You're Invited!

Dear St. Margaret’s Families,

 

One of the great joys of being an adult in a school community is the opportunity to learn each day. We learn from our students, each other, our parents, the church and from experts we invite to our community.

 

This year our professional community experienced a learning opportunity that continues to energize me and has been a source of both reflection and joy. I am excited to offer my first quarterly parent message on the work that we began before school started which continues to invigorate us every day. My message to you is an invitation—to better understand something happening at school, to join us for an event, or to reflect on the power of our learning community. And because at my core I am an educator, I will often share research that has guided my thinking. Whether you are an Early, Lower, Middle or Upper School parent, it is my hope that my invitation to you feels relevant and meaningful.

 

Each year in the Opening Days, as we refer to them, our professional community has the opportunity to learn together before students arrive in our classrooms. As we reflected on the many remarkable attributes of St. Margaret’s, we decided to spotlight the wonderful sense of community that is a core value and a distinctive aspect of our culture that we all hold dear. 

We invited Charles Vogl, author of The Art of Community and St. Margaret’s alumnus class of 1992, to join us for a day of learning and reflection. He began his time with us by defining the word community as “a group of individuals who share a mutual concern for one another’s welfare.” He juxtaposes this definition with groups of people who may have shared interests, like support of a sports team, museums or medical associations, yet are unaware of each other’s existence. In a community as defined by Vogl, the ties are to each other. He went on to further explain how we can explicitly build community by extending real and meaningful invitations.

 

In small groups he had us all explore a time when we were invited to an event or an experience and how that made us feel. In the room that day, there were tears, laughter and embraces. For many people in the room, they harkened back to middle school or high school when the power of an invitation transformed their feelings of community. This same exercise was played out with student leadership groups in the Upper School and the experience was equally astounding. I was part of a small group where a new student shared that simply being invited to join a small discussion group by an older student was a powerful feeling of belonging.

 

As a young person, I moved around quite a bit and each time my family moved I found myself in a new public school. The desire for community has lived in me throughout my life, perhaps because I struggled to find it as a young person. Part of the great joy of discovering St. Margaret’s almost 20 years ago was the prospect of being rooted in a community that valued this wonderful sense of belonging. As I look back on my years as a member of this community, I am so grateful to have been present for events both large and small. My only regret is that I missed any at all. I sit in Lower School Chapel now and wish I had been there more frequently as a parent, as I now see that the red sweater days are both magical and fleeting. When I attended the reunion for the first five classes of Tartan graduates, I was struck by their experience of community and the power of their relationships, decades after they graduated. 

 

These relationships are the key to well-being as we now understand from landmark research done at Harvard, which followed a group of participants for over 75 years. In their book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study on Happiness, Robert Waldinger and Marc Shultz shine a brilliant light on the importance of relationships and their ability to sustain us and ultimately make our lives more meaningful, richer and longer. 

 

I want to invite you to the many events that will be happening over the next few weeks. The opportunities to be together as a community are powerful reminders of all that we share. The PTF Tartan Family BBQ next Friday, Oct. 13 has become so popular that we have moved it to Chalmers Field. We look forward to our Tartans enjoying this great space to play before they head to the Homecoming football game that night. The PTF will also be hosting a General Membership Meeting on October 19 that is an opportunity to hear updates on the school. We hope you will join us for the annual Forever Plaid gala hosted by the PTF on November 4 at VEA Newport Beach. On campus, the arts will be showcasing the Upper School play Frankenstein October 26-28, The Frightfest Arts Showcase on Oct. 30, and SpongeBob the Musical in the Middle School on November 16-18.  In the realm of athletics, the many exciting contests are posted on mySMES and at www.smes.org/athletics.

 

If you have been a part of this community for many years, please consider reaching out to a new family and inviting them to join you at a community event. They may never forget this small act of kindness. The opportunity for you and your children to develop lifelong and meaningful relationships in this beautiful community is incredibly precious. I invite you to join us for events big and small and look very forward to seeing you all soon. 

 

With love and gratitude,

Jeneen