Dear Flint Hill School Families,
Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and a very exciting start to the new year. When we look ahead to Winter Break it can seem endless, yet here we are back at school. I hope you spent valuable time with family and friends. I know we did, and the positive impact it had on our family was enormous.
I am sure many of you also went about the annual process of making New Year’s resolutions. I have to admit that I spent a great deal of time thinking about my personal goals, which includes more time with Emily and family, as well as professional goals that align with our School’s mission, vision and strategic plan. I am always looking for ways to continue to build on our sense of community, school family, openness and trust. And in that process, I realized that the New Year presents an opportunity for us to consider a few resolutions as a community.
- Time Management. We all have an opportunity to manage our time better. We just experienced how quickly it can race by during a break or vacation. It is important to use time effectively while also managing to live in the moment. During Winter Break in our household, having our four grandkids together and juggling a number of activities and ages was wild. A simple task like trying to get people to sit down for a meal was absolutely chaotic, but we enjoyed it greatly. In the long run, everyone got together beautifully. We could see the changes and the growth in each and every one of them, which reminded me, one more time, of the importance of relationships and cherishing our time together as a family. The same holds true here as we watch your children grow up and develop right before our eyes. So I urge you, even in challenging moments with your families, to cherish that time together. Think about how important it is to make each and every moment count and how quickly each moment passes.
- Communication. Effective communication is of critical importance to the strength of a community. We need to be sharing with each other, listening and learning. Think about school and your child’s experiences. Whenever possible, it is important to attend Coffees, listen to what others have to say, read the Weekly Newsletter to keep up with the school information, and, above all, value and respect the experience of your children’s teachers and school leaders. These valuable professionals do more than teach specific subjects — they are making every moment a “learning moment.”
In addition, communication between home and school is the only way to get through any roadblocks that may come up. It will help you to make sure that you know your child completely, from every perspective.
- Keeping Things in Perspective. The word “perspective” comes up constantly in my thinking. We need to keep everything in perspective. We need to find ways to enjoy life not just during holidays or breaks, but each and every day. We also need to maintain perspective on all that is going on in our individual families and in our school family. Everyone here at school is working hard to make your children’s lives more positive, more productive and more effective. This is what Flint Hill education is all about. Ultimately, each of your children will need to stand on his or her own. They will need to have the resiliency, the grit and the skills to move forward with confidence on whatever path they choose. From my own experience, observing my own grown children is rewarding and impressive. It is always fascinating to see how they deal with the situations that arise in their adult lives.
As you think about your resolutions in this Near Year, I hope you will join me in committing to reinforcing the ties between home and school. Let’s work together on keeping our resolutions as we move forward. And let’s all commit to making our sense of school family as strong as ever.
Best wishes to you!
Sincerely,
John M. Thomas
Headmaster