Dear Future School

It’s that time of year when our oldest students start seriously thinking about the schools they’ll go to next. These transitions are always bittersweet. It’s so hard to go, and at the same time, everyone is eager to know what’s in store. We always wonder what the children will take with them into the world. And we wonder what the world will offer for them to explore.

This week, Lucius wrote a letter to his future school. I thought you might like to read it:

Dear Future School,

I am coming from a school named Opal.  I want you to let me continue the work I started in elementary school. 

I hope that you push my brain to not just spell the word “people” but to think about what “people” really means.  I want to think about politics and create projects around kids’ rights.  I want you to be a supportive place for me to truly think and to grow my brain in a way that thinks about all the stories, all the perspectives, all the truths and all the identities to make a conclusion.  I think the way classes are organized, designed and taught should help me to meet my goal of working on kids’ rights and to be engaged in political conversations and actions.  I want you to be a place where I am not just asked to do spelling and writing but invited to grow my brain in ways that will help me as an activist. 

At a lot of schools it seems like they do a lot of memorizing of information, like memorizing the states.  I hope for teachers that might instead ask what stories do we need to learn from these states to better understand them so that we will remember them instead of just memorizing them. 

I think that I will make room for and support others’ perspectives and identities to grow to their full potential.  Learning their perspective helps me grow my own.  I am a really curious person that is coming to you. My curiosity can be put to work not just thinking more about what I’m curious about but how that could help the world.    

Sincerely,

Lucius

More than anything, I wish I could promise him these things.