Week of June 2: The Final Blog for This Year

Our overnight camp-out was mercifully dry, warm, and injury-free. This was a milestone — we put on not a single band-aid, although we did offer sympathy for a collection of scrapes and abrasions, including the one on Kersten’s shin.

All of our efforts to create a movable feast that was dependent on the weather meant that the first two days we had chosen were the best, of course. We extend great thanks to all of the parents who offered to help right on through Friday. When it’s a blended fifth-sixth (as is typical), it’s easier to get some help from parents whose children are not graduating. So we send out especially appreciative thanks to those who were also going to be taking time to buy or borrow dress-up clothing, host their out of town relatives, and more.

Our kids probably don’t know it, but this is likely to be the last co-ed (is there a more modern term?) overnight event they will enjoy until they are far beyond parental oversight. (Do we all wonder at the fact that oversight can mean not only what you supervise but also what you miss seeing?) So it’s one more element in our institutional goal of preserving childhood.

campfire

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They had  a lot of fun. Despite the hostile scouting report that Tony returned after his visit to the boat rental on Friday, the two young guys in charge on Monday were happy to send our kids out in pedal boats and kayaks without two adults on board, gave us a price break, and didn’t think a half-hour rental was really limited to 30 minutes. Our thanks go out to the parents who also took out kayaks and prevented the kids from doing things that were totally stupid.  We all try to prevent that, and we often succeed.

 lakeside

pedalboat

kayak

The weather deities smiled on us as promised. Kids swam in our cold pool, explored the creek and forest, and mostly avoided the bumper crop of poison ivy. (We did do a recognition lesson when we were at the lake.) The night offered wonderful stars and voracious mosquitoes. It was a bit too warm to bury ourselves in our sleeping bags, so there were a lot of bitten faces in the morning. Still, let’s keep in mind that it DID NOT RAIN. Ever.

rocks

If you ever need a lot of ears of corn shucked fast, get some sixth graders to do it. Ours cleared their requested corn assignment in record time!

We took a trip to the Roebling Company’s suspension  bridge in Riegelsville on Tuesday morning. This is a lovely, almost-scale-model of a suspension bridge. The cables, anchorages, and deck were all of a size we could understand. Although the bridge keeper seemed a little daunted by the need to lecture to 18 kids, he warmed to the topic and conveyed not only information about the history of the bridge and the water-level monitoring for which he is responsible  but also about his connection with the local people on  both sides of the river and his commitment to staying with his job, even when it goes beyond a 24-hour day.

bridge

bridgeguy bridgewalk

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 Thank you to Mark for the gorgeous photos!

We’ll close out this blog for the week and the year with some thoughts about our graduates’ speeches. As we have said many times, we try hard to ensure that the speeches are truly their own. We do work a bit with grammar, sequence, perhaps elaboration, but the message is the one that each student wants to share. This year was like most others. That is, although there were a lot of different ways of expressing their ideas, a theme that came up again and again was the importance of being part of a community. Some children talked about their shyness and how they overcame it, embracing the value of learning how to connect with others even when it was difficult to do. Some talked about inclusion, noting the ways they were welcomed and later helped to welcome others into their group.  A second theme was that of knowing and being comfortable with themselves. One student’s choice of quote linked those two things, saying that we need to like ourselves in order to get along with others.

Those are some very big ideas. There were other heartfelt topics: their love for our environment, for example.  But friendship and belonging and inclusion and self-acceptance came up again and again. I like to believe that we are sending out young people year after year whose preparation for middle school is not only academic competency and the having of strong personal interests but also having this view of themselves and others. We all know adults who don’t know how to begin and sustain satisfying relationships, as well as some who seem disappointed in who they are. It appears unlikely that our children will grow up to be among them.