We make our way over the dunes with the sun setting and a bundle of discarded wood in our arms. The wood is dried, split, cast away pieces not fit for our fireplaces. The best pieces are the driftwood – twisted and smoothed by their travel across the ocean waters to our sandy shore. The wood is dropped and we set about the work of building the fire and arranging our places in the circle. The sun drops out of sight and the flames come alive – crackling in concert with the breaking waves.

School is also a place where we come together, each of us carrying our questions, our concerns, our worries, and our hopes. The call to learn is a call to talk. Like the heat of the dead wood burning on the beach that pulls us together, our different opinions, perspectives and experiences – when combined and ignited by inquiry – pull us closer so we can see ourselves as collaborators joined in a common search for understanding, peace of mind, and a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves.

School is so much more than class and the CORE subjects students are charged to learn. School is a community, a space to learn how to get along, how to talk through our differences, and how to restore ourselves and others when things go wrong. Unique among the other groups we may join, school’s invitation to question, examine, and critique makes the school community both more challenging and more rewarding. School calls us to engage with what we can not yet do and what we do not yet understand. School expects us to be vulnerable and to embrace the making of mistakes as a sign of progress. When we fall short – we know we are stretching ourselves – making room for growth.

I hope this weekend you have the opportunity to gather around an outdoor fire and talk into the night long after the sun has set.

Peace,
Chris