Honoring Stewart Miller

Sunday, July 7, 2013

This summer Yellow Barn honors Stewart Miller, Greenwood’s Headmaster, for motivating and helping to realize our extraordinary partnership and lasting friendship with the Greenwood community. A day of celebratory events on July 20th include Open House on campus, a gala dinner scholarship benefit concert in Stewart's honor.

Ellen Stimson, a friend and colleague of Stewart's, offers these words about Stewart and The Greenwood School:

The School That Stewart Built

I want to tell you a story. It is a story about strength and collaboration. It is a story about shared problems and real solutions. Really it is a story about love. The Greenwood School is run by a kindly ex-Marine named Stewart Miller. He rides a Harley and looks fierce.

Looks can be deceiving.

Greenwood is a place where young men come who have had real worries and dreams and who leave transformed. When they go they will take some things with them that they didn’t bring to school. They will take the skills necessary to succeed in a classroom and to build a life. They will take the confidence born of a worthwhile journey. And they will always carry with them a keen understanding of the strength and power in community. It is the community that Stew built.

Stew says there was never anything all that much different about these boys in the first place. They may have had trouble reading or maybe with numbers. Some of them had short attention spans. There was one big difference though. They were luckier. Their moms and dads met Stewart who told them that he and his teachers knew lots of boys just like them. They had a toolbox full of strategies that had worked thousands of times before. And then he put his big arm around them and told them it could work for them too. And it does.

Because Stewart has built a culture at Greenwood where everyone pulls for these boys. Everyone listens … with love and compassion. It is top down. At Greenwood everyone wants the same thing. No teacher wants to teach Faulkner more than they want a student to love reading. And that’s why this story has a happy ending. Because Stewart Miller? Stew writes happy endings.

—Ellen Stimson, Owner, isabelpratt, LLC

After serving four years in the United States Marine Corps, Stewart Miller graduated from Rowan University where studied literature and poetry. His love for teaching and the great outdoors led him to Putney, Vermont where he has enjoyed living and working with his wife, Melanie and son, Trent. Stewart has published articles and essays and presented regionally and nationally on the topic of learning differences, and he is entering his 9th year as Headmaster of the Greenwood School.