August 2026

I can still see the worksheet beneath the humming fluorescent lights of my Seventh Grade classroom. Ninety-four prepositions filled a rectangular box in unforgiving rows: aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, among... I sat folded into one of those single-unit desk-chair combinations, my gangly body conforming to furniture designed for someone else. Beneath the seat, a wire basket collected the books and papers I routinely forgot there. Then my teacher explained that a week later the worksheet would disappear. In its place we would receive an empty box and, like every class before us, fill it from memory. I stared at those ninety-four words with the special certainty of a Seventh Grader who knows an adult has devised a completely ridiculous use of his time. Beneath that certainty was something less defiant: I was afraid I could not do it.

I crammed the worksheet onto the top shelf of my locker, where it spent the week becoming crumpled, intermittently buried, and somehow never quite gone. I made a halfhearted attempt to foment a minor rebellion among my friends, but they were more interested in what time our bus left for the basketball game than in gathering pitchforks over prepositions. By test day, defiance had become dull panic. I knew that I didn’t know them. Worse, my parents didn’t know that I didn’t know them, and they didn’t yet know what they didn’t know. Soon, everyone would know. It was a small Seventh Grade introduction to personal responsibility: eventually, what you know, what you avoid, and what you leave undone catches up with you. The blank box landed on my desk. I moved quickly through the A’s, slowed considerably, and barely made it past beyond.

Today, the assignment still strikes me as pedagogically questionable. I teach Eighth Grade English at St. Edmund’s Academy, and no student in my classroom will be asked to reproduce ninety-four prepositions from memory. Still, as another school year begins and our community gathers again, I find myself thinking about those words. Not because anyone needs to memorize them, but because they have something to teach us about how we will live together. The lesson I learned has never quite left me. The words still rattle around in my mind, surfacing while I teach, write, or listen to a sentence take shape. My Seventh Grade teacher never convinced me that memorizing the entire box was worthwhile, but she left me with something more durable: an awareness that these small words matter.

Prepositions do more than describe the world. Almost without our noticing, they help create it. A person can stand beside us, against us, among us, with us, inside or outside. Change the preposition and the relationship changes with it. These tiny words locate us in space and shape how we understand our place relative to one another. I wonder whether listening works the same way. We listen to a child’s words and for what has not yet found language. We listen with families, across differences, beneath behavior, and after difficult moments. These small relational words change the posture of listening and ask us to consider where we place ourselves in one another’s lives.

At St. Edmund’s Academy, those relationships begin each morning. Children arrive by way of Darlington and Forbes, greeted by Mr. Don or Mr. Vitaliy as the early sun spills down both streets and the day still feels unwritten. I stand near the buses and carline welcoming children who, only minutes earlier, were being fed, packed, reminded, hurried, hugged, and sent into the world by grown-ups who love them beyond measure. Our work must be worthy of the trust that love places in us.

This year, 345 students will gather here. Our most recent complete demographic snapshot, from last school year, showed families living across 42 ZIP codes, connected to 21 countries, and representing nine faith traditions; 38 percent of our students were students of color, and one in four was multilingual.

We anticipate this year’s portrait will look much the same. Earlier this month, we asked every family to help us see that portrait clearly again through our annual demographic survey. Even the numbers require listening. They help us notice more fully who is gathered among us and appreciate the experiences, traditions, and perspectives that give this community its depth and character. Many roads, literally and figuratively, lead here. Six Core Values unite us, but those values never hang flat on a wall. They gain depth and meaning through the varied lives shaped by them and the relationships formed among us.

Listening across difference begins with a simple conviction: another life can teach us. In Early Childhood, Understanding means classroom supplies include crayons reflecting the varied skin tones of our students and families, and children are invited to see beauty across colors and cultures. Four-year-olds notice what is right in front of them: skin and hair, names and lunches, languages and celebrations. Before easy assumptions have much room to settle, they have the chance simply to see one another with curiosity. Respect asks something more: listen to one another, learn about one another, and discover that what you bring into the room can be cherished without diminishing what someone beside you brings.

Over time, children begin to practice the balance named in our Vision: approaching real-world problems with both humility and conviction. Humility means recognizing that where I stand shapes what I see, and that even a sincerely held perspective is not the whole landscape. Conviction means I need not surrender what I hold sacred or essential simply because someone beside me sees differently. The work is to remain rooted without becoming rigid, open to another person without insisting they stand where I stand. In learning about others, children discover both a wider world and a clearer understanding of themselves within it. Difference enters the room. Listening turns difference into relationship. Relationship turns diversity into education.

Within that wider community, belonging becomes personal, one child at a time. To be known is to be seen in the fullness of who you are. It is a teacher remembering who can name every dinosaur in the book, who returns from recess with pockets full of rocks and acorns, who knows the starting lineup of a favorite team, or who fills margins with dragons, dresses, or machines. It is knowing, too, who needs a little time at the edge of a group before joining, whose humor arrives quietly, and who needs encouragement to begin but little help once curiosity takes over.

