A Parent's Reflection on Graduation

Early June signals the start of summer for most students, and for high school teachers, the scramble to the finish line and bittersweet goodbye to a group of teenagers we have worked with and learned from for four years. This year, the nearly-here graduation comes with even more emotion, as I experience it not only as a high school teacher but also as a parent. 

Hudson, class of 2022,  joined Emerson in fifth grade after spending two years at the Hill Center and a few more homeschooling. As a mom of four young children, I loved parts of the homeschool adventure: feeding the baby breakfast while reading to the olders; finally learning to identify birds with my curious and observant grade-schoolers; being able to turn our weekly baking activities into science class. But there were many things that were unsustainable, too: how to diaper and teach fractions at the same time? When was the baby supposed to nap? And what about time for friends? 

The first day my older two children visited Emerson, my second son’s teacher told me how when she drew a single line of blue chalk across the board, Finch gasped and said, “that’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!” I knew at that moment Emerson could provide a curriculum and whole-child experience I simply could not manage as a one-room/one-mom schoolhouse. And so our journey began. 

Hudson loves all things science. When he was young he would pour over the Great Courses catalog and beg to take “Black Holes: Secrets of the Universe” and “Quantum Physics Explained.” Hudson spent his senior year piloting the robotics club at Emerson; last year he helped design and 3-D print the TARC rocket for the first-ever Emerson team to enter the challenge; they surprised even themselves by nearly making it to nationals. This year, at the FIRST robotics competition, they made it to states- and for a new team, this was an incredible win. 

Having teachers in the high school that can meet that curiosity and help expand Hudson’s list of questions about the world has been one of the greatest gifts of his Emerson education. He will arrive at Worcester Polytechnic Institute this fall knowing a small bit of what he does not know, and yet he will have the capacity to listen deeply, make clear observations and connections, and discern the questions that are needed in order to advance true inquiry.

Over the years, I’ve come to see graduation not as an end but as a portal to a new beginning: a time when the students ask their own questions, reflect on what their time at Emerson has given them, and begin to stake out their place in the world. I love getting letters from graduates, sometimes from far off places: this year I got letters from students studying in Montreal, Sweden, and New York. I had coffee with graduates who wanted to talk through their roommate situations, work options, and romantic interests. I feel honored to work in a space where students are taking the important next steps toward their future, and doing it in a way that honors the whole human being. 

Looking back on Hudson’s time at Emerson, I am grateful that he not only received an education that enabled him to achieve his academic goal of pursuing robotic engineering at a four year university, but also that he experienced first hand what it means to learn and work as a conscious and integrated, fully awake human being. It matters that our teachers have the credentials and knowledge to bring a rigorous curriculum to our high school students; it matters even more that they bring it with a deeply held social and ecological consciousness. I am grateful that in a time when loneliness has been identified as a pandemic, I get to work in a school where the teachers strive every day to make real and meaningful connections with the students and with each other. My colleagues are compassionate, present, hard-working, and some of the smartest people I know. They model daily the conscious and courageous living I would like my children, and our graduates, to embody.

When my children were small and I wasn’t sure I was doing everything right, my father said, “in the end, what matters the most is that you love them.” I think of that maxim now as I prepare to watch Hudson and his classmates walk across the stage and receive their diplomas. In all my striving, in all my daily exertions to give each one of our children the most holistic, well-rounded, grounded and intellectually stimulating education, I know there are ways I have come up short. But I do know that at the end of the day, as a collegial community, we have given them the tools necessary to begin their own journey toward wholeness. They will leave Emerson with a toolkit for how to begin the search for truths, how to actively care for the earth and its guests, and how to laugh, with perfect timing, at a life-saving joke. So, I rest assured both as a teacher and a mother, that our children have not only been seen and heard and instructed and cared for, but they have, and will continue to be, deeply loved. 

  • by Amy Sutherland

    EWS parent

    EWS High School Literature and Section Chair

Brad Porter