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Melissa Soderberg, Head of School

August 3, 2024

 

Dear Columbus Academy Families,

 

A few weeks ago, I was in the Frank Church Wilderness of Idaho on the River of No Return. Rafting. Rapids. Heat. Stars. The challenge of living completely outdoors – with people whom I barely knew and who now share in some of my more intimate emotions – reminds me that sometimes the best summers are actually spent as visceral experiences.

 

Wet bathing suits for hours is an instinctive memory from my childhood. And as a middle-schooler, when I was “too old” to be able to freely climb on my father, summer provided the excuse to stop acting my age and hang onto the wet skin of his back as I jumped off his shoulders into the lake. My parents slept late, had time to play board games and were more physically available than the rest of the year. Sunburn, dirt and sand happily filled our lives when they might have been cursed intruders in other months.

 

Given that I am writing to you in early August, your family may have yet to experience your time away from routines, but I hope there is some magical schedule-breaking you can do together because you and your children will remember it fondly for years. As a friend recently reminded me, from the time children are school-aged, there are really only 15 summers, many of which are spoken for with high school jobs and activities. So, in the most cliched way possible, start making memories.

 

Back on campus, the activity level is picking up as upper school fall athletics begin, teachers are returning to classrooms, and final coats of paint on walls and pavement get completed. We are excited to welcome our new faculty and staff in the coming week and to introduce our new admissions officers: Director of Enrollment Management Adriana Matzke, Director of Admissions for Grades 6-12 Patrick Skahan and Associate Director of Admissions for Grades 2-5 Elizabeth Sinclair (who previously taught third grade).

 

As you begin to receive lots of information from the school, be sure to glean the less practical messages of vision, philosophy, direction and intention from the divisions and programs. We are a school with many great minds, both young and old. Wisdom bursts through from our pre-kindergartners as much as from our most veteran faculty and coaches, and we don’t want to miss the point of us all being together in community – to build each other up to be stronger by knowing one another.

 

In closing, I’ve included one of my favorite poems – “So Much Happiness” by Naomi Shihab Nye – reminding us that happiness is contagious and powerful even as it is hard to pin down.


It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,

a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,

something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.


But happiness floats.

It doesn’t need you to hold it down.

It doesn’t need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

and disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

and now live over a quarry of noise and dust

cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

it too could wake up filled with possibilities

of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

the soiled linens and scratched records...


Since there is no place large enough

to contain so much happiness,

you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

into everything you touch. You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,

and in that way, be known.


Here’s to a wonderful year!

 

Warmly,

Melissa