A MESSAGE FROM
Crissy Cáceres HEAD OF SCHOOL
These past few months have been ones that no educator could have scripted. The level of challenge that has befallen educational spaces has been unfathomable to consider. And yet, amidst all of this challenge, I have witnessed our community time and time again rise up and persevere. From the first moment of having to close our doors on March 9th and reinvent our classroom experiences for children, creating new ways to build meaningful social emotional connections with them, their families, and one another, to a summer of creative envisioning, redesigning of spaces, and non stop hard work on the part of our colleagues, we reopened our doors on September 14th to children eager to feel the warmth and familiarity of care and love and joy that is real within our community. Over the past few weeks, I have witnessed endless exchanges between adults and students which emphasize the many ways in which we prioritize children’s experiences. From a song taught by our teachers with purposeful lyrics to help our young preschoolers remember to hold the railing and be safe as they walk down the stairs, to a teacher’s conversation with students asking them to consider their friends’ feelings as time is shared on the rooftop playground, to a child excitedly telling her teacher over zoom a story about the graphic novel she wants to write, our students are back learning and thriving, both in person and virtually. From our Family Center to our High School, a blank canvas is being filled each day while leaving room for the ways in which the picture painted can and should change and evolve over time. I am lucky. I witness each day the behind the scenes of how this happens. I watch our various teams, from facilities, to dining, security, nursing, athletics, and more, continue to think carefully and critically about the ways that they can support the vision of what we seek for all children, young and older, within BFS. I extend heartfelt gratitude to all colleagues for their dedication. Recognizing that the newness of all we’ve been tasked to consider has brought with it sincere exhaustion and even points of fear and doubt within all of us, my thankfulness for what we’ve made possible runs deep.
To our families, we thank you. We thank you for your patience now and in the months ahead as we continue to work creatively and thoughtfully to continue to make real a balanced and healthy experience for your children. We know that you too have navigated your own share of complex experiences. We are here to support you. To our alumni, we recognize that we need to partner with you further in our quest to live as one full and mighty community. You are living in many corners of our world, and we know from following your stories, that many of you are making an incredibly positive social impact on many with your life’s footprints. Your focus on the realization of an inclusive and just world is constant. For that, we thank you, and we are here for you. In the spirit of our Quaker school and the principles that inform our moral compass, this is a time of centeredness, which calls us to extend peace to one another as we steward our community forward. Our reopening has proven that we can lean on one another in times of challenge. It has proven that we are beautifully imperfect in this landscape of education and humanity, and yet, at Brooklyn Friends School, it is when owning our imperfections and creating because of and in spite of them, that our canvas is most complete. In friendship,
Fall 2020 Brooklyn Friends School Journal 3
