Dear Friends, I've sent the following message to all members of the Class of 2020. I cannot express enough my regret that their senior year, and the senior year of high school and college students around the world, has been disrupted by COVID-19. Be assured that my colleagues and I are considering how best to honor our students while dealing with the realities of the virus. With warm regards, Landis Dear Class of 2020, Colleagues of mine throughout the school have been working hard to make a successful transition to remote learning these last few weeks. It's gone well, relative to what I'm hearing in many schools, and I hope you are finding it to be a positive experience under the circumstances, even though it is decidedly different from what we're all accustomed to. As we plan for the remainder of the year, I want to be candid with you: there's going to be a lot that's going to be different. Although I wish I could change the circumstances for you—and for all the students whose year has been disrupted—unfortunately, I can't. Some 5th graders won't get to lead an All School Meeting, some students in theater won't get to perform the musical they've worked so hard on, and you, as seniors, won't get to have a typical celebratory end of school year. Aside from your classes, all events between now and early May are being canceled. Sadly, that must include prom and the senior trip. The one event we will not cancel is Commencement. It may happen virtually or it may happen on a date other than when it's currently scheduled, but you will have a Commencement. Our first priority is keeping you, your families, and my colleagues healthy, so it may not be in person on June 4. However, we will continue to arrange for the tent rentals, speech preparation, programs—all of it—and hope that we'll be able to be together. Upper school leaders will be reaching out as we return from break to get your insight as we consider alternate plans this spring and make a final decision on what those will look like in the coming months. It's also inevitable that some members of our community will get sick in the coming weeks and months, which could further complicate our ability to execute on even scaled-back back-up plans. A flattened curve doesn't appear to be imminent, so it's also increasingly looking like we'll be remote indefinitely. I don't know exactly what that means for some of our annual spring traditions, but surely some will be scaled down or virtual, and most events will simply need to be canceled. Your advisors conferred last week and are excited to proceed with supporting you in preparing and presenting your remote Senior Exhibitions. They will reach out to you separately with the details, but I wanted to note here that you will present a Senior Exhibition in a digital format that maintains the essential purpose of the traditional experience: deep self-reflection about your journey as a lifelong learner. I was inspired by your advisors' commitment to doing their level best to make Exhibitions possible for you as they continue teaching remotely. I hope you'll share your gratitude with them all; they are working hard under very difficult circumstances. It pains me that your senior year has been impacted and will continue to be impacted, yet there's nothing that any of us can do to change that. As disappointing as this situation is, I am acutely aware of the fact that the level of connectedness that you, as a class, will have—with each other, and with countless seniors in countless schools around the world—will be different, even deepened, by the events that are marking your last year of school before college. I was thinking of you when reading an article in the New York Times last week, which includes an interview with my friend, Percy, a head of school in Seattle. The article also includes an interview with Natasha Kuhn, whose teenage years were enveloped by the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Near the end of the article, Ms. Kuhn reflects that, "In a time when no one has the answers… the trick is to stop seeking them out from others." She goes on, "This is an amazing opportunity of building your inner strength and your strength as a community… it's just knowing inside of myself that we're going to be OK. Bad times come, we should not expect they won't. So you deal with it and support each other and survive it." You are a strong community, Class of 2020, and are surrounded—and supported—by members of a strong community. I'm comforted by that, for you and for all of us. When I have more news to share, I will. In the meantime, you have all my good wishes. Warmly, Landis Wildwood School |