Back to School for 2024-25!

Dear Families,

I hope all of you have been enjoying a somewhat slow and joyful summer. While there is a bit more of the break still to come, Wheeler is back in your inbox to share some individual messages and important information in preparation for the new school year.

As we departed for summer, I shared a reflection and a charge with our faculty and staff that have remained resonant as we’ve traversed these last few months and prepared for fall, and I would like to share them with you today.

In the spring, I had the chance to work with seven Upper School students with very different experiences and opinions, who wanted to discuss the ongoing war in the Middle East. I believed that if we could find a way to talk and listen to one another, we would be fulfilling a most important job: to provide an opportunity to see and listen to others, something that requires practice and that so many people are struggling to do, whether in person or online. Over a series of conversations, I was impressed by the ways our students were able to listen respectfully, make good choices about their interactions in almost every situation, and respond well when we asked them to reconsider their words and their perspectives. It was clear to me that the adults in their lives, both parents and teachers, are doing something right by giving them important tools for productive dialogue and, even more, by raising them in an environment of care and concern, where they have been reminded that if one of us is hurting in a community as richly diverse as our own, so are we all. Our students always inspire me. As expected, there were hard moments and some missteps in our meetings, but I was proud of the group for prioritizing the effort to connect and converse across deep and sometimes difficult differences.

Of course, this is no accident: We are lucky to be together at Wheeler, a school that has carefully built and tended this culture of care and engagement over generations. We have intentionally created a diverse and pluralistic community so that we have opportunities to practice care and connection with others. We also have this small state of Rhode Island’s origin story and Roger Williams’ “lively experiment” to thank, all designed to ensure that those of many different beliefs can co-exist in peace, and that multiple truths can be held at once. 

So, we have a great deal to live up to, and this brings me to my hope for this year. I was moved by what Ken Burns, the famous documentarian, shared in his excellent Commencement speech at Brandeis University this spring: “If I have learned anything over those years, it’s that there’s only ‘us.’ There is no ‘them.’ And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life, that there’s a ‘them,’ run away. Othering is the simplistic, binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self-imprisonment.”

I see this tendency so easily all around us and in each of us. The way that we can other, divide, put people and issues into boxes, or apply lenses that aren’t sufficiently complex. We do this not because there is something wrong with us; we do it because we are human and we are playing out, as Burns said, the “inconvenient complexities of history and human nature.” 

As summer winds down and the pace of September takes hold, I wish for us that we will all join together to take a deep breath, and insist on curiosity, complexity, and the rigorous pursuit of a fuller picture. Because more and more, it seems clear that sustaining a vibrant society requires young people who are inquisitive, brave, and humble enough to scramble their certainties.

I think we can all get behind this important vision for our future. Even more, in this historical moment in which we live, I can’t imagine a more important way to live out Mary Wheeler’s vision to learn our powers and be answerable for their use.

All my best,

Allison Gaines Pell P’23, P’25
Head of School

Please read and thoroughly review the letters and information on this Back to School website to ensure a smooth start to the school year!