Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [92]
In July 2006, I inducted Dr. Widmer as headmaster in a small ceremony, after which we all ate dinner together in the King’s Academy dining hall, seated at round tables to facilitate discussion and interaction, following the Deerfield tradition. The construction team had done a fantastic job, and the 150-acre site contained over twenty buildings and extensive sports fields. There was a theater, a dining hall, a gymnasium, a library, boys’ and girls’ dorms, and a spiritual center. The adobe-walled, red-tiled buildings were sturdy and elegant. Now all we needed was people to fill them.
For the next year, Eric Widmer and his team worked tirelessly to hire faculty, many from the United States with boarding school backgrounds, supervise the construction, set up the admissions process, and receive applications for the first entering class. They traveled across the Middle East, describing and explaining the idea of a coed boarding school, with instruction in English, to worried mothers and skeptical fathers. Because the idea of a boarding school—and a coeducational one at that—was so new to the region, some parents were wary. But many others saw the potential for their children’s futures.
Setting up a new institution from scratch is never easy, but Eric and his team pulled off miracles. They scoured the globe and put together a team of some of the finest teachers imaginable. They also managed to develop the curriculum and instill something less tangible: the ethos of the institution. Deerfield has had more than two centuries to develop the “Deerfield Way.” But at King’s, Eric was creating new traditions as he went.
King’s Academy opened on August 29, 2007. As bagpipers played, faculty and trustees gathered in a courtyard on the campus and said a few words to mark the beginning of the first term. There were 106 students in the entering class, from Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, and several Arabian Gulf countries. There were also students from the United States and from as far afield as Taiwan. The sixty-six boys and forty girls were divided between the ninth and tenth grades, with both full-time boarders and day students, most of whom were commuting from Amman. The following year, over 150 new students arrived in August for the start of the new school year, bringing the total to over 250, still split 60 to 40 percent between boys and girls. Among the group were representatives of twenty-one nationalities, including new arrivals from Iraq and Afghanistan. And in August 2009, King’s opened with 400 students from twenty-four countries.
Among the entering students was my eldest son, Hussein. Like all parents, we want the best education for our children, and I considered sending him overseas to be educated, as I had been. But as a parent, it was too hard to send my son away, and thankfully, there was now a local school where he could have an education rivaling the one I received in America.
Although it is never entirely possible in Jordan for members of the royal family to lead a normal life, Hussein has had to learn to make his bed and share a bathroom, and to wait on tables for other students. The first weekend he came back home, Rania, the other children, and I were all waiting eagerly to see him; we had missed not having him around the house. As soon as he got through the door, he said, “Hi, I have homework to do, so I’ll see you all later.” Hussein going to do his homework? That was a shocker.
One of my aims for the school was to have a diverse student body, representing not just different countries but also varied economic backgrounds. Some of my closest friends at Deerfield were there on scholarship, and I saw the value to the school