“Full Circle” by Matison Hearn-Desautels ‘14

“Full Circle”

by Matison Hearn-Desautels ‘14 (MS / HS English)

Matison delivered the following reflection at a faculty & staff meeting on November 29, 2021:

Damian [Jones] asked me to reflect on coming full circle at Burke. Specifically, he asked if I could reflect on being a student and now a teacher; but my time at Burke actually began way before that, at my beginning, as a soon-to-be person carried between classes, the faculty room, and hallway hangouts by my mom, [Head of Middle School Susan Hearn].

At that time, Susan was a fairly new teacher right out of graduate school. In many ways my life at Burke is the story of my likeness and indebtedness to my mom, the powerful, beautiful, and intelligent woman still working here 30 years later. So what I want to talk about today is how Burke is a place worth being at and returning to, because of the smart and thoughtful people it is composed of.

So in that spirit, here’s what coming full circle at Burke means to me:

• It means meeting Hannah Bernhardt, my best friend to this day, in Kathleen’s 6th grade class.

• It means being a faculty kid - growing up hearing the refrain “but isn’t it weird having your mom as your teacher?” and replying with my own refrain - it’s really not.

• These days, it means teaching the brilliant kids of current faculty.

• It means sharing an office with two of my favorite teachers from my time in middle and high school. One who lovingly called my AP English cohort her “little cannellini beans” and taught me how scintillating precise word choice can be, and another who taught me to question existence and, perhaps even more importantly, bad poetry. I’m talking about Elizabeth and Daniel, if you couldn’t guess. I bet you can guess which is which.

• It also means sharing my office with the new teacher, Peter, who brings so much verve and freshness to this institution.

• It means seeing the brightness that he and so many other newer additions make to this community, and seeing how they fit in so beautifully with folks who have been here for a long time, sometimes like a loooong time.

• I think that Burke’s ability to grow and change while retaining its essential qualities speaks to this community’s dynamism and integrity.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how coming full circle at Burke puts me in this weird and wonderful dialectic - there’s a duality of being the trusted adult for kids who are struggling while also being that kid who, at times, was struggling myself. When a kid comes to me, say, admitting they’re struggling with mental health, or identity, or the stress of high expectations, I feel this incredible empathy because I was that kid, standing where they are now, trying to navigate those things. This reminds me of the important lesson that we as educators, as caretakers, are people who have been shaped by the adults before us who have seen and cared for us. It also shows how deeply committed we are to the kids and colleagues who make up this community. We put our whole selves into this place just like we ask our students to do. It’s as demanding as it is rewarding.

In many ways, my life at this point parallels my moms in the ‘90s. I am now a new-ish teacher at Burke fresh out of grad school, in my mid-20s, joking around with the English department. And although Burke has changed and grown in the last 30 years, what remains constant are these things I’ve shared with you. This dynamism and integrity.

I also think about my mom and Burke – the two are inseparable in my mind – and I consider how she is a woman who valued my education so much she made it so I never want to leave the classroom.

And that’s what Burke means, most importantly. It is a place worth coming back to, and a place where you want to stay, because of the people and our uniting value of great education.

10 \\ 1968 Edmund Burke School Magazine