Westminster Academy Year 1: A Letter from the Principal
Dear Students and Families:
Reflecting on this year has been the most overwhelming process - in the very best way! I said it at our launch party on June 2, and I’ll say it again here: the last 12 months have been surreal, an absolute dream come true. I dreamed about starting a school for so long, of creating a place for my students to learn and grow together, but it was always the kind of dream that seemed so far out of reach. To watch it come to life this year, and to do that with the best group of students and families has been the most exceptional gift.
This year was one huge experiment, not just for me, but also for my students and for their families. I didn’t know how I would make all of the day-to-day necessities happen, let alone happen in the best possible ways. But each day, my students filled my classroom with humor and grace, skimming over my mistakes, putting up with how distracted I often was, making me laugh till my stomach hurt, and continually wowing me with their brains and their hearts. Meanwhile, their families were beyond patient any time I missed a text or an email or was late getting report cards back to them.
I am so proud of the community that our little group created. I watched my students, total strangers at the beginning of the year, become the best of friends. I watched them learn together, I watched them paint and play and study together, I watched them learn how to work as a team, I watched them learn how to apologize for mistakes and make up when things went awry. I watched each of them grow in kindness, creativity, and courage. And that, more than anything else, made the whole year worthwhile.
One of the reasons I’m so passionate about education is because it makes us more interesting people. It provides us with the knowledge of different times, different places, different cultures, different environments, allowing us to obtain the raw material to connect with and converse with those around us in more detailed ways. Education also makes us more thoughtful; it encourages us to make use of that knowledge by weaving it together into some whole overarching ideal that makes sense of our world. But mostly, I’m passionate about education because I believe, to my very core, that it makes us better people by making us more empathic. The entire process of learning something new is the process of connecting two minds: the teacher’s with the student’s. So every single day, during every single moment of learning, empathy is at play. And if in our learning, we can continually exercise that ability to understand and relate to another human being, perhaps our students will be encouraged to exercise their capacity for empathy in every other facet of their lives as well.
That’s my goal for Year 2: to cultivate empathy in everything we do at Westminster Academy. See you in the fall!
- Ms. Dodson
