Où allons-nous ?

Full circle

Long live verb conjugations! We rely on them to navigate living in time. Our default tense seems to be the subjunctive. It feels like we live each fleeting, waking moment, where a flickering remembrance of things past meets an imagined future of what ifs? Gauguin's great painting D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? gets straight to the point. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Our revels now are ending

As this affectionate, at times very nearly-reliable, historical narrative edges towards closure, we can be confident that the school’s Mission, Values, and Commitment to Equity are alive and well. We have been unassailable in educating for a better world and thinking internationally.

Pick your mental map to get your head around the autopoetic, shifting territory that was… is now… and will go on to be... the most astonishing French American + International.

The aircraft carrier; the village; the storied San Francisco nonprofit; the pioneer mover and shaker and legitimizer of bilingual education; the thought leader in the international schools arena; the cross-cultural cognition incubator; the oasis of critical thinking where facts and evidence really matter; the seeker of unforeseen truth; the all-too-human, capable and fallible social experiment; the linguistically bound and bounded, Better Together, proudly engaged culture; the shifting cast of colorful characters, the urgent and relevant antidote to tumultuous times; and those doggedly persistent, unassailable, origin story core values–that never stopped moving to stay the same.

In the end–and this really is the end–it has always been about the kids. It's about hope and positive renewal and the simple, sweet, empowering pleasure of learning and being together; and it doesn't really get better than that. Returning full circle to those erstwhile visionary founders–fierce francophiles all–let’s just say, this is where the story stops this ti…