From the Head of School

Lately, I’ve been reflecting upon our children’s future. In what can feel like a particularly uncertain and contentious moment in our country’s history, I have been thinking: this is the world we will soon be handing over to the next generation. And I’m more aware than ever that it is our duty and privilege to prepare them for this future, to foster in them the intellectual, ethical, and emotional skills to thrive and to serve as citizens of the world. Here at Friends, as educators, we take that responsibility very much to heart and I know the parents in our community do the same. Our job is to teach these children, to cherish them, and to let them go. We all know this.

Ken visiting third graders as they read books about Stewardship.

But as the parent of a college student and a graduate student, what I have also come to understand is the value of coming home. After weeks or months of negotiating their demanding, exhilarating, sometimes stressful academic and social lives, when my kids walk through the door of our house I watch a very specific kind of peace settle over them. It’s a peace born of familiarity and memories, of favorite meals, of years of dinnertime conversations, of family traditions, stories, nicknames, jokes. Coming home is respite and restoration; it is remembering where they came from, what they value, and who they are. When it comes time to leave, yes, they are ready to go, but when they walk out the front door, they carry this peace with them. I see something similar happen every fall at Friends at Homecoming. Our alumni come to us from all over the country, leaving behind, for a day or two, their busy lives of work and service, to exchange hugs and share meals and memories with old friends, to dress in blue and white and yell themselves hoarse cheering on their Quakers, to recall the people, the traditions, and the Quaker values that helped shape them into the people they are.

I felt this sense of home in the air and saw it in the faces at this year’s Homecoming: at the 50th Reunion Luncheon, at the True Blue dinner where we recognized alumni achievements, at the Smith McMillan 5K, at Meeting for Worship, and on the sidelines of games where we cheered our teams–every single one–to victory. My hope is that everyone who came headed back to their lives refreshed, grounded, and with a little bit of Friends School, Homecoming peace.

Even as our current students live out their own daily, immediate Friends School experience, their eyes are on the future. This is especially evident this year as we focus, as a community, on the Quaker Testimony of Stewardship. In September, our upper school students took part in the WFS Climate Strike, a rally–which included the middle school students–and a march to Salesianum School, where our students joined with those from other local schools at a teach-in about the climate crisis. Fridays for Future WFS, a coalition of student clubs, organized this event as part of the worldwide planned Global Climate Strike, a campaign of youth activism to highlight the Climate Emergency. Parents and WFS faculty and staff were invited to join in, and our students’ informed concern and commitment to change were heartening and empowering.

Later in the fall, our eighth grade students participated in the REECH program at Cape Henlopen State Park, a one-day hands-on learning experience with the goal of understanding how well the coastal ecosystem is functioning. The program included an overview of marine ecology in the Delaware Bay, as well as a study of the coastal wetlands ecology in the maritime forest and salt marsh. The day concluded with an interactive program on the significance of the horseshoe crab to the Delaware Bay. At lower school, our students’ growing sense of responsibility for the health of the planet was evident everywhere. Our youngest students cultivated wonder and a respect for nature in our Natural Classroom, while first graders witnessed the miracle of transformation in the Monarch butterfly nursery. Our third graders found inspiration in books. After reading the book Greta and the Giants about 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, they were moved to create their own posters to help stop global warming.

Our students give me similar inspiration and hope. I trust that when the time comes for them to leave their Friends School home, to take what we’ve worked to give them into their future and ours, the world will be in very capable hands.

In friendship,