With an End in Sight
During teacher training last August, many of us wondered aloud whether we would be allowed to remain open beyond the first week of school. Despite the flurry of often contradictory and ever-changing guidance, orders, mandates, and recommendations from district, municipal, county, state, federal, and global authorities, nine months later we have somehow arrived at the end of the year. We have done so imperfectly of course, and no measure we took was free of controversy or criticism arriving from some quarter, but neither were these measures without heaps of praise from appreciative parents and students glad to be resuming a routine and enjoying the camaraderie of friends.
Neither has it been a year short on tragedy. We come within sight of the finish line deeply saddened by the loss of Mrs. Flowers. It seems an especially cruel blow to cap off an already difficult year. In a place as intimate and closely knit as Ridgeview, every wound is deeply felt.
When I inquire of faculty and staff what they are most looking forward to about this summer, many simply say “sleep.” I sympathize and I suspect many parents, as glad as they were to have the students back in school, do as well. We have run a good race and cleared many hurdles, but we have been exhausted in the effort.
Cervantes writes in the second book of Don Quixote that, “While I am sleeping, I neither fear nor hope, have neither pain nor pleasure: and well fare him that invented sleep, a cloak that covers all human thoughts: the food that slakes hunger; the water that quencheth thirst; and the fire that warmeth cold; the cold that tempers heat; and finally a current coin, with which all things are bought, a balance and weight that equals the king to the shepherd; the fool to the wiseman; only one thing (as I have heard) sleep hath ill, which is, that it is like death, in that between a man asleep, and a dead man, there is little difference.”
We are grateful for all the appreciation, praise, gratitude, kindness, and encouragement we have been shown this year. The parent volunteers who were barred from the building were nonetheless here in spirit, bearing as they did, thoughtful notes left for us at the reception desk, in the treats they donated for Teacher Appreciation Week, and in the e-mails they sent to remind us that this was worthwhile work and that our sometimes extraordinary efforts were not going unnoticed.
As much as we found ourselves restricted, I am grateful that we were able to do more for this year’s seniors than we were for last year’s. By any standard, our seniors presented their theses wonderfully, but particularly notable was that these students had not spoken in front of an audience for over a year. The juniors were similarly impressive in their poise and delivery. It was a blessing to get to be with the seniors at the Tapestry House, to laugh heartily with them about our respective idiosyncrasies, and to tell one another what it is we’ve appreciated most about them. Watching them graduate is always bittersweet, and it is only right and natural that we will miss them more than they are likely to miss us. I wish them the very best in their travels, travails, and adventures.
I look forward to the return of our parent volunteers next year, to rejoining reading groups in the hallways, to discussing Tocqueville’s Democracy in America with parents over the summer, to seeing new parents attend our weekly and monthly reading groups, to implementing the big changes that are in the works and seeing our students recover from this pandemic and its restrictions.
Like all of us, I am ready for sleep; for sleep’s cloak to cover my thoughts, for a break from the restlessness and fatigue, from the hurried thoughts and the candle burning at both ends. As much as I look forward though to the end, I look forward with greater eagerness to a new beginning in the year to come. Throughout this turbulent and troublesome period, my hope has been to see us cross the finish line together, but every bit as earnestly, that we should be prepared to begin a new race together as well.
I wish all of you the very best for a relaxing and rejuvenating summer, and I look forward to us beginning a very different kind of year in late August.
D. Anderson
Principal
