Cohasset High School Newsletter

November 7, 2025

Dear Families,

"Raise your hand if you consider yourself or your family rich."

It's an intentionally awkward question and only one of the 38 students I'm working with was brave enough to answer in the affirmative. He was also very humble in pointing out that he had very little to do with it. My purpose in asking wasn't to explore to socioeconomic landscape of the class, but was an exercise in introducing students to perspective.

Over the past two weeks I've had the pleasure of helping Ms. Norton and Ms. McInnis teach a new novel in 9th grade CP English class thanks to a very generous gift from the PSO through Buttonwood Books and Toys. We're reading A Fish in a Tree, by Linda Mullaly Hunt. It's a story about a girl who faces a number of challenges in school. She has dyslexia, has moved several times as part of a military family, and struggles with the social dynamic of middle school friendships. But we're approaching the novel through several different lenses.

Using materials from places like Harvard, Yale, and UCal Riverside, students are investigating the human condition by way of the novel using concepts from positive psychology and Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory. The class is incorporating dozens of metacognitive studies from the past 80 years that help us understand the key elements of realizing purpose and joy in life, and better understand the variety of ways in which people approach and demonstrate learning.

Yesterday we studied reference points. In social psychology, a reference point refers to the benchmark against which you judge yourself—the people whose lives, success, or status you measure yourself against. Whether it's your peers, your colleagues, or curated social media profiles, these comparisons can directly shape your satisfaction, drive, and sense of self-worth.

Dr. Laurie Santos, the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology and Head of Silliman College at Yale University, demonstrates the abundance of social reference points that students have to contend with presently. Unlike students in the 1950s who had limited media exposure, today's students are constantly flooded with images of wealth, beauty, success, and popularity. The problem is that our brains automatically use these curated snapshots and make an unconscious assumption that those are actually benchmarks for happiness.

Simultaneously, and in contrast, Cohasset High School students have a relatively narrow scope of reference points, with things like wealth being determined largely by which side of 3A you live on. If students changed the reference point to another place in the state or around the world, they might see their relative abundance differently.

Similarly, I argued, students who attend CHS are often burdened by pressures of schooling that are built around a very narrow set of reference points. (See the prior presentation on Never Enough for the data). How students view their intelligence, their athletic or musical abilities, their looks or their popularity is all gauged in reference to our environment. But when those reference points are shifted to a much larger national or global environment, so shifts the understanding of what our real talents, opportunities, and possibilities can be.

And that's very powerful.

We closed by looking briefly at the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been referred to as the longest study of human flourishing ever conducted. Beginning in 1937 with 268 sophomore men from Harvard and 456 young men from the poorest sections of Boston, it studied their successes and failures, the challenges that they faced, and their ultimate satisfaction with life, along the way incorporating their spouses and children into their study and growing to over 2000 participants. The current results of the findings were published in 2022, in Dr. Robert Waldinger's book The Good Life, in which Waldinger et al concluded three things:

Relationships are the strongest predictor of happiness and health. Close, quality relationships—not wealth, fame, or achievement—are what keep people happy throughout their lives. People with strong social connections are healthier, live longer, and report greater life satisfaction.
It's the quality, not quantity, of relationships that matters. Being in a conflicted marriage is worse for health than being divorced. What counts is the depth and supportiveness of your relationships, not how many people you know or whether you're married.
Good relationships protect both our bodies and our brains. Strong relationships don't just make people happier—they're linked to better physical health, slower cognitive decline, and even protection against memory loss in old age. People in secure, supportive relationships maintain sharper minds as they age.

The study, which has followed participants for over 85 years, makes a simple but profound point: the people in your life and the quality of those connections matter more than almost anything else for long-term wellbeing.

The findings buttress what we have been exploring in class, but my larger point to the students was that we just spent the last two weeks reading and analyzing a novel, incorporating mini-lectures from Ivy League Universities, analyzing and synthesizing scientific studies, researching cognition, and creating presentations and activities that sought to understand the human condition from the most sophisticated information available. And they all did it and did it at a high level. In other schools they call that honors English. It's the work, and not the title, that defines preparedness.

Sincerely,

Brian T. Scott

Principal

JPH Retreat

"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul" said Marcus Aurelius. On Thursday, November 6th, several students attended the JPH at Ferry Hill in Marshfield.

Under the guidance of Ms. Stromberg, Ms. McCarthy, and the JPH Staff, studied the importance of mental health, reflecting on how the natural world can influence coping mechanisms, decorating masks that reflect both the selves that they choose to show the world and those that they wish to be hidden, and participated in breathing exercises and a "sound bath".

Fall Sports Update

Cohasset Golf (6-5-1) wrapped up their season with a 7th place finish at the MIAA Sectional Tournament and a 5th place finish at the South Shore League Tournament.

Volleyball (9-9) secured the #11 seed in the MIAA D4 Tournament. They opened the tournament with a 3-1 win over #22 Sandwich in the Round of 32. Their season ended Tuesday in the Round of 16 when they traveled and lost 3-0 to #6 Greater Lawrence Tech. Junior Maddie LeFevre captured her 500th kill in the opening round win against Sandwich.

Cross Country will travel to Devens Mass on Saturday 11/8 to compete in the MIAA D3 Divisional Meet.

Cohasset Football (6-2) secured the #1 seed and will host #16 Leicester in the first round of the MIAA D7 Tournament tonight at 6:30pm on Alumni Field.

Cohasset Field Hockey (12-3-1) secured the #3 seed in the MIAA D4 Tournament. Cohasset opened the tournament with a 7-0 win over #30 Tahanto in the Round of 32. They followed that up with a 3-1 win over #14 Nipmuc in the Round of 16. Cohasset has advanced to the Round of 8 and will host #6 Hopedale tonight at 4:00.

Cohasset Girls Soccer (14-3) secured the #5 seed in the MIAA D4 Tournament and defeated #37 Gardner in the Round of 32 on Thursday 7-0. They will play #12 Sandwich at home tomorrow at 6:00.

Cohasset Boys Soccer (6-7-7) secured the #17 seed in the MIAA D4 Tournament. They opened the tournament with an 8-2 win over #48 St. Bernard's in the Preliminary Round and defeated #16 Maynard last night 2-1 in overtime. They take on #1 Sutton tomorrow at Auburn HS at 11:00.

Unicef

The UNICEF Club would like to thank everyone who helped us raise $1,011.30!— whether by volunteering during the bake sale, participating in the candy basket fundraiser, giving your time, or buying raffle tickets.

A special congratulations to Jay Naples, the winner of our raffle!

Thank you for supporting children around the world and helping us achieve our goal of $1,000!

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HIGH SCHOOL HEALTH SCREENINGS

9th and 10th grade health screenings will be starting next week (Oct. 14th) in the high school nurse’s office.

The freshman class will be screened for scoliosis. This requires students to remove their shirts so that the spine can be evaluated. The screening is performed in a private examination room.

The sophomore class will be screened for hearing, vision, height and weight.

At all times student’s privacy will be respected.

If a student does not pass the screenings the parents/guardians will be notified by the school nurse.

Please email Mrs. Collins R.N. jcollins@cohassetk12.org if you would like to opt your student out of the screenings or if you have any questions.