April 1, 2020
Dear Parents and Guardians,
As we are now in the middle of Week 3 of virtual teaching and learning with our teachers and students, I am hopeful this communique’ finds you and your immediate and extended family members and friends healthy and staying safe.
In recent days, a good friend of mine, a retired Assistant Superintendent of Schools in Vernon Township, in fact, shared the following “And People Stayed Home” poem with me. The poem was written by Kathleen O’Meara in 1869, over 150 years ago, after the Famine in Ireland. The poem reads like this:
And people stayed home
and read books and listened
and rested and exercised
and made art and played
and learned new ways of being
and stopped
and listened deeper
someone meditated
someone prayed
someone danced
someone met their shadow
and people began to think differently
and people healed
2
and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,
dangerous, meaningless, and heartless,
even the earth began to heal
and when the danger ended
and people found each other
grieved for the dead people
and they made new choices
and dreamed of new visions
and created new ways of life
and healed the earth completely
just as they healed themselves.
Please be healthy and stay safe.
Sincerely,
Dennis J. Mudrick
Principal