February 2026

As we closed our weekly Chapel gathering, the lyrics filled the space and drifted onto Darlington Road. Students in first through eighth grade stood shoulder to shoulder, their voices uneven but earnest. Some rushed ahead. Others held back, listening for where to enter. Then the song settled. Breath aligned. The pitch steadied, gathering against the rafters before settling back across the floor. What emerged was a sound full enough to carry weight and confident enough to leave its edges unpolished.

Across campus in the bright welcome of the Gathagan Gymnasium, our youngest students gathered for Wolf Pup Pack Meeting. Each month they explore one Core Value through story, song, and conversation. “It’s Such a Good Feeling” reverberates off the walls, joined by laughter. Wolf Pup arrives with a question about fairness, honesty, or courage, and small voices respond with growing steadiness, learning how to take turns, share space, and make room for one another.

Back in the Chapel, our Lower School students leaned forward, jackets still crisp, singing with the confidence children bring when they know their voice matters. At the front, our 8th graders faced the gathering as the leaders of our school, some wearing blazers sized to have easily fit their parents, sleeves riding just long enough to mark the distance between who they were and who they are becoming. First graders and eighth graders stood within sight of one another, separated by years and united by the same refrain.

The refrain rose textured and plural, rough in places and resolute in others. It did not soar cleanly. It climbed, voice by voice, steadying as breath deepened and posture shifted. The sound thickened and lifted toward the rafters. In that shared rising gathered an extraordinary range of cultures, faiths, and family stories.

Woody Guthrie’s refrain carries that same conviction. This land was an invitation to shared responsibility. Watching children lift their voices side by side, I was reminded that such promises endure only when they are practiced. At St. Edmund’s Academy, that practice is deliberate and daily. Children learn patterns built through steady acts of attention, restraint, and care.  Belonging here is not merely a feeling. It is practiced in small, repeatable acts: saying “please” and “thank you,” waiting until others finish speaking, turning toward someone who feels left out.  

In that refrain, our community quietly honored the long arc of many journeys. Families rooted in Pittsburgh for generations stood beside families who arrived more recently. Some were drawn here by universities, hospitals, and research labs. Others came seeking opportunity, stability, or safety.  Distinct paths converged in a single space, held together by Core Values and a commitment larger than any one story.

That harmony is cultivated year after year, voice by voice. Ours is a Preschool through 8th grade community, a longer runway for childhood, where children are known well, challenged steadily, and held to standards that prepare them to thrive. The discipline that steadied their voices in Chapel steadies their academic lives. Each year builds intentionally on the last. Teachers work across divisions so growth unfolds over time instead of resetting each fall. An early observation about curiosity or leadership resurfaces years later in an Upper School advisor’s conversation. In our school, growth is noticed, named, and built upon. These habits prepare children not only for the conversations of today, but for the demands of secondary school and the wider world beyond our doors. 

Children learn more than a song. They practice belonging within structure. For our youngest students, that practice looks simple: choosing a partner, speaking with care, noticing who is left out. These daily acts become habits that help a student speak when it would be easier to stay quiet, stay with a hard text rather than skim, and stand beside a friend instead of stepping away.  At its best, education forms children who are capable and humane, sharpening intellect while deepening respect.  

I saw that taking shape in a recent conversation with a kindergarten student. “I love Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior,” he said. When I asked why, he paused. “Because about a hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to go to school with all my friends. Friends with white skin would go to one school, and friends with brown skin to another. That’s a mean idea. Dr. Martin Luther King made it good to be with all my friends.”

There was no performance in his answer. Just a child naming what he saw and felt.  Separation was wrong. Together was right. His understanding was not precise, but it was sturdy, rooted in the friendships he treasures and in the halls he walks each day. These moments grow in classrooms shaped by teachers who know their students well. Guided by our Core Values, children learn early that noticing difference reflects care and that naming it strengthens belonging.

