A Welcome Back Letter to the Wheeler Community

Dear Wheeler Community,

I spent some time this summer at the beach — after four years, I am starting to approximate a Rhode Islander! At this particular beach, there is a spot where the land takes a turn and meets a river. The river’s current can sometimes rush right up to the incoming ocean waves. On an especially glorious afternoon, I spent a few minutes watching the waters gather repeatedly. There is no real rhythm to it — sometimes this collision creates an eddy, sometimes a bigger peak, and sometimes multiple peaks that dissolve into nothing. It’s both beautiful and chaotic.

Earlier that same day, I’d read a New York Times piece about the COVID-19 pandemic that referenced Dr. Michael Osterholm, a disease research expert out of the University of Minnesota, who said, “we ascribed far too much human authority over the virus.” We have to take our approach, he said, with “two doses of vaccine and one dose of humility.”

Today, as we approach the beginning of another school year, we continue to meet the uncertainty, twists, and turns of the pandemic. But we have some agency in deciding how we approach our time together. Ever an optimist, I think we can meet the challenges this pandemic has wrought with a sense of joy, spirit, and community. Despite the disheartening news stories, the mitigation strategies we must put (back) in place, our weariness, and the ways that the world and even our neighborhoods can seem so divided, I am expecting this year to be filled with much happiness and connection, a sentiment that you will find shared by our division leadership, as you can read in their welcome back letters.

Below is an extraordinary poem that former faculty member Ann Bruno P’18, ’20 authored and read at our 2021 Commencement Exercises. “A Gathering” was the invocation that began that powerful ritual, and I share Ann’s lines again to invoke this new school year. The Wheeler she beautifully describes embodies all that we will aspire to as we reunite with old friends, welcome new members of our community, and return to the intellectual, artistic, and athletic pursuits that have provided generations of students with an excellent education and set them up for impactful lives.

A graphic of a poem titled "A Gathering." The poem reads: Let us gather here in this place where we played in the dirt, dug cleats into packed earth, passed the baton, rounded the bend; let us gather in the echo of Sondheim sung in a cool clearing, of the clean squeak of rubber soles on gym floor, of secrets whispered on Junebug Mountain. Let us gather under the same sun that led us through unfamiliar gates on a street called Hope to rooms where we found derivatives, incorporated evidence, mastered the subjunctive, crafted, hypothesized, dissected, where our fingers were stained with paint. Let us gather in the name of candles lit from someone else’s flame, in the name of shared sorrow, shared joy, in the name of friendship lighting our faces like firepit embers. Let us gather in the beauty of pink petals and baby quail, of clouds shaped like lions and cows; let us gather in the cadences of one another’s recited names. Let us gather so that we might make room in our hearts for accidents, for all that we can’t predict, for the love of those whom we haven’t yet met. Let us gather in this fluttering green air, so that we might have the faith and valor to go forth into the unknown with gratitude for having been here together. Let us gather, this very day, so that we might begin.

As we prepare to begin the 2021-22 school year, there is so much to look forward to! Personally, I am excited to reconnect with faculty and staff at The Wheeler Farm this month, as we think collectively about our students and the year of learning to come. I also cannot wait to see you and our students on campus and at our first-ever Back to School Bash at the Farm on the evening of September 2. Of course, I am most eager to watch our kindergarteners and our seniors process across the courtyard together behind the gold lion and the purple cow as we have done each year for decades. And that is just the beginning of all the meaningful activity to come!

On our Back to School website, you will find links from areas across the school, directing you to the division welcome messages I referenced earlier and a variety of important information for the fall, including the latest FAQs from the Healthy Wheeler Task Force. If you have not done so already, be sure to read our update from earlier this week regarding vaccinations, and please share your information with us as soon as possible.

We all hope these precious weeks of hugs and smiles have given you a sense of peace and restoration; we are looking forward to a wonderful re-“gathering” with everyone.

Head of School standing in front of Hope Building
Allison Gaines Pell