How strange it is to return to a place that once shaped you in so many ways and to find yourself a stranger, yet an old friend. Here I am after more than seventeen years, finding myself back at Michael Oak during this season of transition. The buildings hold many memories for me – the classrooms with their distinctive smell of Prussian blue paint, the playgrounds where I watched children grow, the halls filled with rows of children at the start of a new year, some bright eyed and eager and others apprehensive and unsure, the songs sung in rounds filling the air. Over time, the school has shifted and grown in ways I could never have imagined. It now has a full high school, playgrounds are varied and mindful of children’s needs, it has weathered a global pandemic, welcomed new colleagues and said goodbye to old friends whose absence is keenly felt.

As I stand here on familiar ground that is no longer quite what I remember, in a world that has changed in so many ways, I suspect that many of you feel something similar, a shift in the world that brings many questions. I imagine that we are all finding our way through changes we did not choose and challenges we cannot ignore. What, then, is the impulse of our time? How do we meet what faces us whilst holding fast to what Michael Oak has trusted for sixty-four years?

I believe it begins with honesty about where we are. Waldorf education has always asked us to see the child truly, to meet what is actually there rather than what we wish were there. Perhaps we must do the same for our school. We face real pressures from outside, real questions from within. We are learning what it means to be a larger school, a different school in some ways, whilst trying to remain ourselves.

What makes us Waldorf cannot be simply preserved like something under glass. It must live and breathe and meet the moment we are in. It lives in our reverence for childhood, in our trust that human development unfolds according to its own wisdom, in our commitment to beauty and to whole human beings. It lives in the relationships between us: teacher and child, family and school, colleague and colleague.

As we settle into this new school year, we welcome each of you. Whether you have been with us for years or are just beginning, whether your children are new to our kindergartens or returning to familiar classrooms, we need you here. We are especially mindful of families new to our school, hoping that what follows will help you feel at home.

This letter contains practical information about our school rhythms. Beyond the details, though, I hope we can build something together: a community honest enough to name its challenges, brave enough to ask its questions, and grounded enough in what matters most to find its way forward. This is no easy road, but we must walk it.

With warm regards
Beulah Reeler
Acting School Coordinator