These details may seem small, but over time they tell a child something powerful: you are known here as yourself. We notice what delights you, what challenges you, and how you are growing. Nearly nine in ten alumni told us they remembered being known at St. Edmund’s as individuals, including their interests and aptitudes. I am drawn to that number because it measures something numbers rarely capture: someone paying close enough attention to say, I see you, and what is taking shape in you matters.

Listening closely also means resisting the shortcuts of labels. Children are not categories. Race, religion, language, a learning profile, a strength, a struggle, even a difficult moment may tell us something important, but never everything. Childhood itself cautions against such certainty. Growing up is not an event; it is an unfolding. The quiet child finds a voice. A setback reveals resilience. An unexpected interest becomes a passion. Our responsibility is to keep paying attention and resist mistaking who children are today for the limits of who they may become. To belong is to be known in your particularity without being confined by it.

And belonging asks children to extend that same recognition to one another. Every other child in the room is someone’s most cherished person in the world, too. My dignity matters. So does yours.

That kind of belonging does not make life together frictionless. In Preschool, this work can begin with something as consequential as the only Chase Paw Patrol toy in the room. Two children wanted the same toy, and I had it first quickly became you took what I was playing with. Tears followed. For a few minutes, they stood firmly against one another. Their teacher asked questions, helped each child hear the other’s claim, and invited them to imagine another way of standing in relationship: me, you, me, you. Taking turns. Sharing with rather than struggling against.

As Head of School, part of me occasionally wonders why we do not simply buy a dozen Chase toys and eliminate the problem altogether. But finite Chases have something to teach us. Children will test limits and our patience; today’s best friend will occasionally become tomorrow morning’s sworn enemy. Growing up requires discovering that the person frustrating you has not lost their dignity simply because, for the moment, they stand in your way. Sometimes the smallest shift in preposition opens the largest opportunity for growth.

The same listening that helps children find their way through conflict also helps us recognize when they are ready to take on something more. High standards can be an expression of care. They say to a child, I see enough in you to ask more of you. But the purpose is not to hurry children toward some imagined finish line. Childhood has its own pace and dignity. At St. Edmund’s Academy, students can undertake serious scholarship, speak before a community, wrestle with difficult ideas, and still race outside for recess or stop for snack at an age when doing either may suddenly feel decidedly uncool. We hold the long view: creating the conditions for children to become increasingly capable without asking them to become adults before their time.

In an alumni study conducted by Connor Associates, 84 percent of graduates said St. Edmund’s had better prepared them for their first year of high school than peers from other schools. I value that result not because childhood is a competition, but because readiness is what can happen when children are known closely, challenged thoughtfully, and given time to grow. Belonging says your place here is secure. Excellence says your potential is worth the effort.

That same long view shapes how we listen with families, particularly when school and home do not see a situation in quite the same way. Families know dimensions of a child that teachers cannot see; teachers watch that same child learn, collaborate, compete, recover, and contribute in ways families cannot always observe from home. Neither perspective is complete by itself. Wisdom often emerges not by deciding which view wins, but by listening long enough for both to sharpen our understanding.

Sometimes we must also listen after: after a mistake, a misunderstanding, a difficult decision, or a moment when our intent and another person’s experience do not align. Listening after is not about dwelling in shame. It is an invitation to let experience enlarge the mind. Like an archer whose first arrow misses the mark, we pause, widen our gaze, and adjust our stance. We circle back, ask what we missed, repair what needs repairing, and try again. The point is not to linger at the miss, but to become wiser because of it.

That same habit of attention will help us understand the year ahead. Some evidence will arrive in numbers: survey responses, academic measures, participation, patterns we can see only when individual experiences are considered together. We should count what can be counted. Numbers can reveal something important that a single moment cannot. They are one more way of listening.

But other evidence arrives quietly and resists measurement altogether: the teacher who notices an unusual silence; the classmate who slides over to make room; the family and teacher who find their way back to one another after a hard conversation; the child who discovers, in the middle of something difficult, I can do this, and I do not have to do it alone.

Seventh Grade me never conquered that box of prepositions. I barely made it past beyond. Yet those small words have carried me farther than the test ever did. They place us in relation: beside, among, against, with. Listening is how we decide what those relationships will become. Sometimes a shift no larger than a word can change our posture toward another person: against becomes with; outside becomes among. Perhaps that is part of the work before us this year: to move close enough to notice, remain open enough to reconsider, and stay present enough to keep listening when understanding does not come easily.

Soon, children will again arrive by way of Darlington and Forbes, each carrying a story still unfolding and each loved beyond measure. Our shared responsibility is to know them without confining them, to value the lives unfolding beside them, to challenge them because we believe in what they are becoming, and to protect the time, wonder, and dignity childhood deserves.

To those returning to St. Edmund’s Academy, welcome back. To those joining us for the first time, we are glad you are among us.

I look forward to listening with you.