May/June 2012
Dear Upper School Parents,
It is with profound ambivalence that I write my last monthly letter to you. On the one hand, I very much look forward to spending afternoons moseying though the Metropolitan Museum and lingering for an hour in the gallery with Vermeer; exploring the neighborhoods in our endlessly fascinating city; and reading the stack of books by my chair that have long been beckoning me.
On the other hand, I will dearly miss witnessing the daily accomplishments of your daughters, watching them mature into leaders and strong young women, and, along with you and their teachers and advisors, helping them through the rocky patches of adolescence. We are a unique community of generous-spirited students who will, one day, “challenge, shape and change the world”; of knowledgeable teachers who are devoted to their students’ learning and well-being; and of caring parents who support and enhance their daughters’ education. Together we are a school that lives its mission–to educate the heart and the mind, and to nurture the spirit.
Unlike Tennyson’s Ulysses, whose “vessel puffs her sail” as he sets out upon “the dark broad seas,” my launching on June 30 will be on the cross-town bus. But I hope that all of us will remember Ulysses’ words when we find ourselves at a crossroads: “’Tis not too late to seek a newer world” and, in all important endeavors, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
With Love,
Carole L. France
Divisional Head, Upper School