A Season of Anticipation and Joy
Dr. Liz Willis
Dear Villa,
Welcome back to three of the happiest weeks of the school year–those between Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks! I pray that you and yours enjoyed a wonderful holiday away from campus, and that your children returned refreshed and ready to learn. The next three weeks will be busy and joyful, marked with music and celebration, including at our upcoming Illuminata on Thursday, December 11th.
I also hope that your parent/teacher conferences were engaging and informative, and that you experienced genuine partnership with our Villa faculty and staff. As a learning community rooted in relationship, we are committed to journeying with you in support of your student, and to openly sharing the celebrations and challenges that each school year involves. For those families with older students, you’ll note that we dedicated this year’s fall conferences to exclusively involve parents and teachers. This is no departure from our mission of empowering young people to be agents of their own intellectual growth; students in grades 3-8 will be invited to join conferences in the spring. However, at this point in the year, fall conferences provide an opportunity for families to hold adults-only conversations and candidly share all of the questions and feedback that might be top of mind at the opening of a school year. Similar to a large family meal, sometimes it’s helpful to have an “adults table” when information is being served.
Yesterday marked the first Sunday of Advent, the Christian liturgical season that prepares for and celebrates the birth of the Christ child. The beginning of a season of joyful anticipation, the first Sunday also invites us into quiet reflection, encouraging pause and contemplation as we wait for glimmers of light and change. Mid-winter celebrations across faith traditions include this element of hopeful waiting, this very human eagerness to move beyond the long, dark days and nights and into the promises of what’s to come. In this spirit of both reflection and mid-winter goodness, we share the following schedule change.
Since the commencement of my tenure as Villa’s Head of School, I have delivered a State of the School address in mid-spring. This year, we are moving that address up to provide a mid-year update rather than a too-early “year in review.” We strongly encourage every family to attend this in-person event, now scheduled for Thursday, January 29th, at 5:30 PM in the Parlor. Childcare and refreshments will be provided as a number of community members join me in sharing an update on Villa’s strategic plan progress–where we are, and where we’re headed. If you, too, love data on faculty retention, finances, programmatic developments, and campus enhancements, there’s nowhere you’d rather be!
Thank you for your partnership, your kindness, and your joy, particularly as shared through your remarkable children we are so fortunate to call “ours.”
All my best,
Villa Academy Head of School