. In the first session, we had some time to think about music, writing and revision, local and global revision and what “radical revision” might mean in classroom spaces on campus. We also discussed how to bring your authentic self to any teaching situation, and particularly in any writing situation. There was great dialogue with the teachers on campus, who are all deeply invested in writing across a variety of disciplines.

Afterwards, I got a chance to briefly sit in on a IV form History class, before I needed to run over to DJ lunch. Rocking out for lunch was incredible – I don’t think we could have EVER imagined having a DJ for our lunch when I was a student! In true DJ fashion, I almost blew out the speakers, so it took us a few minutes to get the sound back online. One of the students literally said, “Yo – you was cookin so much the speakers needed a break!” That let me know that the dining hall was rocking with me.

I finished up the second pedagogy workshop with faculty in the afternoon, then I got some down time in order to rest my brain. That evening, I got a chance to go to dinner with Kim and a bunch of the Black faculty on campus. Experiencing St. George’s in this new iteration was really inspiring. It made me feel like the work that me and my peers did while we were on campus in our youth was a great foundation for what current SG students have been able to do.

The next morning, I got on campus just in time to sit in on an Advanced Music class, which was incredible. We wound up having a conversation around the importance of music and technology, and also what it means to develop a sense of bringing your authentic self into a sonic situation. The St. George's visit was super-action packed, and I expected nothing less of Kim. Kim has been an awesome teacher, an incredible advocate and an absolute jewel for the St. George's community for over two decades. So when Kim asks us as alumni to try and make something happen, we all do our best to make it work in honor of who Kim is, the work she's done, and the legacy that she's provided for so many youth who are now St. George's alumni. We might not have made it if not for Dr. Kim Bullock!

So shout to St. George's for having me in such a fancy setting with the Dent Lecture. And super shout out to Manny. Come to find out that Kim’s assistant director is a Williams grad (who I actually briefly met a year ago when I was back at Williams). So again, synergy in this small world, where all of these things align! I really appreciated my time back on the Hilltop to see how different it actually is – shout out to the St. George's School community. Shout out to the young homie Wayne, who introduced me for the Dent Lecture. Wayne is a super-phenomenal student and basketball player; I’m excited to see him do really good things. Shout out to all of the faculty at St. George's who showed me love and embraced me for my visit. As always, I'm going to share some pictures with y'all below.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to the woman in the bookstore. You need to bring back those St. George's Champion sweatshirts and hoodies, word! That's all I got. I’ll catch y'all on the next one. Peace!