Weekly Message from HOS 2026/06/22-2026/06/26
Dear Keystonians,
In just a few days, another school year will have come and gone. As I sit down to write this, we are in the whirlwind of end-of-year activities. I say with certainty—and with every happy, tired bone in my body—that Keystone Academy squeezes every ounce of potential out of a school year.
Just this Thursday and Friday, we enjoyed celebrations of learning, a Service Fair, a House Cup Handball game (Go Wood!), the 8th grade promotion ceremony, and the dance that followed. We passed the leadership of the PTA groups, we played, we celebrated and we started to say goodbye. Even as we celebrate the final seconds of this year, we also have a foot in next year—which I keep reminding myself and the leadership team is [5, 4, 3, 2, 1.5] school days away.
Everyone seems to be charging toward the end of the year with a kind of excited wild abandon. We are all carrying that unique brand of end-of-year energy: excited and spent. We are in the last seconds of the game. We have given it our all. We look around at our teammates and shrug our shoulders in that happy way—the one where you make your neck shorter, raise your eyebrows, and share a huge smile. I have seen that look exchanged all over campus this week. It contains a million possible feelings, with as many combinations as there are people here times seconds in the day. For many of us, it is some combination of:
We are almost there.
We did it.
I’m tired.
I’m happy.
I’m proud.
We are stoked for what’s ahead.
We bubble over with gratitude for what has been.
We are sad to say goodbye.
This year will never be repeated.
The best is yet to come.
These emotions swirl around our community, held in the vessels of the humans who carry them. In the early morning, I look over campus from my apartment in the west tower. I take a deep breath and think about all the amazing humans who will circulate across these paths, through these halls, into the dining halls, classrooms, studios, fields, labs, and gyms. I want them all to be happy, safe, peaceful, and challenged. I want them to have what they need to learn, grow, and thrive. I stretch my arms above my head and wonder what the day will bring.
Especially in these final days, I think about the emotions we all hold as we enter this liminal space between one year and the next.
As teachers, we know this cycle well. Each school year brings a unique combination of students and teachers. School cultures are shaped over time by the sum of the contributions of every person who moves through a community. Each person shapes the culture of a school.
I think about this a lot. In my role, my responsibility to support and shape our culture is visible every day. But school culture is shaped not by a single person or a small group. It is shaped in the millions of ways we meet each other—in the ways we acknowledge the alchemy of emotions, experiences, and different journeys that bring us to each interaction. We do our best to challenge ourselves, to hold ourselves accountable, and sometimes just to hold each other together.
A few weeks ago, I sat with a student who is leaving Keystone next year. As she prepared to move on, she asked thoughtful questions—about leadership, about life, about the work of leading a team. She also reflected on what she was leaving behind. She wondered how she would carry Keystone with her. She wondered what parts of herself she had grown here that would stay.
Oh, the primordial, beautiful soup of human communities! They delight and disappoint us. They teach and trouble us. They hold and release us. We are them, and they are us.
As we close this chapter, I want to thank you. For your hard work. For your trust. For your partnership. For the moments of kindness, challenge, and laughter that shaped our school year. For your enduring commitment and alignment to ren yi li zhi xin 仁义礼智信。
In this 2025-26 season of Keystone Dreams, we were all here together—and that has been the greatest gift.
Have a restful, joyful summer.
Warmly,
Emil