Over time, they begin to notice that what feels obvious to them may not feel obvious to someone else. We see through lenses shaped by memory and fear, some hard-earned, some inherited. In our classrooms, humility sounds like waiting an extra beat before responding, hands still folded on a desk. It looks like a student saying, “Help me understand what you meant.” It feels like choosing a quieter tone as the conversation sharpens.

The small voice that learns to say “I didn’t mean to hurt you” grows into something steadier. The habits formed on the Preschool carpet deepen over time. I saw them alive in my eighth grade classroom as students read Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, lifting their eyes from the page to meet one another’s gaze.

A small detail halted the room. Claudette describes needing shoes. Her mother traced the outline of her feet onto a brown paper bag and sent her to the store with that shape because she could not try them on. The sentence is spare. Its weight is not. The brown paper bag becomes a boundary made visible, a message pressed into a child’s body: you do not belong here.

Because differences are named openly and held with care, they did not treat this as distant history. They treated it as present. They leaned forward and engaged. Some spoke quickly. Others went quiet, eyes fixed on the page, absorbing the weight of what a Jim Crow rule could do to a child’s sense of self. No one needed to be told to take it seriously. They understood that attention is respect.

The kindergarten child who called segregation “a mean idea” was protecting his friendships. The eighth graders were doing the same work at a deeper level, holding complexity without retreating. They met face to face and saw more than labels. What unfolded asked them to listen without retreating and to keep thinking even when the conversation grew uncomfortable.

And so the work continues. Each week in Chapel and at Wolf Pup Pack Meetings, we return to our Core Values through questions that shape how children think and how they live. A three-year-old practices taking turns. An eighth grader grapples with intellectual responsibility. The same values steady both. We ask: How can we work together across our differences? Why does respect matter? What should I do when I fall short of my own standards? How does responsibility build community? These questions linger. They follow children onto the playground, where a game pauses so someone else can join, and into classrooms, where a hand rises not to win a point but to extend the conversation.

Recently, our Lead Student addressed the question: How can I have high standards and still be kind to myself? She described training daily during swim season and expecting improvement at every meet. When her time did not improve, she let a single number define her effort. Then she reframed it. High standards ask us to look clearly at our effort without letting a single number define us. “Progress isn’t always obvious,” she said. “It comes from showing up every day.”  

Later in the program, we commend students whose daily choices reflect our Core Values and name a new Lead Student. The cycle continues. Week after week, children learn that character is built in small decisions: competing with dignity, revising a draft, learning through mistakes. These values live in our curriculum and routines, shaping how children think, persevere, and grow.

We close by singing our alma mater, promising to seek the way of life without fear. That promise gathers the morning into a single line. Fearlessness begins in knowing one’s dignity, standing firm in conviction, and honoring the worth of others. It belongs to children, and to the adults who model it beside them.

Then the Chapel doors open. Children stream back through the iconic red door, their song still lingering in the air. Across campus, in the bright hush of the Gathagan Gymnasium, our youngest students bid farewell to Wolf Pup and return to carpet circles and tables where crayons wait beside unfinished drawings, where blocks rise and fall and rise again. Older students move through dawn’s early light toward classrooms and playing fields, toward conversations not yet finished and friendships still unfolding. The music thins, but the practice remains.

As I turn toward the Darlington entrance, I see a student holding the door against the cold. She waits longer than she has to without being asked. I notice the St. Edmund’s Academy patch stitched neatly onto her blazer and her ungloved hand steady on the cold metal handle despite the wind pressing against her.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome, Dr. Barnett. Have a nice day.”

The door closes softly behind me. The song from Chapel has quieted, but its meaning has not. What filled the sanctuary now lives in this small exchange. A student steady in the cold. A gesture offered without fanfare.  Practice made visible.  

This place rises from what we practice together.

Here, children are expected to care deeply and think hard, to blend their voices and listen for others, to hold a door and make eye contact, to examine an idea with care, to extend respect across differences.

Before entering my office, I pause and watch her walk down the hall toward her fourth grade classroom, blazer straight, stride sure. The last note dissolves. Another door opens. The practice continues inside.