individuality within community

 

to work as a team

1st, a teacher receives classroom, students, and subject area,

and then crafts approach and activity

to meet the students where they are,

charged with helping empower them 

to venture as far as they can go,

taking who they are

toward mastery of the skills they need

to make sense of the world around them,

to learn how the world can be changed,

and how each can work to effect change 

that will benefit themselves and the world,

2nd, each teacher can be empowered to realize

that a school is a village,

that others also share the vision, and the effort,

the top of the mountain is much the same,

but the way up to the top has many paths,

the top might be a validation of the value of who one is,

and that validation can come from self

as reader, as artist, as writer, as dancer,

within a project, within a discussion,

within service to another,

within service to the environment,

within countless ways,

3rd, a school is challenged to embrace

how another's work with students and their disparate callings

actually makes one's personal efforts

stronger, more effective, more long-term,

Carolina Friends School has generated and evolved committees

so that staff can center efforts on the collective,

staff and student alike can progress so much further

because others also see the mountain

and work had to find their ways up it,

at a recent meeting of clerks of CFS committees,

a point was raised that the value of committees,

and attending the meetings,

was not readily apparent to many staff,

so folks revert to what they can control,

what happens in their own classrooms,

and easily can miss the larger picture,

our challenge as a whole staff is to understand and act 

upon how much we are a village,

and that others' efforts actually enhance our own efforts,

we are not alone in finding the way forward, and up!

the team is how the collective

somehow both enhances the individual

and also allows community to be, and thrive,

and validate us all.

by Henry H. Walker

March  5, ‘25