To our loyal leadership blog readers, thank you for another year. We hope you have found this space to be meaningful, instructive, and helpful to you and your family.
This last column of the year is an early goodbye, as our final days of school still lie ahead, culminating in our Moving Up Assembly and Graduation ceremony next week.
Moving Up is a particularly special BDS tradition, where each student’s name is read as they symbolically transition from their current grade to the one they will join in the fall. Another significant Belmont Day tradition that occurred just two weeks ago is the fourth grade’s Greek Festival, the culmination of their study of ancient cultures, particularly those of Egypt and Greece. For anyone whose child has experienced our fourth grade curriculum, you know of the excellent work of the fourth grade team in creating the festival to showcase all that students have learned, from Greek mythology and the Olympic Games to creating a museum and a Hall of Gods.
This year, the fourth grade teaching team of Lana Holman, Emily Crawford, and Tim Gore prepared their students to deliver a brilliant recitation of Constantine P. Cavafy’s poem, “Ithaka,” which is a reminder of Odysseus’ journey and perhaps their own. They inspired me to borrow “Ithaka” for the foundation of the remarks I will deliver at the Moving Up Assembly. Truly, there are few journeys more consequential than a student’s journey from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, and Ithaka awaits our eighth graders who will graduate in a week.
I am sharing Cavafy’s poem here, and I suspect you will quickly see the salience of his words as another year at Belmont Day comes to an end.
If I don’t have the chance to connect with you in person during these final days of the school year, on behalf of all of us at Belmont Day, I wish you a restful, joyful summer. See you next fall, BDS!
Ithaka
By C. P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
