Quaker Schools & Spirituality

I am fortunate enough to be at Pendle Hill with about 50 other heads of Friends Schools for our annual gathering. I have been coming to this event for close to 20 years and I always find it rejuvenating. I am always amazed at, though our schools vary in size, history, location, etc, we have so much in common.

During this trip I have been a part of conversations across almost all areas of administration. We have talked about making our education affordable, especially for our younger families in our preschools and kindergartens. We have talked about ways to have our older students and younger students be in the same places on our campuses and benefit from one another. We have talked about, no matter how elite each or our schools may be perceived to be, we don't get enough kids into the "right" colleges. And we talked about working diligently with colleges and students and families to get our kids into the RIGHT college for each of our students. We discussed what positions we need to add to our staff and which ones we need to let go. We discussed what education is going to look like in the next 5, 10 , 50 years regardless of what our economy does.

Most importantly, we discussed that when we are in the position to have these difficult conversations and we then proceed to make the best decisions our schools can make; we greatly benefit by bringing our sense of Quaker spirituality to the decision. It doesn't make these decisions easy, but we can then make them with more confidence and calm. It is a gift that we have as educators in Quaker schools. We beleive that listening to that still small voice within is worthwhile. Our students can use this, our teachers, our staff, parents and trustees. Again it is a gift and we must always be mindful of this.