From Jeff’s Desk

How was your week? These four day weeks in my experience can be some of the more challenging – payback for a day off? But what a nice week we’ve had, including a gorgeous Thursday and Friday, which included a terrific Lower School ‘Small School Meeting’ and the matinee premier of our 7th grade drama production of Treasure Island. All of this as we continue to hear dire news about the state of mental health in America, particularly among children. And while Burgundy generally is a refuge from so many problems of the world, we are not immune. So thanks for taking time to read a longer-than-usual reflection, when you can! 

At the Small School Meeting this Thursday, First Graders, led by one of their peers who was inspired during his class’s civil rights unit, marched into the amphitheater with handmade Black Lives Matter and racial justice-themed posters and then took the stage for a Readers’ Theater presentation on Dr. King’s teachings. The Goats and Sheep children stood before the entire Lower School and spoke in genuine developmental, age-appropriate language about the importance of Dr. King’s – and Burgundy’s – work to ensure that we all are respected, safe and made to feel at home, regardless of the color of our skin, or any other differences. 

The First Graders reminded us that children not only are capable of feeling and understanding complex issues such as fairness, justice, and equity but, also, that they have agency and the ability to assert their voices to influence change. This is the heart of what progressive and all education should be about: preparing children for citizenship and readiness to advocate for their own and others’ rights and wellbeing, as well as for the good of their communities.

We should feel good that some of our youngest students are capable of identifying with a struggle, regardless of their own race or personal or family experiences, and regardless of the politics of a particular movement, which sometimes can distract from a core truth, in this case, that Black lives (and all lives) do matter and must matter. Students are moved by learning at home and at school that some groups in America and across the world still struggle for equal rights and protection under the law. And how good and important that we can allow children to know they have agency even as children to try to make a difference.

The reality today too often is that children can feel hopeless and powerless to effect change – whether with respect to acts of racialized, gender/identity-based, or cultural hatred, gun violence, bad policing, the pandemic, wars of aggression, or the many forms of injustice that continue to exist, even in our own great nation, including access to healthy food and drinking water. 

Even for adults it can all be too much; there’s so much to worry about these days that it’s hard not to be traumatized. Ongoing pandemic illness and socio-politicial trauma exist in a moment in time but also carry a persisting impact: they bring on lasting physical and mental health concerns that we’re only beginning to uncover and understand. For our youngest children they have grown up thus far mostly amidst turmoil! Some of the social and emotional concerns we see and read about manifest where children have not had the more typical school and life experiences they would have had, had we not been in pandemic. Rather than a typical, joyful first few years of life and school, children have encountered trauma. Even where the trauma is mostly what some would call indirect trauma (as in via adults, communities and news cycles focused on scary and ugly topics) it all has a powerful and cumulative impact on children. And, as some of you are experiencing, that includes our own Burgundy kids.

In fact, children’s mental health was reported to be generally in decline even before the pandemic (see APA article on state of mental health). School communities and resources are identified as key to helping children thrive during these challenging times. We know that at Burgundy we have unusual advantages in this regard, with our small school and classroom communities, with our flexibility and intentionality to know and care for our children as individuals, and indeed our ability, willingness, and intention to meet children where they are developmentally and to listen to and connect with their curiosities, fears, and inspirations.

For children, like adults, much of our individual and collective wellness, thriving, and healing in this time depends upon community, specifically, the grace and support of our immediate communities. Just as our neighbors have become closer and sometimes even beloved friends and confidentes, so too must our school community be a source of sustenance and support as we navigate the socalled ‘aftermath’ of COVID and next phases of the social and political turmoil that continue to roil our communities and the world. This is why we need to get back to meeting and talking with one another more frequently and why we intend to be picking up with the invitations!

Thursday evening I sat with several Lower School parents and our first visiting Lower School Head candidate. In introducing themselves, one after another, our parents cited the importance of Burgundy’s learning community welcoming and knowing their children and bringing out their best. At times we marvel at what our kids ask or talk about or how they’re able to speak or perform before a group (which for most people is scary!). We see this emerging competence and confidence happen in real time during the middle school performing arts class productions, where we observe children performing and solving the challenges of live performances with such poise… It’s a foreshadowing of the impressive, competent, self-assured, collaborative ‘final product’ that we celebrate at Burgundy graduation…