Weekly Message from Head of School 2023/11/20-2023/11/24
Dear Keystonians,
Happy Friday to you!
Last Saturday I was in Singapore for a recruitment fair, looking for extraordinary educators and leaders to join Keystone's team. As I was leaving the host school headed to the airport to return to Beijing, I realized perhaps I hadn’t left quite enough time and was running dangerously close to missing my flight, which was arranged in just a way to get me back to our Secondary School Open House on Sunday morning. Standing at the entrance to school, I realized there was no taxi cue, and the ride apps on my phone didn’t seem to be working. I turned to a woman who also looked like she was waiting for a ride and asked her if she knew how I could call a taxi. She asked me where I was going and when I told her the airport and what time my flight was, she said:
“Let’s ride together. I live out that way and I can help make sure you get there.”
My new friend is a biology teacher, a native Singaporean of Indian descent, who was exploring the possibility of working overseas again by spending a Saturday morning at the job fair. She has a daughter who is in university in Singapore. We talked about curriculum, our kids, the world, and what to say to encourage the kind taxi driver to go a little faster than he otherwise might (“As quick as you can please, la.”)
Wouldn’t it be something if she came to Keystone some day? In any event, the ride reminded me of the poem by Danusha Laméris. This poem has some cultural and historical references that might need some explaining, but it makes me happy to think of us all reading it together this weekend of gratitude. Perhaps the young students I see next week coming in the gate will know why I never miss a chance to say, “I like your hat.”
Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
Warmly，
Emily
