Woodstock School Alumni Magazine Vol CIV, 2011

emember this School. It’s a rather nebulous
idea, in some ways—a school. You never really
know where the learning will take place.
It may happen while you’re sitting in a circle
around a stove, going over math homework
with friends. It may happen at the lunch table,
when someone puts a clever turn on words and
ideas that you have been thinking about too.
It may happen when you’re doing research on
your own and you stumble across one of the
world’s “great ideas.” It may happen when
you’re bored and flip ahead a hundred pages to
see what else is in the textbook—or any other
book, for that matter. It may happen when
someone you thought you knew stands up and
tells the student body all the reasons why they
would make a good governor, or committee
chair, or StuCo President—and you hear and
think, yeah, they’re right, they would make a
good one…or you think, actually, I could do
that too! Learning may happen in the dorm, on
Hansen Field…in the gym…on the road up to
school…or even…in a classroom! Remember
where you are now!
I taught ESL at Woodstock for ten years and
learned constantly from my students. One of
the first things I learned was that they were
really smart—or they would never be surviving
school in a different language! I learned
that kimchi comes from heaven—no, really, it
does—most people who eat it think Korea is
heaven! (I love kimchi, but my wife does not
love me when I eat it—something to do with
powdered shrimp and garlic). I kept copies of
many of the good papers students wrote. My
favorite was by a Japanese girl a number of
years back: “English is a Hard Language to
Think.” Her paper discussed—with intimate
knowledge—what it is like to know what you
think inside your own head and struggle to
find the right words and phrases to express
it clearly in someone else’s language, so that
it can enter their head. I wished I had read
that paper long before I started teaching. I
often got it out and read it over again at the
beginning of a new semester or school year.
Another favorite of mine was a well organized
essay by a Vietnamese student about
the advantages of letting ESL students be part
of non-ESL classes rather than making them
study separately in a class with other ESL
students—that essay was so convincing that it
helped us decide our policy as a school on this
issue. Then there was the masterpiece written
by an eighth-grade boy—again, arguing
from intimate experience—a five-paragraph
essay, with introduction, body and conclusion,
presenting compelling logic in favor of
doing away with after-school detention (This
one did not shape school policy, however!
In fact, it was written during—you guessed
it—after-school detention. It was his best essay
ever.) A school is a learning community,
for teachers as much as for students. The
mystery of learning is part of what makes it
worth remembering.
School is also worth remembering because
you have worked hard at it. For years you have
diligently prepared for quizzes, tests, examinations,
IGCSE’s, AP’s, SAT’s, and any other
alphabet soup that has been thrown at you. You
have prepared for both internal and external
examinations, for recitals, juries, and final
concerts. You may be tempted to ask, was I an
idiot for doing this? I don’t think so. The hard
reality is you live in a competitive world. One
reason you have what you have is because you
have worked hard for it. And what you don’t
have probably went to someone who worked
even harder! Our school motto is palma non
sine pulvere—no victory palms without the
dust of struggle.
One final thing that makes school worth remembering
is your own belief that what you
are doing right now is good and worthwhile.
You have invested your time, your effort, and
your life where you saw value. The Woodstock
School Creed ends with the sentence:
“Thus, in all these ways, we will transmit this
School greater, better, and more beautiful than
it was transmitted to us.” These words were
not invented by Woodstock. They come from
Plato’s Academy in Athens. They remind us
that we live not only for ourselves, but also
for those who follow after. This will be true of
your whole life. What will you do that is worth
passing on to someone else? What have you
done while here that you can point out to next
year’s new students and say, “I’m leaving that
behind to help you”?
A time to remember! Look back, remember
where you came from. Look around you,
remember where you are now. And looking
ahead, remember the One who appoints the
“times” in your life. Saint Augustine prayed,
“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts
are restless until they can find peace in you.”
Bhakti poet Ravi Das expressed a similar
thought through a series of vivid pictures:
Quadrangle - 17
Lord, you are sandalwood, we are water,
your fragrance permeating every part.
Lord, you are the cloud, we the enraptured
peacock;
like the partridge entranced with the moon.
Lord, you are the lamp, we just the wick,
spreading light day and night.
French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise
Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in
the heart of every man that cannot be filled by
any created being, but by God alone.” Think
again about Solomon’s words: “He has made
everything beautiful in its time. He has also
set eternity in the human heart.” That’s how
we’re wired. Even though we are very much
creatures of this earth, we can’t help but respond
to God.
I have climbed to Darwa Top, the ridge above
Dodital, and looked at Bandarpunch from there
nine times. The mountain is immense, with its
two peaks and many glaciers. You look at the
long valley leading up to the south side and try
to estimate how many days it would take to
walk up it to the main glacier…and you give
up. In the clear, bright morning air it looks as
though you are right there, and yet you can
also see that you are very small next to the
gigantic rock faces, boulders, and fields of
scree, the long, climbing valley, the towering
snow-covered peaks. That’s how we are before
God—very small, unable to handle the scope
on which He operates, but alive and aware of
the beauty He has made.
Before he died, Jesus told his followers that
he would be raised again on the third day.
Yet when women arrived at the tomb with
burial spices and found it empty, they seemed
perplexed. They were told, “He is not here; he
has risen! Remember how he told you!” And
it says, “Then they remembered his words.”
Sometimes you remember things better after
they come together and make sense. The resurrection
seemed impossible…until it happened.
Then everything made sense. A little like falling
in love…or graduating! A mystery until,
suddenly, you’re in the middle of it. On the
eve of India’s independence in 1947, Pandit
Nehru spoke of India’s approaching “tryst with
destiny.” His words were filled with a tender
awe and joyful anticipation that spread to those
who heard them:
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny,
and now the time comes when we
shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in
full measure, but very substantially. At the
stroke of the midnight hour, when the world
sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.