Weekly Message from Head of School 2022/09/18-2022/09/24
Three men walk together, and there must be someone who can be my teacher.
Confucius Analects: Shu Er
Dear Members of our Keystone Community,
Earlier this year, as we gathered 485 boarding students into the gym on the first night of our residential program, we talked about responsibility and the privilege that comes with responsibility. I shared with the students the Hawaiian word of kuleana, which means both responsibility and privilege, and also right. The right to be a part of our school community comes with privilege. Privilege without a deep sense of responsibility is entitlement, something schools like ours must continually and actively work to reject.
Let’s consider this as we reflect on one of our school’s three keystones:
Building character and community throughout our residential [school] setting.
As I shared in the gym that night with our boarding students, one of the important responsibilities of our “big kids” in a school like ours, is to be role models to their younger schoolmates. They do this with regular and consistent commitment to our five shared values in ways that are visible and discernable to everyone in the community. I invited them to imagine both an adult they respect very much, and a young child they care for, and to act in all moments as if those people are right next to you. This keystone impacts all our students at Keystone Academy, even those who do not yet live on campus. In fact, it impacts all of us in this broad and diverse community. We build in the residential setting so that our older students can practice and be held accountable to our values around the clock. This is invaluable training for them in this stage of their lives.
And it is important to remember that our residential school setting, and the accountability to high standards of our privilege and responsibility has tremendous benefits for everyone in our community, not just the people who lay their head here at night—it matters to all of us.
Just prior to the mid-autumn festival a small group of school leaders gathered our third-party colleagues in the MPR to offer our appreciation for their extraordinary efforts to get the school year off the ground (as we fly to new heights!). In that gathering, we reminded each other that no matter what our job is on this campus, we are all teachers. Here, students have the practice of calling all the adults on campus “laoshi”. I find this beautiful. The reverence for teachers and education in Chinese society is extended to all of us who devote our lives to making school communities work.
It is important that we are mindful of this in our community and do consistently extend that reverence and respect to everyone, because we know that everyone is a teacher. This statement is not to minimize the extensive professional practice, commitment and training of our classroom educators—they are indeed particularly credentialed and excellent in that line of work. Keystone's professionals in all fields bring their diverse skill sets to making our school soar. And, if we are to be our best, we will extend the same courtesy, reverence and respect to everyone—every single person-- in our community. Whether it is the security guard who is checking your health kit at the gate, or the cafeteria worker who is serving your meal, or teacher who is giving feedback, our excellence in that particular keystone that relates to our residential school setting is measured by the consistent quality of our interactions with each other. That is our kuleana.
Warmly,
Emily McCarren
