Rick Commons: President of Harvard-Westlake
Introduction
As of January 2024, Rick Commons is in his eleventh year as the President of Harvard-Westlake, an independent college preparatory day school for grades 7th-12th in Los Angeles, California. He has worked in education since graduating from college, holding numerous positions, such as an English teacher, soccer coach, dean and more. In his current role, Commons oversees both the school and business sides of Harvard-Westlake, working closely with the CFO and Head of School, along with the rest of the leadership team.
Commons entered the University of Virginia through the Echols Scholars Program. While his major was undecided at first, he eventually settled on English due to his love of reading and writing. At the time, college graduates were interested in pursuing investment banking regardless of their majors. Not knowing what he wanted to do, he also ended up applying to work at multiple banks. Commons notes, “most of the banks were wise enough not to offer me a job, but one of them offered me a position as an analyst.” The position required Commons to give up two years of his life to an investment banking career. Not having another plan, Commons came close to agreeing and heading to Wall Street.
Fate, however, seemed to have other plans for Commons when he and a friend visited Woodberry Forest School in Charlottesville, Virginia to watch a lacrosse game. Knowing banking wasn’t Commons’ passion, the friend deliberately introduced him to the head of the English department who was looking for a teacher. One thing led to another and Commons ended up ditching his plans to take the banking job. Instead, he took a job where he was the coach of three sports, in charge of running a dormitory, and teaching four sections of English. Being able to talk about books and poems at a beautiful campus was a dream come true for Commons.
After working at Woodberry Forest School, Commons decided to move to California without a plan. It was supposed to be a gap year for him to be in LA and learn to surf, write a novel, and hang with friends. But upon his arrival, he realized he needed a job. Around this time Harvard School for Boys and Westlake School for Girls were merging, and as a result, the admissions office was flooded with work. When Commons came knocking on their door for a job, Harvard-Westlake was able to hire him as an admissions officer. After working in admissions, Commons went to Stanford to receive a graduate degree in Education. Following his graduation, Commons came back to Harvard-Westlake as the assistant dean for the 10th grade and later, a college counselor, all while teaching English and coaching soccer.
In 1997, Commons took on the role of Dean of Students at a school in Baltimore where he would eventually become assistant head of school. He later was asked to be the head of Groton School in Massachusetts where he spent the next ten years. In 2013, the former President of Harvard-Westlake was retiring and asked Commons if he would be willing to return as the new President. Commons agreed, and thus became the President of Harvard-Westlake. While it might not seem like the most obvious transition because Groton is a small New England boarding school and Harvard-Westlake is a large Los Angeles day school, the two schools have plenty of parallels. Both student bodies are ambitious, talented, engaged in school, and overall want to learn. Both schools have changed significantly in the past century, but Harvard-Westlake has probably changed more dramatically, from a single gender high school military academy to a co-ed middle and high school on two separate campuses.
Commons worked in a multitude of different roles in his life, and he believes they have all set him up for success in his current position. One skill in particular he has improved on, and significantly helps him today, is public speaking. Commons thinks “about how often I am called upon to give talks to speak in public. And it's something that people often fear, and people often wonder how you get trained at it. And I have been asked at various times in my career, you know, how I learned to be such a comfortable public speaker. And the answer from my perspective is teaching English. Standing in front of a class, working through a novel or a poem or an essay with a group of people and helping them to articulate their ideas. And often trying hard to articulate my own in a way that would come together for all of us, in a period of 40, or 45 minutes, was a practice that where I learned to take ideas, organize them, and express them out loud in ways that I wasn't always good at, but I got better and better.” Another skill he has honed is the ability to identify other people with talents and capabilities he may lack, and then surround himself with them. He believes this is an especially important skill for anyone who wants to be a good leader. Commons thinks back to when he was Head of School at Groton, and he felt pressure to prove himself because he was so much younger than those he was overseeing. He always tried to be the smartest person in the room, when he knew he wasn’t. His transition back to Harvard-Westlake gave him the opportunity to reinvent his leadership style and reorient his understanding of leadership. Commons states, “It's not my job to sit in a meeting with them and try to know more. It's my job to collaborate with them, and to do everything I can to make them even stronger at what they do.”
Commons loves the dynamicness of his job and all the variety in his day-to-day life. A normal day is filled with meetings with the Board of Trustees, parents, students, division heads, etc. And in between it all, he gets to hear the laughter and chatter of students walking to class and be immersed in the energy of working at a school.
Mentorship
Commons believes that the best experiences for students are when they create deep connections within the community. He sincerely hopes that each student finds and connects with a teacher who understands their potential and encourages them to reach it. A teacher should be able to say “you’re great” and also “this isn’t your best work so I’m not going to grade this because I know you can do better work.” The ability for a teacher to recognize the quality of work and then help the student improve on it is especially crucial in high school. And for that reason, Commons believes that he will never really graduate from high school.
While working in Baltimore, Commons had come to the conclusion that he wanted to pursue a career in school leadership. During his time there, he consistently looked up to the Head of School, Bo Dixon. Dixon and Commons were very dissimilar, yet Commons was in awe of Dixon’s commanding nature. Dixon had the ability to enter a meeting where multiple people adamantly disagreed with his idea, but by the end they were all in complete support of his plan, both good and bad. Commons notes, “he just had this magical ability to create consensus around what he was hoping to do.”
As Dixon was planning to retire, he shared his plan with Commons to have Commons succeed him as Head of School. Commons was ecstatic over the opportunity to possibly lead a school. However, Dixon wanted to manage his expectations because it was ultimately up to the board to determine Dixon’s successor. Not wanting Commons to sit around and wait for this position, Dixon helped him come up with a plan. He told him: “Over the course of the next three years, what I think you should do is apply to other schools to become their head. You might not get the job, you probably won't because you're young and inexperienced, but you'll get interview experience, and you'll try out some other places and see them. And if three years from now, it doesn't work for you to become my successor here at McDonough school, you at least won't have wasted your time.” After their conversation, Commons put the plan into action. He researched schools and [came across] Groton School in Massachusetts. He applied purely to gain interview skills and explore other schools. To his surprise, however, he proceeded through the multiple rounds of interviews until he received an offer for the position. Feeling ready for a change, Commons decided to move to a small town in Massachusetts to head a small boarding school called Groton. As he reflects over his career path, Commons sees that Dixon’s advice pushed his career onto a whole new trajectory.
Although students should graduate from high school with a plethora of values and principles, Commons hopes that everyone will have the foundational ability to connect with people who are different from themselves. For Commons, it is an increasingly essential skill that is grounded in integrity. He notes, “many often start with integrity, but you need to have integrity because it enables the connection… If you see me saying something that is different from what I do, or lacking integrity, there is no basis for connection… I want the students to be able to connect with others in ways that aren’t simple and natural. I love when I see friendships that are so tight, and seemingly unlikely, because people come from different places.”
Although Commons loves the culture of achievement and ambition at Harvard-Westlake, he worries it can be to the detriment of the student. School culture may pressurize people leading to feelings of stress and the need to be something other than who they are, but Commons’ hope is that as students work to achieve, they also “maintain a sense of self that is authentic and they don’t compromise on it.”
