Letter from Head of School Ken Aldridge

As I told the graduating Class of 2021 several months

ago, when we arrived on campus on September 7, 2020, it was not easy to be optimistic about how long we would be able to offer in-person instruction, and it was hard to imagine what this year would hold. We had no idea the feelings of joy and triumph we would have as we gathered to celebrate the class at their commencement in early June 2021.

When I look back at the year we just had, two words stand out: beyond expectation. Beyond expectation that our program, reimagined and rethought for a pandemic by our incredible faculty and staff, would not only succeed, but thrive.

We reimagined outdoor spaces as classrooms. Lower school students learned while spread out on tree trunks at the natural classroom, middle school students sat in a circle on the Jones House lawn while brainstorming parts of a story, and upper school students sat along the front walk working on charcoal landscapes. As fall turned into winter, our joyous lower school students carried their snow gear to school each day, hopeful that the lower school hills would provide one more day of sledding fun. As spring approached and temperatures rose, we began to plan for an in-person spring musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, live from the 50 yard-line of Tattersall Field.

We reimagined our routines. We held auditions for drama performances and college visits virtually, we had sports competitions without fans. We held on to and felt great pride in those moments that felt “normal” - Spirit Week, snow days, state tournament games, the sound of musical instruments and singing voices filling the halls.

We reimagined our partnership with parents. No longer able to meet face-to-face, we held parent-teacher conferences over Zoom, hosted a virtual parenting with resilience series with Dr. Lani Nelson-Zlupko, and welcomed a few hundred parents and friends to our first-ever virtual Quaker Quiz Night.

We focused on the Quaker testimony of equality. We talked about standing up for others, working together, being the light. We reimagined, with the help of a year-long internal climate assessment, the approach to our diversity, equity, and inclusion work. The results of this assessment will be utilized to integrate new and important initiatives into our curriculum and school community, connecting it directly to our values and mission.

We reimagined our use of technology. We held virtual Meetings for Worship with alumni from across the globe (literally!). Students virtually visited national parks and museums in Europe, competed in an Ethics Bowl, a Quaker Youth Leadership Conference, the National Mock Trial Competition, and the American Mathematics Competition. The technology of 2021 opened many doors for our students, faculty, and alumni, and we will continue to look for ways to integrate virtual aspects into our community even as the world begins to open back up.

The longer we were in school in person, the more these reimagined expectations became a way of life. And then, beyond expectation, the finish line was in sight. The Class of 2021 signed its Senior Scroll, fifth graders visited middle school, and we began to think beyond the 2020-2021 school year. We all let out the collective breath we had been holding since September, rejoicing in what we had just accomplished. We had safely, strategically, and successfully educated nearly 700 students in the midst of a pandemic. I can’t thank our faculty, staff, parents, and students enough, for we could not have accomplished any of this if we were not all in it together.

The Class of 2021 graduation marked a milestone for my family. The empty nest is no longer an obscure thought, but a quickly-approaching reality as our daughter, Mariah, was the last Aldridge to graduate from WFS. It was my honor to celebrate with her and her classmates. As I told the class at Final Assembly, I believe that when they look back 20, 50, 70 years from now, I do not think it will be the masks or the vaccines or the unprecedented times they will remember. I believe it will be their time spent together, learning how to change the world.

In friendship,