In these moments of parental worry, I remind myself of what I know to be true as a Quaker educator--that education itself is a lifelong journey, not a destination. This idea comes to Friends education from two essential beliefs of Quakerism. The first is consensus, a process of Quaker decision-making that seeks to understand the group's thoughts, feelings, and insights over an expedient resolution. The second is continuing revelation, which declares that new truths emerge as we continue along our individual and collective spiritual journeys. Those are the significant, noble beliefs that Quaker education strives to embody by valuing process over product. My hope for my children and our students at FSH is, of course, that they will master reading, writing, and arithmetic. Those skills have allowed me to engage in meaningful work and the things that matter most to me. But more than any set of skills, I want them to recognize that learning is a lifelong process in which they are engaged continuously (and have been since the first hours of their lives). I want them to see that no matter what they "master" as students, there will always be so much left to learn, long after they've stepped away from formal education.
This week's Celebration of Learning for students in grades 1-8, like so much of the work that happens in our classrooms at FSH, intends to honor and celebrate students' learning process. We hope to give you a chance to glimpse what we see in the classroom every day that can't be fully appreciated or captured in even the best narrative report or a stellar letter grade. Yes, posters will be on display and writing will be read, but we also want to share the process of learning the invisibles and intangibles (belonging, kindness, empathy). Fittingly, some of the work students will share is still on its way to completion.
Learning is always a process--one that’s beautiful, messy, enlightening, perplexing, and rewarding. It requires a mix of patience, grit, grace, careful preparation, intuition, and self-reflection. It’s a process that I think a Friends education gets right, and that I hope you agree is worthy of celebration every day, at every age.