Friends School Families,
Tomorrow morning, our doors open and another school year begins.
Backpacks will return to hooks. Classrooms will fill with conversation. Old friends will find one another, new friendships will begin, and teachers and students will start the work of transforming rooms that are ready for school into communities of learners.
There is always something wonderfully hopeful about the first day.
Each year at Friends School, we place special emphasis on one of the Quaker testimonies that help shape our school. Last year, we explored Community. This year, our testimony is Peace.
When we talk about Peace with children, it can be tempting to define it simply as the absence of something: no fighting, no violence, no conflict. But the Quaker understanding of Peace asks considerably more of us.
Peace is something we do.
We practice it when we listen before responding. When we make room for someone else. When we disagree without making an enemy of the person across from us. When we notice someone on the outside and invite them in. When we acknowledge that we’ve caused harm and work to repair it. When we choose curiosity over assumption. And sometimes, when something is unjust, Peace asks us not to remain quiet but to speak.
Our students will have countless opportunities to practice these things this year. So will the adults.
We won’t always get it right. A peaceful community isn’t a community without disagreement, mistakes, hurt feelings, or conflict. It is a community committed to what happens next.
That is the work we begin together tomorrow.
As a reminder, every year parents/caregivers are invited to begin the year with us at our Parent/Caregiver Meeting for Worship from 8:30–9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. After the bustle of arrival and goodbyes, we’ll gather together in silence before heading into the year ahead. If the weather is good, we will meet at the back picnic tables near the parking lot. If not, we’ll gather in the gym.
I love that this is how we begin. Before we fill the year with everything we hope to accomplish, we make a little space.
Then the classrooms fill, and off we go.
Happy first day, Friends School. I can’t wait to see what this year brings.
Yours,
Joe
