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Dear Parents & Carers
It was wonderful to welcome so many of you to our Welcome Evening last week and to have the opportunity to talk a little about our hopes and ambitions for your daughters this year – and, indeed, for all the years they spend with us at Channing.
But perhaps my favourite description of what we are trying to create came not from me, but from one of our new families. A parent whose daughter has recently joined the Junior School told me how happy she is to come to school each morning. When he asks her what she is most excited about, there is simply: “Too much to be excited about!” What a wonderful problem to have. And what a wonderful way for a child to feel about school.
We want our girls to arrive each morning feeling that there is too much to discover. Too much to wonder about. Too much to try. Too many questions to ask, books to disappear into, problems to solve, friendships to nurture, ideas to explore and opportunities to grasp. Because childhood should be full of possibility.
At our Welcome Evening, I asked parents to hold one question in mind: Who is your daughter becoming?
Our vision, Girls Enjoying Success, is deliberately about both parts of that phrase. We want our girls to enjoy these precious years: to laugh, play, make friends, discover new passions and experience that wonderful feeling of being excited by what tomorrow might bring. But we are also proudly ambitious for them: not simply for what they will achieve, but for the young people they will become.
We want them to be curious enough to ask why. Brave enough to have a go when they are unsure. Resilient enough to find themselves in the Learning Pit and keep climbing. Kind enough to notice when somebody else needs a hand. Confident enough to develop their own views, and open-minded enough to listen when somebody sees the world differently. And, importantly, we don’t expect that journey always to be easy.
There will be mistakes and disappointments. There will be things they cannot do yet. There will be grazed knees, wobbly moments and friendship fires. Sometimes they will need us to help; sometimes they will need us to encourage them to have another go. Growing up is, after all, a work in progress.
That is why the partnership between home and school matters so much. Together, we have the enormous privilege of helping each girl discover not only what she can do, but who she can become.
This is my ninth year leading our fabulous Junior School, and one of the greatest privileges of having been here for that length of time is seeing how quickly that journey unfolds. The little girl who once needed to hold my hand at the gate becomes the girl confidently holding somebody else’s. The child who once said, “I can’t do it”, discovers that she can. Interests become passions, uncertainty becomes confidence and, almost without us noticing, little girls begin to become remarkable young women.
The reading books, playground adventures, assemblies, school trips, friendships, moments of triumph and moments when things go wrong can sometimes seem like ordinary school days. But they aren’t ordinary days. They are the days in which our girls are becoming themselves.
As another busy week begins at the Junior School, I hope our girls continue to come through the gates curious about what the day might hold, ready to be 10% Braver and feeling that there is, quite simply, “too much to be excited about.”
To all of our families celebrating Sukkot, which begins at sundown on Friday, I wish you and your families a joyful and meaningful festival. Chag Sameach!
With warmest wishes for the term
Miss Dina Hamalis
Head of the Junior School
