8 August 2011
Dear Canterbury Parents:
I am writing to you at the time when activity on our campus has reached its annual nadir. Our summer programs have ended, the staff has not yet returned for in-service, many of our administrators are taking one last vacation, and the grass is too dry to cut. The campus is remarkably quiet. This is the time when our school is least like our school.
That will change soon, when the sounds typically associated with campus life- the slamming of car doors, the shouts of greeting, the thump of a soccer ball well kicked, the patter of feet on the chapel floor- will return. In doing so, these sounds will restore our school to its appropriate state of affairs. It seems to me that there is a direct relationship between the amount of noise on a school’s campus and the amount of education that takes place. Schools should be noisy places.
My experience demonstrates that beginning around the second week of August, the noise level at Canterbury begins to increase. In fact, there has been steady stream of parents and students into the office over the course of the last week. I expect that this phenomenon will only intensify this week. My experience also demonstrates that the desire of our students to return to Canterbury begins to intensify around this time. This reality conflicts with my own experience as a child. Whereas I couldn’t endure the prospect of another school year and would go to Promethean efforts to prolong summer vacation and avoid the start of another year, Canterbury students are eager to return.
This promises to be an exciting year. We have developed big plans for Canterbury’s future that we will begin to unveil this fall. These plans promise to generate a great deal of excitement within the community and to position our school for the future. Thus, for these reasons, I am particularly excited about the upcoming school year.
Very soon now, you will be dropping your children off at Canterbury for the new school year. All of us here look forward to their arrival, and the opening day of school may sound like a commotion to some, to us it is the “joyful noise” that reminds us of why we are here.
Very truly yours,
Burns Jones
Head of School