Each year in early June, we mark the achievement of completing Middle School with a student-selected, themed luncheon that includes student speakers, who regale us with stories about our 8th graders, a student-elected adult speaker, and a slideshow. We also present the newly-minted high schoolers with “Class of ” tees. Congratulations, Class of 2019!
Ms. Claire welcomed the Middle Schoolers, their teachers, and their parents with the following.
Welcome to the Independent School of Winchester’s second annual luncheon honoring Middle Schoolers completing the 8th grade. Welcome, teachers—who have worked so hard to prepare our 8th graders for high school and for life! Welcome, 6th and 7th graders—in whose honor this event will be in just a year or two. Welcome to our rising 6th graders—who begin Middle School in the Fall—and to our high school students, who wanted to see their dear friends through this important milestone. And welcome especially to Mariana, to Katherine, and to their parents. We are here to honor you!
Our theme today is the book Little Women. Please enjoy the High Tea prepared by the Kornreiches and the Spargers. Many thanks to Lenore and Dee!
Hopefully most of you know that Little Women is a novel written by Louisa May Alcott in the late 1860s. It features the four March sisters and their parents facing a myriad of challenges during the American Civil War. My family had the good fortune to visit the home where Louisa May Alcott lived for many years. Much of Little Women was based on her own life experiences. We laughed when we discovered that her parents had started a progressive school in a barn in their front yard—a little close to home for us!
This 147 year old novel has much to teach us! It speaks to ambition, which abounds in both Mariana and Katherine: “Jo’s ambition was to do something very splendid. What it was, she had no idea as yet, but left it for time to tell her, and meanwhile, found her greatest affliction in the fact that she couldn’t read, run, and ride as much as she liked.”
Little Women also speaks to the challenge of getting one’s emotions in check—a skill that figures big in the transition from elementary school to high school. Jo March’s “quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic.” One of the tricks to surviving the Middle School years is to figure out how to weather those ups and downs and how to hold one’s tongue, especially when addressing one’s parents.
Hopefully, now that Ms Diane, Ms Brigitte, Ms Christy, Ms Becky, Mr Jay, Ms LaTasha, and Ms Kerry are almost done with you, you also know that is important to, “Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.” Translation: in the words of Ms Diane, “Get a planner and use it!”
Congratulations, 8th graders. I will close with Jo March’s thoughts: “I want to do something splendid…something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.” At ISW, we are quite sure you will both astonish us one day. We are already so proud of you!
And now, in the words of Louisa May Alcott, “Let us be elegant or die.”