What an incredible underdog run by our hometown champion Nationals, following our Mystics and Caps and their championships!

Cities need these moments. People need them! Even if we’re not sports people, sports offer metaphors for collaboration, selfless teamwork, and playing our roles in order to accomplish something bigger than anything we could imagine individually.

And what fun it is when a city wins a championship! I’m not talking about just the come-from-behind wins; I’m talking about the way a city or metropolitan area for one poignant moment unites and feels like a community! Random people connecting, smiling, high-fiving, reliving and cherishing the moment. That’s what I savor. Polarized politics and so many degrees of separation melting into a collective moment of joy. Shared humanity amidst otherwise disparate and disconnected journeys. Shared humanity is always intoxicating.

At Burgundy, educational journeys are always shared and connected: children and teachers and staff and parents, too, working and growing together comprise the magic of Burgundy. Our children’s Burgundy journeys are not a competition with winners and losers. Instead, each is an exciting cumulative sequence of connections-making and discovery. Each student matters because each has leading roles in her own education; sometimes the star, sometimes the teammate, they are invited to play their parts and therein allowed to be and become their authentic selves because they are part of the learning, not a recipient. Each has strengths to be leveraged. The strong classroom community taps those individual strengths and comprises a team of its own. Within that team everything is possible. Each child can make a big contribution, and each grows and learns.

The plays and performances and expositions we put on at Burgundy, along with the sports contests we play, are culminations but also rehearsals for real life and next phases of schooling. We model what a strong community looks and feels like…And what it can foment: a better world, a world in which—equipped with self-respect, dignity, respect for others and the natural world, and whatever other gifts they can bring to the table—each Burgundy graduate is ready to contribute to the betterment of their next school communities and ultimately a larger community.