As an independent school educator, we occasionally get invited to participate to help other schools evaluate themselves. For a school, this process occurs every seven years. Six weeks ago, I accepted an assignment from the Whitfield School in St. Louis to be a part of their visiting team.

Each team has a leader, who organizes the efforts of the group of educators who evaluate the school. When I got my first email from the leader our team, I saw the name of the leader and knew there was something that about this person which seemed familiar, but I could not put my figure it out.

The head of school in charge is Peter Fayorian, the head of school at the Greenhills School in Ann Arbor. Not a common name. I liked the tone of his email and knew that I would love the style in which he would lead the team. But I still couldn’t figure out what was bugging me about him.

Last night, it hit me, maybe this was the same person who I had gone to Middle School and High School with, even did a few science projects in his basement in the 9th Grade. We were in the same classes, but ran in different groups. In a large public high school, with a graduating class of 750+, it might have been. I thought the name was the same. But since I moved the day after graduation, I have lost track of most of my high school classmates.

I got my old yearbook out, and yes, the name was spelled the same. Upon Googling him, I couldn’t quite connect the dots. When I did a Google image search, found a picture which led to an article that confirmed that in fact he is the same person I went to school with for six years.

We will have some catching up to do. I wonder if he is aware of the connection?