Finding Our Element: A Legacy of Passion and Purpose at Keystone
(Weekly Message from HOS 2025/10/06-2025/10/10)
Dear Keystonians,
It was a delight to see our Middle and High School hallways and classrooms filled with parents during our Back-to-School Nights this week. My heartfelt thanks to our dedicated teachers for their thoughtful preparation and to all the families who joined us. Witnessing you engage so deeply in your children’s daily learning journey was a true highlight and a powerful reminder of why we do this work.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have also been reflecting on the meaningful conversations with our Parent-School Communication Task Force about redefining success and celebrating the entire learning journey. After the holiday, a thoughtful parent in our Task Force connected our conversation to the words of our founding head of school, Malcolm McKenzie. His vision for Keystone is not just our foundation; it is a living, breathing guide for our work today.
He once wrote about finding his “element” in school teaching, moving from university to work with adolescents and, finally, to a school like ours that combines primary and secondary. “I am in my element here,” he said. “There is a feeling of complete rightness, of being perfectly at home, knowing that you are exactly where you are supposed to be, and doing what you love doing.”
This resonates deeply with our recent discussions. One parent insightfully asked: How do we recognize and celebrate learning if we try to move away from a culture of “winning” and ranking? Malcolm, drawing on Ken Robinson’s work, provided the answer: by helping each child discover their unique talents and passions—their element.
He warned of the forces that can make this difficult, noting schools often have a:
"Preoccupation with certain sorts of academic ability"
"Hierarchy of subjects"
"Growing reliance on particular types of assessment"
At Keystone, we strive to counter this. “We encourage a wide range of academic interests,” Malcolm wrote, “and we try to undermine any attitude that regards some as inherently more important than others.”
This is the continuity of our vision. It’s why we are designing events to share stories of alumni who have found their unique paths. It’s why we focus on assessment for learning—diagnosing needs to provide better support, not just to rank. It’s why we talk about a broad definition of success that fosters well-being and high achievement, because one enables the other.
Malcolm’s closing words on this from his letter years ago are a charge we continue to uphold: “Life is too short, and too precious, to settle for anything less than what ignites and inspires us.”
My deepest thanks to the parents and teachers who are partnering with us to ensure Keystone remains a place where every student can find their element.
Warmly,
Emily
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Head of School Letter from Malcolm McKenzie dated December 8, 2017:：
My first two teaching positions were in universities. However, I found my career passion when I moved from university teaching to school teaching 30 years ago. This move was to a secondary school. I loved teaching teenagers almost immediately. These adolescent years are so impressionable and important for all of us. Now I work in a school that combines primary and secondary. This is one of the many, many reasons that I love working at Keystone. The younger children are so inquisitive, appreciative, and delighted about their learning. I feel privileged that I have been part of five wonderful schools, Keystone being the most recent and, in many ways, the most exciting. I am in my element here.
In my element. Although it is a commonplace phrase, I use that English idiom deliberately. I have been reading a book by Ken Robinson called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. When a person is in her or his element, there is a feeling of complete rightness, of being perfectly at home, knowing that you are exactly where you are supposed to be, and doing what you love doing.
Ken Robinson may be better known for his provocative writings and talks on the importance of creativity in human experience and endeavor, and on how so many schools crush the creative instincts and impulses of their students. His earlier book, Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative, has been hugely influential, as have some of his TED Talks. Robinson is a mine of brilliant nuggets about how we can make sure that innovation and creativity are nurtured rather than nullified. Such approaches to education, and to life, allow us to get the best from people, rather than the mediocrity that can too easily be disguised as excellence.
Which brings me back to being in the element that feels right. It is far better to be a fish in water than a fish out of water, gasping for oxygen. Robinson argues that finding one’s element is a matter of getting to know well both one’s talents and passions, and then making sure to create opportunities where those overlap and can thrive. The book consists of stimulating stories of successful individuals who have done extraordinary things, sometimes overcoming physical adversity as well as the more common barrier and barrage of advice to do something more standard and ordinary with their lives. Personal, social, and cultural forces often make it hard for us to discover what we really want to do. Families and schools can be especially powerful in this regard.
In commenting on schools, Robinson focuses on three features. The first is ‘the preoccupation with certain sorts of academic ability’. We know about the rich diversity of human intelligences, yet we are narrow in our limited appreciation of these in many schools. The second is what he terms ‘the hierarchy of subjects’. Mathematics and the sciences are frequently at the top, and the arts at the bottom of this ladder. The third is ‘the growing reliance on particular types of assessment’, most commonly the standardized tests whose limitations are by now well-known but whose influence is still given far too much importance by some people.
At Keystone, we encourage a wide range of academic interests, and we try to undermine any attitude that regards some as inherently more important than others. Discovery and exploration are a feature of the co-curricular, residential, global, and community service programs. We focus as much as we can on assessment for learning, rather than assessment of learning only. And when it comes to college applications, and this is a real and understandable concern for our grade 12 students right now, we ask them and their families to go for what they really want, rather than for what others who do not know them might be advising. Life is too short, and too precious, to settle for anything less than what ignites and inspires us.
Becoming elemental is seldom easy. But it is vital for lives of purpose and passion. Many people are never in a position to evaluate and make the choices that bring them into their element. In a school like Keystone, we are. What a blessing.
