February 21, 2023, Fort Wayne, Ind.—Canterbury School is pleased to announce a multi-year partnership for its annual Jonathan Hancock Lecture Series with the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne, effective immediately.
Through the partnership, the Community Foundation will help support and expand public awareness of and access to Canterbury’s Jonathan Hancock Lecture Series, which the school founded in 2019 to bring nationally renowned speakers across a wide variety of topics to Fort Wayne each year. It is named after Jonathan Hancock, who served as headmaster and other key roles for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2016.
The partnership is effective immediately and will begin with the Jonathan Hancock Lecture Series’ spring 2023 event, which takes place April 18 and will feature educator and bestselling author Jessica Lahey. The event will focus on Lahey’s bestselling and widely recognized book “The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed.”
“We are thrilled to partner with the Community Foundation to bring greater access to the Jonathan Hancock Lecture Series,” said David Jackson, Head of School at Canterbury. “The series is focused on enriching the lives of Fort Wayne’s citizens by enlisting engaging speakers on important topics in our community. Jessica Lahey’s talk on helping to recognize the gift of failure in the growth pattern of our children’s lives will be an invaluable resource for all Fort Wayne parents. We are proud to partner with the Community Foundation to sponsor this important conversation.”
“This lecture series is a great opportunity to bring inspiring speakers to our community that align with our own Let’s Rise! Vision Plan initiatives,” remarked Brad Little, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne. “Collaborating with Canterbury School and the Jonathan Hancock Lecture Series is an easy decision. We hope to have a great turnout for Jessica Lahey as well as future speakers.”
In addition to “The Gift of Failure,” Lahey is the author of “The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence.” She has more than 20 years of experience as an educator in both public and private schools, spent five years teaching in a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents in Vermont, and serves as a prevention and recovery coach at Sana at Stowe, a medical detox and recovery center in Stowe, Vermont.
She writes about education, parenting, and child welfare for The Washington Post, The Atlantic, is a book critic for Air Mail, and her biweekly column “The Parent Teacher Conference” ran for three years at the New York Times. She designed and wrote the educational curriculum for Amazon Kids’ award-winning animated series The Stinky and Dirty Show, and was a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee for her Creative Nonfiction magazine essay, “I’ve Taught Monsters.”
The spring 2023 Hancock Lecture Series event will take place at 7pm at the Arts United Center in downtown Fort Wayne. Tickets for the event are $10, with all proceeds raised from ticket sales being donated to The Mom of an Addict, a Fort Wayne-based nonprofit whose mission is to provide education and support to families who have been affected by a child’s or loved one’s substance use disorder. Tickets can be purchased online via the Canterbury website.
About Canterbury School: Founded in 1977, Canterbury School, is an Early Childhood-to-Grade 12 independent college preparatory school with two campuses located in Fort Wayne serving students from throughout northeast Indiana. With a mission to to maximize the potential of young people by providing a challenging, enriching, and supportive learning environment in which students build the foundation for a life of purpose, passion, and meaning, the Canterbury community currently includes more than 850 students and 130 faculty and staff. For more information, visit the Canterbury website.
About the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne: In 2022, the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne celebrated 100 years of serving Allen County as a public charitable foundation. The Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne does three things: help people make their charitable giving more impactful, connect funding to nonprofits through effective grantmaking, and provide leadership to address community needs to improve quality of life. Each day, the organization connects people and resources to build a more vibrant community. As of December 31, 2022, the Community Foundation held charitable assets of approximately $194 million and awarded more than $9.3 million in charitable grants and scholarships throughout the same year. Since its formation in 1922, the Community Foundation has awarded more than $184 million in charitable grants. For more information, visit the Community Foundation’s website.