March 2026

A few years ago, before our renovation on the Forbes side of campus existed, before Edwina the guinea pig called our new Preschool classroom home, before the circle of light hung in that entrance's atrium, St. Edmund's Academy was in the middle of a construction project. The old gym had a history worth honoring, a synthetic floor laid over a former ice rink, the original boards still surrounding it like loyal retainers from another era. Alumni will remember it fondly. They will also remember the carpet. On that floor, amid the cheerful chaos of blueprints and possibility, a boy with a wry smile stood studying the architect's rendering.

He pointed to the large circular light fixture drawn into the atrium ceiling.

“That,” he said, with quiet authority, “is the hopes and dreams light. Because that’s where the children’s hopes and dreams are.”

He was in Lower School then. Today, John is in 8th grade. Throughout the year, he reconnects with my son as his Kindergarten buddy. The hopes and dreams light hangs exactly where the architect promised it would. It has been there long enough that the children who pass beneath it each day have no idea it was ever just a drawing on a gymnasium floor, or that little boy named it before it existed.

That is how hope works.

This past week, with spring break just ahead and the building humming with a particular kind of anticipation, I took the stairs. Our O’Brien Early Childhood Center occupies three floors connected by a communicating staircase, Pre-K at the bottom, Preschool in the middle, Kindergarten at the top. One trip up or down passes through every room. It is a short journey in distance and an astonishing one in everything else.

I began at the middle landing.

Lunch was underway. Small chairs pulled to small tables. Lunchboxes open like little treasure chests. Edwina, the class pet, surveyed the scene briefly before deciding it was all a bit much. Across the room, a conversation about dragons was unfolding in the imaginative play area with great seriousness and, apparently, considerable urgency. I squeezed into one of the tiny chairs and asked my question.

One child answered directly. Another stood up and crossed the room to make certain I heard her. A third paused everything to inform me, with great importance, that she had cheese balls today.

Warm weather arriving. Someone beloved at the door. A fairy house built with patient care and genuine faith that the right visitor will find it. Food left out just in case. A playdate extended without hurry. These three- and four-year-olds have not yet learned to separate the worthiness of service from the simple pleasure of giving it. And occasionally, quite convincingly, spring break is simply a very good time for pretzels.

One floor down, the room had settled into its afternoon rhythm. The lights were dim. Each child rested on a square of the large multicolored carpet, arranged in tidy rows. On the SmartBoard, Fred Rogers was explaining, with characteristic gentleness, that no matter what you might imagine, you can never go down the drain. You are far too big.

Around the room, small details held their own kind of gravity. A baseball cap whose brim had nearly disappeared beneath a galaxy of Pokémon stickers. Bright rainbow boots waiting for puddles not yet discovered. One student in full Cinderella attire, her skirt spreading across her carpet square in generous layers of soft blue tulle that shimmered each time she shifted position.

From this relaxed arrangement, the answers came.

The conversation turned to sports. Basketball. Soccer. Football. Hockey. The list grew longer, enthusiasm building with each addition, until one child raised his hand and settled the matter.

A fort that remains standing. Stuffies arranged with care. Marshmallows watched closely. In these answers lives a child beginning to take genuine responsibility for her own experience, picturing a future, making choices, attending carefully to the comfort of those around her, including, notably, the stuffed animals. Grandmas, it should be noted, remain enthusiastic about all of it.

At the top of the stairs, I spent time in both Kindergarten classrooms. Outside the windows, the playdeck moved with steady energy. Inside, small groups bent over reading practice decodables with quiet concentration. A block structure was being negotiated with the gravity of a planning commission. Children drifted in and out of the conversation, offered a thought, returned to their work, then circled back with a revision.

Kindergartners have clear views on rest.

A brain that clears out, not forever, just enough. Fresh air alongside learning air. The recognition that teachers have families, plans, and work that continues beyond the classroom. These are quiet, hard-earned understandings, formed not through instruction but through being known and taken seriously in a place that models exactly that. A child who notices the humanity of her teacher is a child who has been seen. “Learning air” may be the most precise thing anyone has said about what school asks of a child, and a five-year-old said it.

Spring break matters.

Spring break matters, the noun kind first. Fairy houses and flaming marshmallows. Grandma Yaya. Rainbow boots meeting their first puddle of the season. Every stuffed animal unpacked and arranged with care. A fort that stands a little longer. This is the stuff of childhood, specific and unhurried and entirely sufficient.

Spring break matters, the verb kind too. The children who pass beneath the hopes and dreams light each day are not in a race to somewhere else. They are here. They are known. They are valued. They are being challenged to grow at the pace their development requires, no faster, no slower.

John stood on a gym floor years ago and named a light that did not yet exist. He could not have known the building it would hang in was still unfinished, or that one day a kindergartner he had never met would become his buddy, or that they would walk together beneath the very fixture he had named.

Hugo, for his part, has no idea the light has a name.

He will learn it in good time.

That is the space we protect at St. Edmund’s Academy. Not a shortcut to somewhere else, but the room for children to be fully, unhurriedly themselves. The preschooler who builds a fairy house and leaves food out (just in case!) is tending to something real. The kindergartner who needs fresh air instead of learning air for a few days is responding to something real. The child resting on her carpet square while Fred Rogers explains that everything is going to be okay is exactly where she should be.

Spring break matters because childhood matters. And childhood, here, is allowed to take its time.

I wish every member of our community a break filled with fresh air, good movies, carefully monitored marshmallows, and at least one afternoon where nobody tells you it is time to clean up yet.