Winter Celebration

This week began with a powerful moment as we all gathered for Community Meeting after last Friday's events in Newtown, and heard the first grade lead us through Woody Guthrie's "Why Oh Why" and then our fours sing "This Little Light of Mine." As we ended our meeting in quiet reflection, we held our children tight and were thankful, our hearts full as our thoughts wandered to those who are now without loved ones, and for the despair and anger that events like those at Sandy Hook summon up in us. And yet, as educators and parents we are charged with helping to look forward, and that is what we did at our Winter Celebration on Thursday. From our 4th graders' two-part a capella Dona Nobis Pacem to the K-2 flash mob accompanied by the tunes of the Trans Siberian Orchestra to the community-wide singing of Auld Lang Syne, it was a moment, as one parent said to me, that Blue School was most profoundly itself.

Moments later, families wandered the building to see the ways that children made the learning of their semester visible. They wandered up the "Tower Where Wintertime Lives" an installation of children's letters to winter with a recording of their voices resonating throughout the stairwell; they demonstrated their knowledge of bridges and how to build them, wrote poetry about the definition of beauty in a changed neighborhood, modeled art installations on the work of Andy Goldsworthy, explored the impact of water and wind during a hurricane, and much more.

It was such a pleasure to see all of you there, and we wish you all the best, and a powerful, enchanting 2013.