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Alumni Profile

Rob Cosinuke

Rob Cosinuke, graduated from The School in Rose Valley in 1973 and went on to graduate from Westtown School,Haverford College and Harvard Business School.

As for most people, periods of major transition have been hard for me. For example, changing jobs, having kids, building a house and moving in at the same time, losing a loved one, or starting and building a business during the ups and downs of the Internet economy, have all been periods of great turmoil, frustration and ambiguity. Dealing with the stress and uncertainty of these transitions, and seeking the new directions or opportunities that they can also represent, requires a sense of self confidence, creativity, and hopefulness that I think we developed as part of the unique daily fabric of life at The School in Rose Valley.

So how did my experiences at SRV help me with these transitions? Well, first, I think that we developed a high degree of comfort with a non-prescribed, non-linear way of discovery and learning - much like what occurs in real-life transitions. When I think back, I vividly remember being a happy kid engrossed in active, hands-on stuff - not hours of mundane text book learning, or following a "proven" curriculum. We took bird walks and cooked our own breakfast over camp fire pits; we helped construct the geodesic dome and covered bridge with our friends, teachers, and parents on Putter Day; we discovered how to make pottery with our own hand-dug clay and outdoor wood fired kiln. In all of these cases there was never one way to do something. Everything was tuned to the individual child, and we learned to move forward with our individual "contracts" with our teachers and peers in a sort of epic journey of education. Just like real life.

Second, I think we learned to trust ourselves, our intuitions and our own creativity. I can't think of a time when we weren't encouraged to find our own way, to assess, to adjust, and keep moving forward. In math we learned trigonometry and engineering principles in order to build a bridge to span a gap and hold a heavy weight with only five sheets of paper. This took creativity and trial and error. If we didn't have enough kids for a soccer game, we recruited the sheep and goat and tied them in the goals to fill these voids. In art I can vividly remember being encouraged to "Use all of the paper. Play with textures! Get messy!" We were constantly scrounging for supplies, finding new uses for found objects, reinventing and reinterpreting everything inside and outside of the classroom. This formed a sense of self confidence in our own creative "juice" - a sense of sureness that if placed in a new situation we could create something beautiful.

Finally, transitions require some kind of a moral compass to help answer questions about what's best for the individual, for others, and for the group. These were questions we dealt with every day at SRV. Our vital connection to nature and the environment, the communal layout of the classrooms, the mix of ages which created opportunities to be both "followers" and "leaders" over time, all combined to create boundless opportunities to for us to practice making tough decisions. I remember one year in sports, we couldn't decide on what to focus on as a group in the spring. We decided to vote on it, and since there were more girls than boys, we picked field hockey over baseball. To this day, I still have and am proud of my field hockey stick from fourth grade.

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