Early Morning

My schedule this year at school includes two days opening the school, and these always afford a different Fairhaven School experience, these first hours before the hurlyburly to come.  Empty rooms invite.

Morning light brightens the Circle Room.

It is difficult not to think of the notion of tabula rasa: each day brings a clean slate, both for the school and its students. Of course, even a wiped slate has some vestige of what came before, and this applies to the new morning at Fairhaven School; nevertheless, unlocking the buildings and turning on the lights conjures one important word: possibility.

Sitting on the repaired couch.

What will we do today? Who we will we do these things with? What will we discover today, about ourselves, about each other, and about this world? Somehow, the stillness creates these and many other questions.  One answer, on this morning, was for two students to sew a torn couch in advance of a pending JC case.

For one, the day began more simply with another thing that bespeaks possibility: she took the quiet time before her friends came to read a book.

Mark McCaig

September, 2012

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