who we need to be

true to what the students need

as a longterm staff member at CFS,

I get asked about changes to the school,

folks who were here years ago

see physical changes: new buildings,

remodeled buildings,

pavement instead of a gravel drive,

and they wonder at the changes,

is the school they knew somehow irrevocably changed?

I often then speak to the continuity I feel

of the heart of our school with those early decades,

I can worry, too, about what is at the heart

of Carolina Friends School, of who we are,

and how change is not always of getting closer to the roots,

that lethargy and the inexorable inertia of the other, the mainstream,

can tempt us away from the radical call

to stay true to the roots of what the learner most needs,

to be true and reinvent ourselves every moment

to be who the students need us to be,

today, my worries went away, for awhile,

as I saw who we have been, who we are,

who we are becoming, at its best,

I told a fellow teacher that she invented the wheel,

for in her dedication to the kids 

and to the substance of what she teaches,

she spearheaded an Hispanic Festival,

CFS Teacher Kelly Yupanqui

Kelly celebrates her native Peru

Colombian Dancers

a celebration of the Americas,

particularly of our southern neighbors

yet also they who are our neighbors down the street,

CFS student with her grandmother from Mexico

she found a way to enlarge herself and our curriculum

in a way new to CFS, yet also true to the heart of who we were,

and true to who we need to become

to celebrate the ever-enlarging community of who we want to be.

by Henry H. Walker

October 5, ‘18