Eric Hedinger spends the first part of his morning in the carline greeting students as they arrive.
Getting to know the almost 500 students at Augusta Preparatory Day School is a priority for the new head of school.
“I want to know everyone,” said Hedinger who officially started on July 1, coming from Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he had served as the head of its upper school since 2012.
Providence Day School has nearly four times as many students as Augusta Prep, and while meeting all of those students wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, forming meaningful relationships with them would.
“I would rather have a deeper relationship with people than a superficial transactional one,” he said and meeting kids as they start their day or during their extracurricular activities after school are a few ways he can get to know them.
So, Hedinger is spending the greater part of this year on a quest to find out more about his students, faculty and staff as well as the processes of the school. He also wants to get to know leaders in the new community he’s calling home.
“My theme for the year is the ‘why behind what we do’,” he said.
He was met with a series of “whys?” when he relocated to the area. “Why leave Charlotte?” “Why leave a larger school to come to a smaller one?”
For Hedinger, the answers were simple. The sprawling city of Charlotte is growing ahead of itself in his opinion, and he likes the pace of the Augusta area.
He’s not a stranger to Augusta. For years, he coached soccer, and tournaments led him this way. He also worked with Derrick Willard, Augusta Prep’s previous head of school, while at Providence Day School.
With that set of whys out of the way, Hedinger started asking his own whys — from examining the minutiae of why carlines are structured as they are and why classes shift within the schedule to the philosophical whys behind the reasons the teachers at Augusta Prep chose that profession.
“Once you get the ‘why,’ you can decipher the ‘how,’” he said.
As he comes into Augusta Prep, he will be part of sculpting the vision for the next five years.
People have asked him what will be built next on the Flowing Wells Road campus. The school has seen new structures over the past several years including the W. Rodger Giles Institute for Inquiry, a 20,000 square foot, two-story, comprehensive science facility, that opened in January
“I don’t think the next thing we’ll be building is a physical structure. We’ll be building an infrastructure for learning,” he said.
Providing professional development and resources for teachers is a high priority as is creating an environment that stimulates student learning. He sees emerging technology such as AI as a tool that can be utilized for that purpose.
He also sees opportunities to enhance early education.
“I see the needs of this community are not for physical structures; they are for infrastructures and having the best, most robust learning environments,” he said.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for 36 years. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
