Thoughtful Uncertainty

5/6/20
Liza Ewen
Acting Head of School

Throughout the year, I’ve kept a running list of topics to write about in the Weekly Update--an emergency stash of ideas to turn to when the past week’s events don’t reveal what this weekly note to you should address. For the last two months, that list (like my once-beloved office calendar) has taunted me with topics that are too much to tackle during a global pandemic. The value of a growth mindset and teaching our children (and really, ourselves) how to be resilient. The role of technology and screentime in the FSH classroom. This morning, for the life of me, I cannot remember what could have possibly led me to jot down “thoughtful uncertainty” as a worthy topic, but there it is, on the list. Honestly, with each passing week in this new not-at-all-normal reality, I’ve considered writing about the now-hourly conversations my wife and I have with our second-grader about why we aren’t getting a puppy. However, with each passing week, despite impressive clarity, resolve, and parental solidarity, I cannot confidently rule out the possibility that come September, I’ll have a new lens for thinking all things teaching and learning--life with our new puppy.

Each Tuesday night, I turn back to this somehow painfully-dated list of topics, in hopes that having jettisoned them the week before was a lapse in judgment. Each week, I convince myself that it’s okay if I don’t write about teaching and learning all things small Quaker school during a global pandemic. Each Wednesday, by 8 am, I send something off to our Director of Communications, Carolyn Clingman, with oft-repeated yet newly-genuine apologies. What I write is never quite what I had hoped it would be. I suspect I’ll be in the same place with the same questions a week from now. But, there’s value in carrying on. There must be, or surely I would have settled for a bit more fitful sleep by this point.

This ridiculously small challenge I find myself facing as I figure out what to write here each week resembles what parents and teachers alike have been struggling to do and will continue to do together until there is a vaccine for this new virus. We will carry on, staying up too late and getting up too early, despite not quite knowing the answer. We will keep going forward in the name of making sure that children are still getting the precious sleep, the outdoor time, the play, the read-alouds, and the routine they need, while also guiding them through a world truly unlike the one they headed out into just two months ago. Even if you’re a parent who’s never been a teacher or a teacher who hasn’t been a parent, it’s clear how much parents and teachers have in common and how crucial our collective resilience is right now--and always has been.

I’m not sure if this is the best topic for the Weekly Update, but it’s where this week has taken me in all my thinking about teachers and students and learning. Thank you all--FSH parents, teachers, staff, and families--for all you’re doing to keep going. To say I appreciate your efforts would belie the importance of knowing that we are all in this together in my ability to get up each morning, regardless of what day it is, and carry on myself. Thanks, too, in advance for your forgiveness should you find yourself reading about my family’s new pet. Here’s to hoping it’s a goldfish.