The Season of Celebrations

Winsor loves a good celebration, and April kicks off our season of celebrations in earnest. We have already celebrated Ring Day, Prom, Party with a Purpose, the yearbook dedication, the Class VI banner presentation to the seniors, the Class V party for the seniors’ last day of classes, and of course, on Thursday night, the incredible launch of the Winsor Leads Campaign. We have enjoyed the Spring Concert, Hemenway speeches, RENT, and the Class IV Health Fair. Soon we’ll honor former students at Alumnae Weekend, delight in the Class IV productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, cheer on both Panthers and Jaguars at Field Day, and celebrate Lower School Closing, Awards Celebration, and Commencement. These last few months of the school year are rich in tradition and joy. 

Commencement, of course, is the grandest of these, a moment not only to celebrate the seniors, which certainly happens, but also to honor the school year in its entirety and the community that has lived and learned together since September. As the last official gathering of all of our students, faculty, and staff, for many of us, Commencement is also the best moment of the year, the one that speaks most to our love of singing, talking about what matters to us, and being together in celebration and sisterhood. We celebrate seniors at the height of their achievements and poise, with laughter and tears in a huge tent filled with love.

Several years ago, one parent of an alum observed that we as a school might not understand the extraordinary challenge that graduation presents to senior parents and families. “We are so involved in the community,” she said. “Some of us have been involved as parents for 8, or 12, or more years. We have helped with admissions and cheered on the sidelines, we have planned faculty treats and driven to this campus a million times. And then, just at the height of our connection to the school, graduation ends and we suddenly feel cut off from all that.” I immediately saw the truth of her statement, though I also see that the relationship with and through Winsor is forever, even if it might change in its intensity and its logistical complexity. 

But what all this makes me really think about is saying goodbye. You might think that educators would be great at it; after all, we have chosen careers structured around a cycle, meeting new students each fall and saying goodbye to graduates each spring. Constant transition is built into our work and our years. I jokingly refer to admissions and college placement as “shipping and receiving,” but that is largely to stave off the emotions that come with saying goodbye every single year to students I love and am proud of, and whom I will miss immeasurably. 

Saying goodbye is hard. To do it properly and well, we need to sit with those who are leaving us (or whom we are leaving), characterize what what we have meant to one another, identify what we will keep with us forever, acknowledge that our connection is about to change, and move forward stronger for having been in relationship with each other and this entire Winsor community. 

Of course, graduates do come back, at a variety of times and for a variety of reasons, and it is always wonderful and bittersweet to see them. We are so proud of their life paths, so eager to hear what the world is like for them now, and we are also reminded how wonderful it was to be with them every day and how much we miss that. All life transitions follow this pattern, in some measure, and they all have joy and sadness embedded in them. 

So each spring of celebrations takes on an added level of significance in the face of this impending transition: we reaffirm, with every celebration, the importance of this schoolcommunity, the one with these exact students and teachers in it, these parents, these coaches and staff members, these alumnae, these trustees, these classes and clubs and teams and programs. We celebrate Winsor as it is right now, with our amazing, fierce, smart students and their dedicated, talented teachers. We cheer and laugh and scream for one another, a community characterized by love, commitment to each other, bravery, and ambition. 

Our spring celebrations speak to the very best of who we are, as a school and as a larger community. And it is this very community that the Winsor Leads Campaign will make possible both now and in the future. It will never be easy to say goodbye, and we would not want it to be. But however you define your relationship to this school, we will always be here for everyone reading this post, to learn and grow with you, to celebrate and honor you and, when the time comes, to welcome you back with open arms.