Head of School Blog "Opening Thoughts"
Dear Orchard Community,
We have had a lovely start to the school year. It is beautiful to see excited young learners come into the school, meet their new teachers and, within a few moments, set about the essential, joyful work of learning and growing into young people of curiosity, intelligence and heart. So, welcome back to another year at Orchard!
Like the swallows of Capistrano, the return of the students happens annually but is no less inspiring and uplifting. This year, the excitement and eagerness of all these young students to make new friends and encounter new ideas is particularly heartening in the broader context of some difficult moments for us nationally. Over the weekend we watched a hurricane hit Texas displacing thousands, following the divisiveness a week ago triggered by the events in Charlottesville.
One of these situations is a natural disaster and one is caused by human intolerance of others. These moments test our commitment to each other and are also opportunities to reaffirm our essential Orchard values and to act selflessly to try to help and heal. It is not enough to be passive bystanders.
Inside our school, we can model kindness and respect for each other and use education as a tool against ignorance about the “otherness” of people. At Orchard, we reaffirm that we welcome and are enriched by having community members of many races, religions, gender identities, sexual orientations, and political views. Our mission at Orchard is to educate students to be intelligent, thoughtful, independent-thinking, and empathic citizens who create a world that will be better tomorrow than it is today.
In addition, we can demonstrate our compassion to the people of Texas who are hard hit by the catastrophic flooding and rains of Hurricane Harvey right now. We will be communicating about ways Orchard can reach out and help those struggling in Texas right now.
The Orchard children and this place are rays of hope and a promise that a community can come together and model respectful interaction in a manner that celebrates everyone’s story as well as being a community with the energy and initiative to act as caring citizens. As the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye wrote, we must come to realize how “desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness.” Here, our students are taught to embrace the wonderful varieties of human experience with respectful curiosity and wonder as they come to understand that there are more commonalities to celebrate than otherness to fear.
Orchard, at its best, is like a shining oasis. So we begin with our best hopes and dreams guided by our beautiful mission.
Truly,
Tom
