It dawned on me on Tuesday—right in the middle of my back-to-school speech to the middle schoolers—that this year is my 10th school year as a head. It might seem like a lot; you’d imagine I would have tired of it by now, but I have the perfect antidote: I work at The École where inertia is impossible—the rhythm of the school year is too frantic to allow for it!
During the summer, at a Vivaldian tempo, we build new classroom spaces for our students. In the heart of winter, we recruit new teachers to guide the children in their quest for knowledge. In the spring, we celebrate our successes, we sing, and we perform. Finally, in the fall we meet prospective families who are considering joining our wonderful community and adding their own magic to the mix.
We don’t have the time to get bored and we hope the children get caught up in the whirlwind of activities, that they take advantage of every minute, that they leave school exhausted and sated—just like the adults!—at the end of each day. We hope they have a thousand stories to tell, a thousand discoveries to share, and a thousand more things to learn. And we hope that they can’t wait to start again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, again and again.
This first week of classes has been full of joy. Joy at seeing new faces light up when they discover their new school, joy at seeing our returning students delighted to see each other, joy at seeing the pride in the faces of last year’s 5th graders as they join the big kids in Middle School, joy also at seeing the teachers at work, getting to know their groups, creating that precious connection between teachers and students (our 1st Grade teachers have already had two marriage proposals!) that goes beyond curriculum and expectations, the connection that guides, reassures, motivates, inspires, encourages, and makes everything possible. I could never tire of anything of these things. Who could?
Every Friday I will tell you what is going on inside our school walls and I will transparently trace the progress we are making—progress that I believe you will be able to perceive too. We already have plenty of projects in place: making better use of our library and MakerSpace, the rolling out of the House System, a strengthening of our personalized pathways thanks to a growing number of support staff put to more effective use in class, the more widespread use of reading and writing workshops under the guidance of Sara Weintraub, the growth of our Middle School, and the opening of the very promising high school partnership with Léman thanks to Franck Le Martelot and Laurence Bendinelli. I simply don’t have enough space to list everything we are doing!
In the meantime, and with all the wisdom of my 10 years as a head, I can confidently tell you that my first impressions of this school year are excellent, and our team (with its many new faces) is already living up to (our very high) expectations!
We will have the opportunity to toast all of the above tomorrow during the back-to-school picnic. Rumour has it that we’ll have a record-breaking number of guests in attendance; I hope I have the time to chat with each and every one of you!