Happy New Year. We are back at school, having crossed the threshold between the excitement of end-of-year celebration and the promise of a new year, if not a decade. When we see the results of our work with our students, we feel renewed commitment to that work. Call it our essential resolution. The results we strive for are tagged to deep-seated learning that is motivated by curiosity and the satisfaction of doing a little better with it every day. This type of learning—so little understood and prized by the population at large—is on display to us every day. It is rewarding to us in and of itself, and it is also one of our sustaining core values, especially during days that can feel heavy with uncertainty, disagreement, and anxiety.
After all, the one thing that can be ever-lasting in a lifetime is learning and striving to know more. So as we go about our days during this short inaugural week of 2020, we are thinking about how the cumulative details of our days at Queens Paideia amount to enriched thinking, work habits, social emotional connection, meaning…. and, we hope, lives.