Weekly Message from Head of School 2023/04/09-2023/04/15
Greetings Keystonians!
This coming week is the beginning of the end of the year—can you believe it?! Although we are still over two months away from the actual last day of school, this week our 12th graders will have their last day of regular classes as they begin their revision and review weeks before their final DP exams in May.
Meanwhile, I spent the whole day on Thursday following a first-grade class through their day. These students will be the high school graduating class of 2034. Seems so far away, doesn’t it? Until you ask the parents of the class of 2023 how long ago their child’s first grade experience was. The year 2012 was a lifetime ago for many of our students, but parents think of it as so recently! They were just little kids—they reflect—and now they are headed off to college this fall! When my daughter was born, I remember a good friend saying that “The days are long, but the years are short.”
Yesterday was my second shadow day, the first one being with 5th graders last month. (I will follow middle school and high school students in the weeks to come!) Shadowing is a common educational practice for observation; it gives an immersive sense of the students’ experience throughout the school day. Visiting classes is great, but when you shadow a student, you see the transitions, the interstitial time that when added up becomes what kids experience as “school”. School is so much more than our written academic curriculum; it is the spaces, the people, the relationships, the movement, the sights and sounds. The eager anticipation as students go down the stairs and through the hallways to their next class, seeing their work displayed all over the school, the lunchtime excitement, the relaxation at recess, and the happy conclusion as they head home at the end of the day. School is in fact the sum of emotional responses and cognitive processes associated with people, spaces and experiences, woven together across years into a tapestry of learning and growth.
Taking time to luxuriate in the practice of student shadowing results in a gold mine of insights and observations for educators. My first take away from these days was how amazingly fortunate our students are at Keystone. They have the best teachers in the world who are working together to create a beautiful symphony of experiences for them. Or maybe it is more like a jazz concert? (I’m not musical enough (yet!?) to work in these metaphors.)
This practice of student shadowing also allows for meaningful perspective. It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of school life, with excitement everywhere, and things to take care of at every turn. When I sit with first graders and think about all that will come for them on this Keystone journey, it is hard not to feel both excitement and an awesome sense of responsibility.
In these years, we create the conditions for students to build their foundation for a lifetime of meaning and joy. We take seriously the responsibility to architect this experience called school with great care and intention knowing that, indeed, the days are long, but the years are short, and in the blink of an eye, the class of 2034 will be leaving us too.
Yours,
Emily
