Weekly Message from HOS 2026/05/25-2026/05/29

Dear Keystonians, 

Wishing you a happy last Friday of May! Our school is 105 students lighter for the rest of the academic year as we now count the members of the Keystone Class of 2026 among our distinguished alumni. Oh, how we will miss them.  

This weekend I will watch my own daughter graduate from her high school in the United States. My heart is exploding—with pride, with sadness that she is at the far end of her youth, and with admiration for the person she has become.  

When I came to Keystone in the summer of 2022, it was not possible for my family to join me, given the complications with travel across borders at the time. As such, my daughter began her high school journey in the United States. At the time, my husband and I thought she would come to Beijing six months or a year later and enroll at Keystone. She had learned Mandarin in elementary school in the US, and we were all excited about her joining such an extraordinary high school in China.  

But when she started high school, my husband and I began to see the ways she was taking advantage of the unique opportunities at that school. She began to study her fourth language, Hawai’ian—a language that was nearly extinct in the middle of the 20th century. She was excelling at the sports she loves: surfing, outrigger canoe paddling, and water polo. She was finding a way that was not the one her parents had imagined for her—it was hers. 

So, we made the difficult decision to allow her to stay in the US for high school. Instead of all being in Beijing, we split our time between the two places. It has not been easy. I have missed her and my husband terribly, but at the same time, I have been so happy and enriched in my work at Keystone. As a dear friend suggested, as a reframe of a complicated situation: “What if everyone gets what they need?” With each passing year, we are more and more confident that we made a good decision. Not “the right decision.” There is no single right way, just as there is no one way to be successful. But this has worked, and she is thriving; nothing can make a parent happier than seeing their child become themselves.  

This spring, Hope and her teammates won their second consecutive state championship in water polo. They ended the year as the number one high school team in the United States for the spring season. She was named Athlete of the Year in her class of more than 400 students. She can speak and sing in Hawaiian, giving voice to a language and a people she is not genetically part of, but is deeply connected to. She was recruited to play Division 1 water polo at a wonderful school. She has treasured every minute of her high school career and is confident about what comes next.  

As a parent (even with the benefit of the perspective of being a school leader), it is easy to constantly ask whether you are making the right decisions for your child. Now that my own child is on the other side of high school, it is even clearer to me that there are no right decisions. There are just good ones. And if you let your child lead, and couple that with radical care and high hopes for them, anything is possible—but you have no idea exactly how it will turn out. What I see even more clearly now is how important it is to resist the urge to imagine one thing—a single story of success—and to fight to make it happen. Instead, imagine infinite possibilities, and let them unfold. Don’t worry about making the right decision to support your kids, just make “good enough” decisions, the best ones you can every day, and know, that it’s all going to be all right. 

Wishing you all a peaceful weekend and a beautiful start to June. 

Yours, 

Emily