Dear Friends - The first time I visited Randolph School I was totally unprepared for my first sight of the amphitheater. I nearly let out a whoop of joy as I realized what I was looking at. The beautiful concentric stonework was dusted with the orange and yellow leaves of fall, and it felt as if I had entered a sacred space, hewn from the earth and utterly timeless. It is a space in which one could easily imagine druids gathering, centaurs playing, and Greek philosophers circ

Dear Friends- The end of the school year seems to be coming quickly. Our school pictures have been taken, the Spring Show is in its final stages of preparation, and a handful of Downstairs students with Renee just wandered into my office carrying special treasure: Rocks of different shape, size, lustre and and color to be added to the collection for the Stepping Stones ceremony on the last day of school. The Upstairs and Downstairs had their Rocket Launch days last week, a wo

Dear Friends- The Downstairs released 27 butterflies on Thursday, and cheered each one as they took wing in the open air for the first time. The kids had watched them change from caterpillar to chrysalis to adult butterfly over the prior weeks, and they were proud that so many had made it through this process. We named each one in spanish as it flew away from the netting of the butterfly farm: “Good luck Uno! Bye-bye Dos! Yay Tres! Bon Voyage Quatro!” Some of the butterflies

Dear Friends- I walked out to the Downstairs playground this afternoon, and there were all of our pre-K students eating lunch with Anne and Evan. They had been outside since 9:30 that morning, and were taking a well-earned break for some food and drink before… staying outside some more! The children and their teachers were all sitting on the stone patio that they had built together last fall. Beyond them was the massive series of spiral stone mazes the students had recently c

Dear Friends- As I prepare to write the Friday Note every week, I often go through a period of “Googling” in which I putter around the internet looking for interesting and informative articles and papers that support the main idea of what I am hoping to write about. I learn so much from this time of searching out information. What a joy it is to be able to find out answers to nearly any question, and to be able to follow the twists and turns of one’s own line of curious inqui