March 11, 2010
Dear KPS Faculty and Staff,
I have been uplifted by my time with you and encouraged to find you so in love with the school. I sensed a commonality in vision among you that I know will give us strength and direction down the trail.
Lisa, you have done a fantastic job of assembling such a strong crew and have set the stage so nicely with programs and process. Carla, I enjoyed my visit with you and Laura, and appreciated the way you two spring calmly into compassionate action when a student went skidding belly first across the playground. Michelle, I loved your math in the morning lesson, especially the fact that you were drilling and practicing through games. Chris, I really enjoyed your quick three compliments with one critique after each student reading. Christine, I love that the student voice is alive in your class and that you had the group sleeping on the ground on the very day of my visit. Robin, thank you for serving on the search committee and asking me the great question of how I would be able to get my teaching and anthropology fix at KPS. Mauli Ola Cook, your lesson simultaneously had students singing, drumming, being the mountains and shoreline of Kauai, and a wave upon its shores and I sat transfixed and filming it. Denise, thank you for serving on the search committee. I love the cherry blossom paintings. Lisa, tunnel tag looked fun. Paul, Sam, and Joel I look forward to meeting you.
A literature item came to me during the past week that I think is worth sharing as it seems to me to be related to the dragons that KPS is slaying. By Wendel Berry, its called “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” It goes, in pieces, “…want more of everything ready made...be afraid to know your neighbors and to die…and you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery anymore…So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute…ask questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that you main crop is the forest that you did not plant…” I see that KPS is doing this and that makes me simultaneously proud and humbled.
It will be an honor to work with you and learn from you. I look forward to meeting with you each individually in the late summer. I wish you the best in a joyful spring 2010. Please feel free to contact me at stark929@gmail.com
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