Superintendent's Letter

Fall 2009

Dear Parent or Guardian:

Today’s letter is the first in a continuing series of letters I will be writing to you periodically regarding the life of the school and its educational mission. As parents, you are no doubt aware that your children learn many things at school: reading, spelling, mathematics, literature -- the list is a varied and interesting one. But, of course, they also learn to make friends with other students and to negotiate the challenging world of teachers, tests, and homework.  For them, it is the first taste of the responsibilities and rewards that accompany life as a citizen. They learn to be a member of their school community as a way of preparing to take their place in the wider community of educated adults, where they may one day found their own families and contribute to the common good, or as we aptly say in Massachusetts, the commonwealth.

One of the school’s most important founding principles is the idea that, in order to reap the benefits of membership in this commonwealth and to contribute to it, Mystic Valley students should be educated regarding the fundamental ideals of our American culture. Recently, on September 17th, we marked the two hundred and twenty-second anniversary of the signing of our country’s Constitution. Here at the school, our high school students gathered in the nearby Irish-American Hall to conduct a complete reading of the Constitution. Numerous students took an active part in the reading. The event was one example of our school’s efforts to make known the essential details of a document that is a central pillar of our American culture.

I think it is significant that the event took place in a hall dedicated to a group of Americans who remain one of the many national groups that have made our country what it is today. Our country continues to be a “nation of nations” whose great strength and singular challenge is the multiplicity of peoples who make it up. Our school has readily accepted the challenge of passing on to all of our students, whatever their backgrounds, the great heritage that unites them as Americans.  And, since we can only meaningfully appreciate and live by the values that we have first tried to understand, we will continue to provide opportunities for our students to grow in the knowledge that all Americans need to take their rightful place as fully educated adult citizens.

Not many years ago, a study was conducted by researchers at Columbia University in New York to try to determine some of the attributes that successful families have in common. One interesting but not too surprising result of the study was that those families who made time each day to eat together had children who were much less likely to engage in drug abuse, alcohol abuse and many other well-publicized perils of the high school years. It seems that the familiar and comforting regularity of meals taken together, and the conversation that goes along with it, have a way of anchoring young people and their parents to the important elements of family life: shared celebrations, shared ideals, and the knowledge that someone cares about even the smallest details of one’s growth and happiness.

This study not only affirms what we perhaps intuitively know already but is also helpful because it reminds us of what we may have forgotten. I also think that its general conclusion fits well with the school’s attempts to provide our students with a grounding in our country’s fundamental ideals. Just as each family has its own customs, celebrations and traditions, so does each nation. These traditions must be explicitly affirmed and reinvigorated with each new generation so that those things which unite us may always be seen as greater than whatever individual differences we may have.

At your nightly dinner table, or perhaps over a weekend lunch, you might consider discussing  with your child the importance of our country’s  ideals and thereby reinforce the school’s efforts to help all of our students grow in an appreciation for the great heritage that so many of our fellow Americans sacrificed to create and hand on to their children.

On behalf of the teachers and administrators here at Mystic Valley, I wish to assure you that we will continue to work to build a school that will support the efforts you as parents are making to educate your children in the ideals we all hold in common as Americans.

Sincerely,

Joseph R. McCleary, Ph.D.
Superintendent/Director