Unseasonable Beginnings
For students, the first day of each new school year is generally fraught with a mishmash of anxiety, giddiness, and weariness. For most adults, a memory of these distinct feelings persists. I suspect most of us would far prefer to reacquaint ourselves with these older feelings rather than acclimate to the ones of uncertainty and trepidation which will define our next chapter.
What work we could do, we did. There are limits that bear mentioning. The technology, though it is quite impressive, was never intended to bear up under these peculiar circumstances and it comes with implications for our privacy. The market economy, though highly responsive to demand, has not been able to keep pace with the needs for plexiglass, face masks, hand sanitizer stations, thermometers, laptops, IT equipment, and much else. In exigent circumstances, we have discovered that it is one thing to order goods, and another for those goods to be delivered.
My point in mentioning these challenges and woes is partly to beg your indulgence. Patience and flexibility will be required from all participants. I also mention these difficulties in order to offer some reassurance that the journey we are about to embark on will be of a limited duration. This is not Ridgeview as we would like it to be; it is Ridgeview, provisionally, as it must be.
Alongside our preparations to keep our students and staff safe throughout the present, much thought and preparation have been given to the future. Amidst unprecedented times, we have undertaken unprecedented efforts to improve our facilities, our curriculum, the ways in which we communicate with our families, and to intentionally develop our community. The strangeness of this situation will not prevail indefinitely, and when this chapter comes to a close, we want for the next to be as good or better than all of those many chapters that preceded it.
Ridgeview is, at its heart, a rather old-fashioned place that emphasizes the traditional. It is not a place of dead languages, but of eternal ones. Its curriculum has passed through the sieve of time and aims to pass on “the best which has been thought and said.” It makes use, wherever it can, of primary sources that speak to us across the span of hundreds and thousands of years rather than textbooks published yesterday and replete with educratic jargon. Our studies aim at the discovery and careful elucidation of truth rather than the persuasiveness championed by sophistry. We do not regard academic success as paramount, but rather the development of virtuous character. Ridgeview’s is a pedagogy based upon human connection, intimacy, conversation, deliberation, self-reflection, humility, and civility.
It is not our objective to be at odds with the world, but it frequently happens that we are. We do not intend to cause suffering, though we know we learn by it. This year is a hard return under unseasonable and unpropitious conditions, but we will emerge from it not the people or the school that we were, but stronger, more resilient, and wiser for the experience. We have and will continue to endeavor to give all of our families good reason for being here, even if the circumstances in which we all work, are not as we would prefer them to be.
As focused as we are on safety, I hope Ridgeview will foster a welcoming environment for its students in these first days. I hope the anxiety and weariness are minimized, and the giddiness is maximized. I hope you will see the fruits of our labors, and together we will make the best of a difficult situation.
D. Anderson
Principal
