Connections

Last year the theme for our faculty meetings at the beginning of the year was “creativity.” The year before we focused on “grit.” This year I searched for something more overarching and inclusive of all that we do here at Sage. Something that would help sum up clearly and concisely what our work is all about, something that would bring us all together and help us move towards a shared vision of our work.

As someone who was raised by teachers and has been engaged in some form of educational enterprise my entire life, you might think that I had a firm grasp on what education is, what it means, and how to articulate it clearly, and so an overarching theme would come easily. If only it were so simple. Education— its philosophies, practice, and results—are wide ranging, complex, and continuous. It is truly difficult to distill the meaning of education into a clear and concise expression. Yet as a teacher and a school leader, it is my responsibility to try. There are countless books, seminars, classes, undergraduate programs, and graduate programs all attempting to define what education is, should, or could be. Many have been helpful in moving me towards a deeper understanding of what it means to teach and to learn, and yet, imagining a theme that sums it all up in a clear way remained elusive.

I then realized, that, as I often do, I was over thinking. What this year (really every year) should be about is bringing us all together and making us closer as a community. Whether we all agree on some grand unified theory of education or not, what is most important is that we are working together and connecting with each other. What is most crucial is that teachers, staff, students, and parents are all focused on those things that bring us together. It then became clear to me that our theme for the year would be Connections.

Education, particularly here at Sage, is all about making connections. It is connecting our passions to our everyday work. It is connecting the past to the present and then to the future. It is connecting quantitative reasoning and skill with qualitative problems that need solving. It is connecting our knowledge to our values, our rigor to our humanity. It is connecting with ideas and people outside of our experience and thereby gaining the ability to see the world differently. It is, at its very heart, connecting with our classmates and colleagues, with our communities, and with the wider world.

In reading this summer around this theme I came upon an article by a University of Wisconsin Professor named William Cronon. The article does, in fact, attempt to encapsulate what education should be about. In the end, Cronon agrees that making connections is perhaps the most important aspect of any meaningful education. As Cronon writes, “More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways. . . .A liberal education is about gaining the power and the wisdom, the generosity and the freedom to connect.”

Let us all connect. Connecting who we are and what we feel and think on the inside to our work everyday. Let us bring together our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our souls so that we can help our students do the same. . Bringing ideas and people together is what school is all about.

I am looking forward to a great school year, and I am looking forward to building deeper connections with every member of the Sage community.