a school should be audacious

the child is central

I still feel the “calling,”

a charge that we can be so audacious

as to care for the whole child,

as to reinvent ourselves and our curriculum, 

every moment,

and still to maintain the best of ourselves, 

throughout that reinvention,

at our best, 

what we are about is holding,

at the same time,

seeing who exactly each student is, now,

plus seeing how that student 

can come fully into her/his powers,

and, in addition, 

the envisioning of how to use our school

to best serve what the past, the present, the future,

call to us to be for the child,

the child central to it all,

whenever I get too much into routine,

into taking a path more because it’s easy than right,

I work to listen more keenly to the call

for us to be fully there for the students,

whenever I feel we’re off the path,

I hope to help us find our way forward,

to listen to what is right, not just to what is easy,

to resist the conventional unless it’s the better path,

to center the universe around a student,

than around another student,

and thus we live education as “calling.”

by Henry H. Walker

July 16, ‘18