Carolina Friends School, and the greatness within

to release the greatness within

greatness is within each of us

and can sometimes find its way out,

I sit with two colleagues and reminisce

about our history within our school,

one still lives a greatness

in the surety and passion of his belief in the learner,

the students who can make their way forward

with teachers as helper, as companion, as fellow travelers,

he believed in me as a teacher,

and that belief, and his example,

 helped me find the greatness within me,

no one in my near half-century of teaching at CFS 

has clerked a meeting so well as him,

to Quakers, a clerk is a leader from behind,

who allows and encourages all voices to contribute, 

who allows and encourages all hearts and heads to be open

to the revelation of truth from within,

to the revelation of truth from another’s take on it all,

who can find and assert the potential consensus within the group,

who can help us find it, too,

my other colleague

lives part of the truth of his own greatness through his saxophones,

through the music he lives and encourages

as a way to speak to a truth deeper, older than words,

he tells a story of transformation,

of two high schoolers who eldered him

to let the students in his class

share in the revelation of truth,

and he changed in his teaching 

and got further toward the greatness within,

I have been gifted throughout my decades of being an educator here

to find greatness around me in my colleagues, in my students,

and, when I can let it be, in myself,

what is most radical about our school

is that we trust and believe and love,

what is most heartening about CFS, our school,

is that person after person, with help,

finds and releases the greatness within.

by Henry H. Walker

November 30, ‘18