Each new year’s I like to make a list of the many things for which I feel grateful. The list is long, and I revisit it and add to it many times over the subsequent days and months. I also make a list of things that truly upset me, and I always find that list is very small by comparison and usually focuses on big category injustices in the world. Just the comparison of the size and nature of the two lists tells me something and keeps me focused on the good and how I have the power to multiply that side of the “ledger.” For instance, ongoing gun violence truly upsets me; but I’m grateful for how supportive the PDS community is of our security measures, for our amazing officers, and for the fact that this year’s annual fund success will allow us to install new cameras in our hallways, every one of which I constantly pray will be a big waste of money.

        I am always incredibly grateful that I am able to help provide the stellar kind of education and environment that PDS creates for our young learners. This was brought home even more deeply by one of the books I read over the break, Elizabeth May’s Wintering: The Power of Rest & Retreat in Difficult Times in which she tells of her decision to remove her six year-old son from her English town’s school system:

“My son had grown too anxious to go to school. Six years old, he had been overpowered by it already; that toxic soup of thirty kids packed in one classroom, a teacher pulled in so many different directions that Bert felt invisible, and a couple of mean boys on the playground. A hyperactive curriculum that made him feel like he couldn’t keep up; a set of blanket targets ensuring that ‘expected’ was all we ever heard about him… I hadn’t noticed the joy seeping out of him, but it had seeped all the same. Some winters are gradual.”

        I am grateful that all of us at Primary Day — faculty, staff, parents, trustees, students — continually work to ensure that our school embodies the opposite of what young Bert encountered. Yes, it upsets me that education in our country fails so many. But I am thankful that the gratitude side of the ledger allows me to feel that together we can have a profound impact on our small corner on River Road and on the precious, bright, adorable children who consider PDS a second home.