Head of School's Corner

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

We are gathered, at last and gratefully, to celebrate the Class of 2022 as they graduate from Keystone.  I welcome you all to this delayed Graduation Ceremony.  The Class of 2022 is Keystone’s 5^th, and you take our total number of graduates to just over 300.  Congratulations, seniors. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

My nine years in Beijing, and eight years on our lovely campus in Shunyi, have passed oh so quickly.   To me it seems recent that I wrote a special letter to all those pioneering parents and students who had signed up to join our new school, shortly before we opened. This was at the end of our planning year, in the summer of 2014.  I called it: “Sunrise in Shunyi: some thoughts on joining a new school.” 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

On Sunday evening, May 29, I was accorded the honor of being a graduation speaker at a virtual Graduation Ceremony for 34 young women supported by EGRC, Educating Girls of Rural China. All of them are graduating this year from Chinese universities.

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

I wish you all a joyful Dragonboat Festival weekend. In the context of great and lasting traditions such as this, it seems entirely fitting to be thinking of continuity, of the good things that endure, but also of change!

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Last weekend, I wrote a piece for today’s In the Loop on the theme of continuity and change, change and continuity.  However, the events of the past few days have made me decide to keep that back, and to publish it later, in June.  What I want to do instead is to share a poem with all of you.

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Tomorrow was going to be our Graduation Ceremony for the Class of 2022. We will still have it, for sure, but it will have to be later, as it was in 2020. The Keystone Diplomas are all signed and waiting to be presented!  In the meantime, while you are waiting, this is written for you, Class of 2022. I salute you

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Sunday, 15 October 2017, close to 5 years ago, was an important day for Keystone.  It was on that afternoon that we formally opened, and dedicated, the redesigned and reconceptualized High School Library. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

I want to tell you this week about the Round Square, a worldwide organization of schools to which Keystone has belonged from soon after we opened. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Last Friday I wrote about two inspiring projects initiated by graduates of schools where I had worked before coming to Beijing.   This commitment to create a career in work that directly serves others frequently comes from habits of heart that are encouraged or cultivated at school. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

I wish to take you all back to late January, just before we went online for the week before we took the Spring Festival holiday.  It seems like a long time ago now. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

It is not at all surprising that our seniors have a deeper sense of their Keystone experience as each year passes.  As we graduate students who have spent more and more years in our school, it is natural that they understand better what we are trying to do here, and how their distinctive Keystone experiences have influenced and transformed their lives. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Last weekend we enjoyed an uplifting three days.  It was a closed weekend for the boarding students.  On Friday afternoon all the secondary students were involved, in advisory groups with their advisors, in a World Day.  This consisted of stalls in both secondary gyms, stalls dedicated to national foods, games, and interesting information from many countries from all continents.  

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Last Friday all our students had a day off school, and so for many it was a long weekend.  For the Grade 12 Seniors, this was a most welcome short break as they had concluded their full set of weeklong Trial Exams the day before.  Many boarding students went home for the three days.  I hope that you parents enjoyed having your children at home on a Friday.  Here at Keystone, we had a varied and stimulating Professional Growth Day in which all employees could participate.  There were different tracks and workshops for teachers and non-teaching staff, but there was something for all.

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

On Sunday evening, March 6, an important ceremony took place in the Keystone Club.  This event has already become a tradition of our school.  It is when the outgoing student leaders in the High School hand over in a symbolic way to their successors.

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Last week I wrote, in part, about the importance of protecting community, and specifically our community.  This week, I have asked a recent graduate to write for all of us.  She is Gu Shiyang (Tori), Keystone Class of 2021, currently enrolled in a pre-med course at the University of Rochester.  Tori’s thoughts about Keystone, and what our learning community means to her, give us all a lovely example of just how precious our school is.  Thank you, Tori.

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

I wrote recently about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose interpretation and practice of his faith led him to be a savior for his country.  By chance, I find myself writing in part this week about another Christian, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who lived in France centuries ago. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Welcome back from a lovely, long break, full of events and incidents.  I led us into the New Year, in my weekly column, with Blake’s powerful poem about the ‘Tyger’, and some thoughts about tigers in the Chinese tradition.  Tigers inspire awe, for many.  Certain other phenomena, events and experiences inspire awe too.  Awe is a sensation to treasure.

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Tigers are everywhere right now.  I have a supply of tiger masks.  Last week I was given a tiger cup. Around the school I see tiger paper, tiger note pads, various tiger images, tiger toys, and even fluffy tiger teddy bears, a cute yet curious combination.

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

Just before the end-of-calendar-year break one year ago, on December 17, 2020, I wrote a piece for In the Loop about our value of ren, or compassion, and of the practice of forgiveness as a quintessential part of compassion. 

Dear Members of our Keystone Community,

It feels good to reach the end of this part of our school year having had our students on campus every day, without any need to fall back on remote teaching and learning.  Schools in some other countries have not been so fortunate.  We know, however, that matters could change any time, and that we all need to continue to follow our health and safety protocols.  That was one aspect of my letter to you sent on Monday this week, in which I gave guidelines for holiday travel

Dear Parents, Students, Colleagues,

My letter last week was, in part, about dancing to different songs.  The previous week, I took a slightly different angle on difference.  I stated that difference can be a great educator.  Living with diversity, celebrating difference, and embracing otherness are powerful engines for expanding our awareness, growing our compassion, and enriching our lives.    

Dear Parents, Students, Colleagues,

In the most recent letter from the Primary School leadership team to parents of children in that division, sent last Friday, December 3, my attention was caught by this absorbing paragraph:

Our Foundation students have been reading Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees, a book about a clumsy giraffe who wants to dance but cannot...

Dear Parents, Students, Colleagues,

I want to share with you this week something that I wrote 25 years ago!  It was sent to me recently by the archivist at the Maru a Pula School in Botswana where I was Head during the 1990s.  In March 1996 I was invited to Washington, D.C., to talk about Maru a Pula School to the delegates at the annual conference of the US National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS).

Dear Parents, Students, Colleagues,

I ended my letter last week with reference to the graduates who have already completed their learning at Keystone, and are now at colleges and universities in different parts of the world, including China.  Writing ‘completed their learning at Keystone’ in the previous sentence was deliberate: these graduates have not completed their learning from and for Keystone.  One of our mantras as a school is that we learn from and for the world. 

Dear Parents, Students, Colleagues,

Today is an important day for the history of teaching and learning research at Keystone, and for our stated intention, in our mission, ‘to engage fully with the world of education, and the world at large, beyond our gates’.