Weekly Message from Head of School 2022/09/04-2022/09/10
Dear Members of our Keystone Community,
Greetings and Happy Friday to each of you! Shortly after I arrived in Beijing this summer, I spent a day with some colleagues and students downtown. We biked around Tiananmen Square, visited the Forbidden city, had two wonderful meals and spent some time in the workshop of a master kite maker. It was an incredible experience to sit in that beautiful space with kites of all shapes and sizes hanging from the ceiling. Liu Bin comes from a line of kite makers, his great-grandfather made kites and lanterns for the palace. He gave me a beautiful book about kitemaking that he wrote.
Liu Bin has studied Chinese and western art extensively and blends this knowledge with the traditional knowledge and wisdom of his family to create extraordinary masterpieces. He infuses modern materials and technology to bring the cultural heritage of this craft to new heights - literally and figuratively.
I trust that this creative blending of wisdoms and cultures deeply rooted in China feels familiar to you; indeed, this beautiful mix is very much like what we aim to do here at Keystone. We want our students to be deeply rooted in China, to be inspired by the wisdom and traditions around the world, and to be creative in how they apply that knowledge to make a difference in the world. For many years educational thought leaders have reminded us that we are preparing our students for jobs that may not yet exist—this creativity combined with reverence for cultural knowledge is essential for future success and impact.
During our employee orientation week, Keystone’s faculty and staff collaborated with Liu Bin to make a kite for our students. It is a beautiful kite of a catfish, representing abundance, the assurance that we will always have enough of the things we need most. The twenty-meter-long tail of the kite contains wishes of hope for our students for this academic year. Our hopes for our students are directly connected to our hopes for our shared future in this fragile world. Someday soon, we will see those wishes and hopes soaring in the sky, a symbol of our shared and noble purpose at Keystone.
For several years now, educators (like professionals in most fields) around the world have had our heads down, tending to the ever-changing needs of our students and schools in the time of pandemic. While the pandemic is not over, we start the year with the invitation to look up, to reaffirm our shared hopefulness.
Liu Bin says that a kite that doesn’t fly is just a painting. Similarly, a school without our students is just a collection of tidy buildings. Since our students have returned to campus over the last two weeks, Keystone has begun to soar again, and it is simply beautiful!
Do you have special thoughts or memories about kites? Or is there something about the theme of our year “fly to new heights” that you’d like to share with me? Always feel free to reach out to me at emily.mccarren@keystoneacademy.cn
Warmly,
Emily McCarren
