Head of School's Back to School Welcome: Explore. Create. Belong.

At Acera, we love WHY questions. So, I found myself asking: Why do we host Back to School Night? Why does it matter that we begin our school year together, as a parent community? And I think the answer is connection. Connection to our children’s world: their teachers, their classrooms, the spaces where they spend their days. But also connection to one another, as a community that is about to spend another year learning, growing, laughing, and sometimes navigating hard things together. 

This is our seventeenth year as a school. And this year, we open the doors of a space seventeen years in the making: our new Arts & Sciences building. I want to pause on that for a moment, because how that building came to be matters. It was built and fully outfitted without the school taking on a dollar of debt. That happened because of the generosity, commitment, and stewardship of the people in this room and the people who came before you. So before we go any further, thank you. 

Letters

This summer, I invited our students to write to me. Just write. Tell me anything. Tell me what you were reading. Tell me what you were wondering about. Tell me what you were doing this summer. And they did. Dozens of letters arrived over the summer. In fact, one arrived in the mail just last week. 

And I wrote the students back, and as I did I tucked a few stickers into each envelope, too. The design was inspired by Madeleine, an Acera alum, who painted the beautiful mural on our wall by the Four Square courts. 

And the stickers had three words on them: Explore. Create. Belong. Those three words aren't decoration. They are, in many ways, the shape of what we hope for every person in this community: your children, our teachers, and honestly, all of us. 

So I want to spend a few minutes to consider about what those words might look like this year. 

Explore 

Exploration starts on day one. It happens throughout our school day, and it happens through choice. From student voice in Creativity and US Electives you can watch that choice ripple forward. It shapes interests. It shapes questions. It may shape the inquiries students eventually pursue through IMPp. 

This year, when students pitched their IMPp proposals, we asked them to defend the why. Why does it matter to study the physics behind car racing and the impact of Formula 1 regulations on the sport? How does chemistry help you make a really good chocolate chip cookie? These are students who have been given room to wonder, and who have learned that their wondering is worth taking seriously. 

But exploration isn't just about finding new things. It is also about being willing to question what we think we already know. As a staff, we are asking ourselves, and our students, a harder question this year: How do we know what we know? 

John Dewey wrote about reflection as the active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief. That is the kind of habit of mind we want to cultivate everywhere at Acera: in the classroom, in conversations with friends, and yes, around the dinner table at night.

Reflection at Acera is an act of inquiry. And exploration isn't just for students. We want you to have opportunities to explore Acera, too. 

This year we'll have Friday coffees that offer different windows into the work happening here. We’ll have AISNE Parent Series, which began this past Tuesday with Sarah Ward, and later this year we'll welcome families back for an Acera evening for adults, our Reed Hollett Acera at Night, where parents get the opportunity to be the students in the classes and learn together.

This is because this community belongs to all of us. 

Create 

Our students don’t just have ideas. They do something with them. They are building, making, designing, experimenting, and increasingly, they are creating leadership opportunities. 

This year, we reimagined our Guilds: student-led groups organized by interest, and chosen by students themselves. An extraordinary number of students stepped forward to lead. 

We have Student Ambassadors. Pizza Team. Creativity TAs. Stewards in the Woodshop, Makerspace, Tech Hub, and other spaces. 

But some of the most important leadership at Acera is quieter. It happens every day in our multiage classrooms, when an older student looks out for a younger one. When a student notices that someone needs help. When a child learns that having more knowledge or more experience carries with it a responsibility to the people around you. That, too, is leadership. 

Belong 

And then there is belonging. Belonging is friendship. It is being known. It is having people who notice when you are missing. It is showing up for one another on the good days and the hard ones. This year, we're going to gather as a whole school once a month with more intention: to welcome the year, to celebrate what students are building, to create and work and even read together. 

I often say one of my hopes for all Acera students is to support them in becoming their most authentic self. But what does that mean to present authentically and hold a sense of belonging within a community? Brené Brown talks about belonging as different from fitting in a community, where you may conform to be accepted. To belong you show up as unabashedly yourself and you are a vital part of the fabric of the community–and that is the power of belonging.

Because we are here for all of it. Not just the wow moments. Not just the joyful opportunities for academic stretch. Not just the beautiful things our children make. We are here for the hard days, too. For the days when something doesn't work. When a friendship is complicated. When a child is frustrated or disappointed or unsure of themselves. 

One of the things I have come to believe even more deeply since becoming Head of School is that a school community is not defined only by what it celebrates. It is also defined by how it holds people when things are hard. And there is a community at school, and beyond the walls of Acera, that is here to hold your children through all of it. 

Seventeen for Seventeen 

And finally, because this is our seventeenth year, we had to do something with seventeen. So we launched Acera Reads: 17 Books for Year 17. Every student is working toward reading seventeen books this year, at their own level, in their own way. And I have to tell you, this challenge has already become a little competitive. 

While Room 2 wrote me the most letters of any classroom this summer, even accounting for the fact that they are twice the size of any other room. Room 8 currently has the most submissions in the Acera Reads Challenge. And a Room 1 student has submitted the most individual books. And before you think, “Well, those must be picture books,” I will tell you: they are long chapter books. Full novels. Some of which I only read myself last year. 

And parents, I see you, too. Thank you to the families who are logging your own reading alongside your children. Because what I love about this challenge is that it isn't really about the number seventeen. It is about making reading visible. It is about saying that books matter. That stories matter. That curiosity matters. And that learning is something we do together, across ages and across generations. 

At Back to School Night you met your children's teachers and saw their classrooms and the spaces where their days unfold. But more than that, I hope you felt the larger invitation. Explore. Create. Belong. Those are three things we want for every child who walks through our doors at Acera. And they are three things we want for ourselves as adults, too. 

So as we begin this seventeenth year, I hope we continue to be a community that is curious enough to ask questions, brave enough to create something new, reflective enough to examine what we think we know, and generous enough to make sure that everyone has a place here. Welcome to year seventeen. Welcome to Acera. And thank you for being part of it.