Schooling with Heart & Vision:
A Message from Dr. Moore

The Changing Canvas

This morning, I noticed that it finally felt a little different outside.

Not cold, exactly. This is Atlanta, after all. But there was just enough crispness in the air to suggest that fall really is coming. Soon, the trees around campus will begin their annual transformation with green slowly giving way to gold, orange, and red. The canvas around us will change.

It struck me that the canvas inside our school is changing, too.

We are far enough into the school year now that things have begun to settle.

Students know where they are going. They know their teachers better, and their teachers certainly know them better. Friendships are taking shape. The rhythms of classes, lunch, recess, athletics, and activities feel more familiar. Parents are mastering the choreography of morning carpool, afternoon pickup, practices, appointments, and everything else that somehow has to fit into a school week.

There is something comforting about reaching this point in the year. We exhale a little. The newness wears off. What felt unfamiliar in August has begun to feel like ours.

But I have been thinking about the danger of confusing settled with finished.

Because while the rhythms may be established, the canvas is nowhere close to complete.

Your child is still becoming.

They are discovering which teachers make them feel brave enough to take a risk. They are figuring out where they fit in a new group of friends. They are learning which tools actually help them when something feels hard, and perhaps even more importantly, how to ask for those tools themselves.

Some are beginning to raise their hands a little more often.

Some are recovering from mistakes a little more quickly.

Some are finding words for something they could not explain before: This is hard for me. This helps me. I need more time. Can I try it another way?

At The Howard School, those moments matter enormously.

For children who have experienced school as a place where they have sometimes felt behind, misunderstood, or simply different, growth does not always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes the most important change is almost invisible. A child tries instead of avoids. Asks instead of hides. Laughs at a mistake that might once have brought tears. Reads a page that once seemed impossible. Walks into school carrying just a little more confidence than they did the day before.

Small brushstrokes.

And then another.

And another.

As parents, and as educators, I think we sometimes want desperately to see the finished painting. We want reassurance about where all of this is going. Will my child become a confident reader? Will they find their people? Will my child learn to advocate for themselves? Will they discover the thing that makes them light up? Will my child be OK?

I understand that instinct deeply.

But children do not reveal themselves to us all at once.

Their stories emerge gradually, layer upon layer. There are colors we cannot yet see. Parts of the picture that are still only sketches. Places where someone may paint over something and begin again.

That is not a flaw in the process.

That is the process.

So, as the temperatures drop and the leaves around us begin to change, I hope we can enjoy the comfort of being more settled while remaining curious about what is emerging.

Notice the new brushstrokes.

Celebrate the ones that might be easy to miss.

And resist the temptation to decide too quickly what the finished masterpiece will look like.

The canvas is changing.

And there is still so much more to come.

 

Dr. Anna B. Moore, Head of School