Not long after current Bright School headmaster O.J. Morgan was hired at Baylor School in 1979 as a teacher and coach fresh out of graduate school at Northwestern, he began thinking that he might want to be a school headmaster one day.

So, five years later, he took two years off to attend Harvard Divinity School to study a subject – theology - that on the surface might seem unusual for a future leader of an independent school.

“In the admissions essay, I talked about being a head of school and how it was important to have a strong background in liberal arts and theology and philosophy if you were leading a community like this,” he said during a recent interview.

“My view of education is grounded in the importance of teaching the whole child.”

Having just completed his fifth year at Bright, Mr. Morgan is finding out that being a headmaster encompasses all that and more, including knowledge learned strictly in the field of experience.

“That’s the most challenging thing about being a headmaster,” he said. “You have to learn to balance all of the different responsibilities, ranging from human relations to buildings and grounds issues.”

Since the Louisiana native and son of a college professor began at Bright in 2004, the school has expanded its technology curriculum and developed an outdoor classroom program that includes a labyrinth, a brick multi-use pavilion on the old kindergarten playground, and several gardens, including an official monarch butterfly way station.

It has also had other building expansions, and Mr. Morgan said the school hopes to begin looking at updating needed areas of the nearly 50-year-old physical plant.

Mr. Morgan has also been able to initiate some of the idealistic programs he began envisioning years ago.

For example, in the summer of 2005, he took a group of Bright third-graders to Mexico City to learn about another culture and visit some Mexican youngsters the students had met through video conferencing.

“We were going to a place that they would not normally have gone to,” he said, adding that the Mexican students visited Bright two years later. “What I wanted it to do is bring them to a level of comfort in taking a risk and stepping out and doing something different.”

Besides instituting new ideas, he is also trying to maintain the old Bright traditions. The school still has the longtime meal of ground steak and mashed potatoes once a month, and the Bright School picnic has continued, although it moved to a Ringgold, Ga., farm of a family connected with Bright in 2008 after various expansions at Warner Park limited the open space.

The school is also trying to tie the old with the new with the planned centennial observance in 2013.

“We will celebrate the great history of Bright School with some fun class reunions, parties and a much-needed capital campaign,” he said.

Part of it will be remembering school founder Mary Gardner Bright, for whom Mr. Morgan has gained much respect.

"Not only was she able to create and run a progressive school, but she had the guts and courage to keep things going,” he said.

He said she also studied under progressive education movement founder John Dewey at Columbia University and had provided enrichment opportunities for her teachers, including taking them on trips to New York City.

“Most were very bright women who found their place where they could expand their minds in ways that were hard for women in the early 20th Century,” he said.

Mr. Morgan has also identified with Miss Bright in that she had to lead the school through struggling economic times and wars, just as Bright is now having to face the worldwide economic downturn.

“Every school is struggling with enrollment and giving,” he said. “We have definitely felt the economic pressures, but we continue to work with our families to make sure their children are able to continue getting such a fine education.”

He also feels confident that Bright can continue to retain and expand upon its rich tradition as an independent elementary school.

“I’m very optimistic about the future of Bright School,” he said. “With our strong curriculum, our broadening diversity, and the strong traditions that have kept us going for almost 100 years, I see us serving the Chattanooga community in significant ways.”

Jcshearer2@comcast.net