The prospect of change might sound scary but the absence of change is stultifying. Water is an interesting metaphor for change as it shares many of the properties inherent in change. Water moves, bubbles, crashes, drops and finds the path of least resistance. Water is both perpetual motion and unmovable force. Water creates currents. Still water can be tricky, confusing and deep. When water doesn’t move it is dirty, undrinkable, a breeding ground for illness, stagnant.
Change is revelatory. It hums, it teases, it refreshes, it surprises. It is change that goes boom at night.
We get to recognize change or not; celebrate change or not; embrace change or not.
Institutional permanence is an oxymoron. Institutional change is a constant simply because staying exactly the same is the corporate equivalent of an empty niche, a vacuum in nature. It isn’t sustainable therefore it isn’t an option. So we, as a Quaker School, as a community grounded in Quaker principles, get to determine the direction, the pace and the urgency or tranquility of change. We do this together, recognizing that the manner in which we initiate change as well as the manner in which we respond to change is part of our journey. Later, inevitably, our response to change will trigger our successors need to build on top of (or, perhaps, tear down) what we had put in place. By viewing change as a constant, and understanding our role as stewards, we recognize that we are responsible for the place only for the time that we are here. Seeing change as a continuum illuminates the importance of process. Understanding change as process highlights that at least as important as the particular outcome we are seeking, which is a step on the way toward something else that we can’t yet quite see, is a way of thinking about what we do rooted in respect, trust and integrity. These are at the core of what we teach and what we learn at Sandy Spring Friends School.