Head’s Notebook: The Trees We Plant Together

Growth is both gradual and sudden. My three-year-old grows millimeters each day, indiscernibly, and then I catch a glimpse of her swinging from the monkey bars and she suddenly looks lanky. When did those squishy little arms and legs become long and lean? Every day I enjoy the privilege of bearing witness to growth in our Fay children. Milestone moments like first graders reading to me in my office or eighth graders delivering speeches for leadership positions make the growth more obvious, but along the way, it has a beautiful subtlety.

 

This poignancy inspires in me a love for Fay’s tradition of planting a tree with the graduating ninth graders. A tree is responsive to climate; it requires sun, water, and nutrients. Its rings reflect the experiences of the tree in a particular year, and over time, it becomes a representation of its environment. Its growth illustrates the passage of time; yes, gradual, but also quite sudden to alumni who return decades later to visit their tree. How did it get so tall?!

 

This year, I planted a dogwood to commemorate my installation as Fay’s ninth head of school right alongside the Class of 2025, a special group of students with whom I will always share a unique bond. With our trees, we also buried a time capsule to mark the quarter century. Shoveling nutrient-rich soil onto the roots together, I shared with them the sentiment of alumnus Matias Jurado Ortiz ‘19 who was present to watch his younger brother Diego graduate, as he reflected on his own tree ceremony six years before: “You plant a piece of yourself at Fay, but you also take a piece of Fay with you.”

 

This was a year of both constancy and change. A new head of school is a steward for the community’s traditions as the institution evolves with the times. Family style meals, blazers and color teams are happily here to stay. Earth Day and Motley Day are back, as you’ll see in this edition of the magazine! And, there were new traditions born, like first graders ‘reading to Ms. Waters,’ Mortimer gaining a mascot pen pal at The Fay School in Texas, the Hello Campaign, the Faculty/Staff Mystery Bus, and more. Fay is building for the future with an addition to the Primary School to accommodate the expansion of the Early Learning Center, and educating for the future with a greater emphasis on environmental sustainability. We know who we are, and where we are going.