Let's Not Confuse the School with its Words
Estimated Reading time: 5-8 minutes
“The city must never be confused with the words that describe it.”
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
We love a good finale. In all the busyness and business of May, we lock in grades, raise graduation banners, and rehearse our speeches and the elegant themes as we cross another threshold. Spring concerts. Closing picnics. Gathering in the evening to watch the sunset as one community.
The closing weeks of school are full of validation and confirmation: this school is indeed the words that describe it. We’ve lived our mission, and here is the array of events and awards and yearbooks that showcase those who brought it to life. The tempo of our closing weeks is this wild cocktail of exhilaration and exhaustion and can we have some exhalation as we confirm and celebrate all we’ve done. Let me be the first to lend you a resounding Chapeau for a year of meaningful work.
And yet.
I want to tell you about my favorite end-of-year ritual. After awards, after graduation and finals, after that daylong rafting trip and cleaning out the lounges and tidying classrooms for the summer months, we’d spend the last 90 minutes of the year in a chapel, a microphone available to any student or adult in the community to offer a story about the year. A tenth grader recounts how a classmate quietly loaned her bus fare during a class trip to Rome when she discovered she’d left her money behind. A junior laughs while recounting how one absentminded miskey of the microwave led to the entire dorm evacuating on a January night. A faculty member recounts how a student’s ukulele performance inspired them to learn the instrument and play for a toddler every day after school. These stories—and so many others—surfaced lessons and relationships that our formal celebrations never quite captured. It was unpolished, unpredictable, and profoundly true because it wasn’t just the words that described it, it was the voices and stories and experiences and complex emotions that shaped the year. We didn’t need much to make the moment - I don’t even think we turned on the lights. Just a microphone and the community.
This end-of-year chapel was a container. It allowed us to see a truer version of ourselves as clearly as any speech, transcript, award, or celebration ever could. It invites us to wonder: how might we continue to shape containers like this—spaces where these stories, both in their telling and in their living, can fully emerge? We need to seek them out, learn from them, and think about how they might help us shape the future of teaching and learning at our school.
Greg Bamford reminds us that schools are complex ecosystems of values, identities, and meaningful moments.
Crystal Land encourages us to reimagine or reframe May beyond its frenetic pace, suggesting even more possibilities for reflection and growth.
Within the container of May, around the panoply of events and occasions, we can surface an even truer depiction of ourselves, our communities, and our values from the insights that can surface among those louder moments.
To help you deepen the reflective opportunities in these final weeks, here are three practical methods you might try:
1. Empathy Interviews
Conduct brief "exit-with-empathy" conversations. Choose five people from your community—students, colleagues, or families—and ask:
Tell me about a moment this year when you felt included, inspired, or deeply connected.
Tell me about a moment you found challenging.
Tell me about a moment that defined your year.
What advice would you give yourself if you could revisit last September?
2. Campfire Conversations
Gather your group in a relaxed setting and start by displaying key words from your mission statement, core values, or guiding documents—words that do describe your community. Give each person an opportunity to select a word and tell a brief, specific story from the year that brings it to life. These conversations transform abstract language into tangible experiences, deepening your community’s connection to its stated values and purpose.
3. Reflective Walks
Take reflective walks in small teams around your campus. Invite participants to guide each other to:
A spot on campus that defined your year.
A place that continues to inspire you to do this work.
A place that represents a challenge we should take on as a community.
A place not typically included on any tour but one you'll revisit in your memory thirty years from now when reflecting on your time at our school.
These walks should be collaborative experiences, encouraging participants to share insights, reflect together, and deepen their understanding of the school's identity.
Finally, consider joining L+Doers Unite. Our community offers a wide array of end-of-year events designed explicitly to help you process, reflect, and learn in ways that live the spirit of learning, sharing and reflection that can make May special in community:
Lean Coffee: A structured yet informal gathering to reflect and share insights on the work that truly matters.
Studio Sessions: Engage with peers in 90-minute sessions of creative practice, where we’ll create, draw, and design together.
Leadership as Practice: A session with Antonio Viva exploring leadership as ongoing practice and reflection.
Member's Only Think Tank: Engage in futurist thinking by exploring emerging trends, imagining their potential impact, and collaboratively problem-solving with peers from across the community.
Audio Walk and Talk: An audio-only event designed to reconnect you with the community, your campus, and yourself, facilitating meaningful conversation on the move.
You'll find ample opportunities to authentically connect, share, and work on what genuinely matters—not just what we say matters, but what truly shapes our communities.
Go finish this year—celebrate fully, savor these moments deeply. How many more might we have? Yet even as you embrace the certainty of closure, stoke your spirit of curiosity and seek that learning alongside your community. When we listen closely, we hear more than the words that describe us—we amplify our rich, living communities, surfacing more clearly the voices, experiences, and places that bring it vividly to life.
