Weekly Message from Head of School 2024/9/22-2024/9/26

Dear Keystonians,

We close this first chapter of our school year having just completed our OEPs for Grades 4-10 and our ELP for Grade 11 students. Congratulations to all the hardworking teachers and staff for their planning, efforts and around the clock devotion to these rich learning experiences! And thank you to students and parents for supporting the idea that at Keystone, learning is boundless and brave and requires us to stretch well beyond both our personal comfort zones towards a sense of what education can be!

As you enter the Golden Week holiday break, I hope you find time for rest and relaxation and time with your loved ones. And take time to read some poetry. Here is a perfect poem for the season, Fall Song, by Mary Oliver. Let’s remember to give ourselves time to slow down, and delight in the peaceful transitions between life’s “momentary pastures”. When we return, we will regain focus on our “bright vision” for our futures and other “unobservable mysteries”.  

Until then, truly yours,

Emily/ Dr. M 

Fall Song 

Another year gone, leaving everywhere 
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves, 
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply 
in the shadows, unmattering back 
from the particular island 
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere 
except underfoot, moldering 
in that black subterranean castle 
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds 
and the wanderings of water. This 
I try to remember when time's measure 
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn 
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing 
to stay - how everything lives, shifting 
from one bright vision to another, forever 
in these momentary pastures.