TOAD Talk: Grace Lowe

Good morning everyone,

 

First, I want to congratulate the senior class on an extraordinary Senior Ex weekend. I attended many of your presentations, and I was so impressed--not just by the depth of your work, but by the way you shared it. The energy on campus, the stories I heard, the pride people felt in your work (myself included) made it clear that something meaningful happened here. 

 

One of the things that makes Senior Exhibitions so special at Thacher is that they happen in front of this community. For the most part, the people in those rooms are the people who know you best: your teachers, coaches, advisors, classmates, dormheads, prefects or prefectees, family and friends. In a small community like ours, that means something.

 

Because presenting to strangers can be intimidating. But presenting to people who know your habits, your growth, your strengths, your rough drafts, your moments of confidence and your moments of doubt--that requires a different kind of courage.

 

For our visitors at assembly, Senior Ex asks students to become investigators, storytellers, problem solvers, and communicators. You choose something that matters to you, dig deeply into it, and then stand up in front of others to share what you’ve learned.

And one element of the process I found myself thinking about this year was the expert interviews, because that requirement points to a truth that can be easy to forget in practice, even in a place like this: none of us learn alone.

 

We sometimes imagine learning as a solo act. One person, one grade, one accomplishment. But as you all know and experience on this campus, real learning is much messier and much more communal than that. It happens through conversations. Through questions. Through watching how someone else solves a problem. Through borrowing wisdom. Through asking for help. 

 

On Saturday, I was thinking about that a lot, because it was also my son's first birthday. 

And if you’ve ever spent time around a one-year-old, you know they are absolute masters of learning. They learn constantly. Relentlessly. Joyfully. They learn by observing. By trying. By failing. By trying again. By making a huge mess. By falling down and pulling themselves back up. By studying faces. By noticing patterns. By experimenting with gravity in ways the rest of us no longer find charming--except maybe Bodil, whose fabulous Senior Ex reminded me that some people actually enjoy defying gravity. 

 

And most of all, they learn in relationship.

 

Rowan’s first year was supported by an entire ecosystem of people who teach without always realizing they are teaching: parents, grandparents, caregivers, doctors, friends, neighbors, and others who show up with patience and kindness. So while yesterday was Rowan’s first birthday, it also felt like a marker of my own first year of learning – learning how to be a parent, how to function while exhausted and sleep deprived, how to hold joy and worry at the same time, how to accept help, and, most of all, how to become a beginner again.

 

And if Senior Ex had required me to include expert interviews, I would have had many.

I would interview colleagues and friends here at Thacher who somehow balance it all and manage to do demanding work with grace and humor.

 

I would interview the countless faculty, staff and partners who delivered meals or supplies to our door and continued to check in on us throughout this year.

 

I would interview fellow parents who offered wisdom exactly when I needed it.

 

I would interview anyone who reminded me that growth does not happen in isolation.

 

That’s one of the beautiful things about a school like this one. Expertise lives everywhere here.

 

It lives in classrooms and barns, on fields and stages, in dorms and offices, in kitchens and workshops. It lives in people who have been here for decades and in people who arrived this year. It lives in seniors presenting capstone projects and in ninth graders figuring out how to belong.

Sometimes we think expertise means having all the answers. But it can also mean knowing how to keep learning. How to ask a better question. How to listen. How to revise your thinking. How to stay curious. How to help someone else grow.

 

So seniors: congratulations not only on what you presented, but on the questions you pursued and the people you learned from along the way.

 

And to everyone else: wherever you are in your own process--whether you feel like an expert, a beginner, or something in between--remember that learning is not a performance of perfection.

 

It is a practice of attention.

It is a willingness to be changed.

It is the humility to ask.

And it is the generosity to share what you know when someone else needs it.

 

Thank you, and happy Monday.