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When young people are given the creative space to work towards a common goal that excites and motivates them, what they can do is scary, startling, if not downright astonishing. Yesterday,Island School students were charged with the opportunity to plan and perform the annual Haunted Campus for Deep Creek Middle School students. Each fall semester The Island School designs and opens up a terrifying, bio-diesel curdling Halloween celebration that will make the hair on your mosquito bites stand up.

DCMS students arrived in full costume and began the evening with fun and games, bobbing for apples and pinning the broom on the witch. Then, led by teenage guardians of the underworld, they were ushered around campus to visit the half-dead orchard, an insane asylum, a boat house scuba massacre, and the med-room gone maniac. As the night progressed and as sonic screams echoed off of solar panels, I found myself started by the most unexpected thing. It was not Geoff, the head of facilities, running around with a chainsaw that caught my eye—he does this every year—nor was it the ketchup dripping mouths on faces pale with baby powder that stopped me in my tracks, what I was most surprised by was the sheer intensity of energy and creativity our students demonstrated.

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Students had all of an hour and a half at the most to plan for the event. The night before, I had given them basic instructions about expectations about the idea of a Haunted Campus for DCMS. They split into groups and spent about one hour of study hours brainstorming and planning. Then, the day of the event, they had only the time during and after meals to actually design, decorate and prepare their haunted spaces. Then, in a final surge of energy as day turned into night, during the half of an hour after dinner, they put the finishing touches on. They adorned themselves with the fake injury make-up that was left over from our Wilderness First Responder class here this summer, and they were ready for show time.

I hope the images  attached here will give you some hint of the passion and imagination that Island School students demonstrated last night. It was an overwhelming success, the best Haunted Campus I have seen yet, and undeniable proof of what young people are capable of.

Kids today are not lazy. They are not dispassionate or distracted. They are not apathetic. Any amount of evidence that might suggest otherwise is actually just proof that the context is all wrong. Young people need the right goals. They need the space to achieve them creatively. They need activity and engagement and things to get excited about. Yesterday, I watched as students rallied together and performed the kinds of critical skills that educators everywhere hope to cultivate in their students. They designed and created, solving problems as they arose, petitioned faculty for resources when they could not find them on their own, allied staff and students toward a common goal, and all under extreme time constraints. Their creative ingenuity was mind-blowing.

As Maxey and I reflected together this morning, crashing through waves at daybreak, so proud of our students’ success, we thought together about how to translate that enthusiasm, drive, and imagination into the classroom. Maxey looked over at me and said: “Why can’t schools look like that? Why can’t students everywhere do what we did last night?” Now that is a haunting question that we should all be asking ourselves.

Last Friday a candidate visiting for our Head of School position, asked us to think this way about our semester program as a whole. What kinds of behaviors and ideas do we want to see in our students after a semester of The Island School. Kayak trips. Community meetings. Dorm life. Morning exercise. Advisory time. Ceremonies. Celebrations. Legacy Days. What do we want our legacy to be? How do we teach culture? What do we want a student at the end of the semester to look like? In a year? In five years? And most importantly, how do we get them there? Backwards design.

He arranged for student leaders to organize small groups of Island School students and one group of faculty in attendance, to think about an element of our school’s mission statement: “creating an intentional community whose members are cognizant of their limitations, abilities, and effect on others.” This is one goal of the Island School mission. Each small group, including the group of faculty, was lead by two students. I sat on an old wooden Pres Room chair, in a circle with the same colleagues sitting in the same chairs, that I face every day: morning and evening circles, circles around tables at faculty meetings, stretching circles after exercise; but, as we sat there facing each other, the ideas that encircled us were new. Facilitated by Franky and Jane, we discussed a critical element of backward design: How will we know when our mission is accomplished? We were charged to make a list of questions that we could ask Island School alumni to evaluate whether those individuals were “cognizant of their limitations, abilities, and effect on others.” Groups split up. The faculty all stayed together as one group, as students led by students, began to discuss their roles as students here.

An aside here to note that some educators out there might likely be unsettled at the idea of un-monitored students alone in rooms assigned to accomplish a task without faculty there to supervise. Shocking. But, for the record, I think that it is exactly this kind of activity that cultivates exactly that which we are discussing…

More shocking were the results.  Though I appreciated the chance to sit down with my colleagues and weave our intensions into a blanketed approach, it was when the groups rejoined and students shared-out, that I found myself with an agape mouth and an admiring mind, totally awed at their self-awareness and critical thought.

The following is a list of questions that our students crafted to reflectively and authentically appraise the people they will become when they leave this place: (Any alumni reading might ask themselves how they would answer the following questions)

How does this person help and support his/her peers? How does this person challenge him/herself? Does this person urge others to challenge themselves? Does this student express him or herself as an individual within the community? Is this person engaged fully in activities? Does this person have a flexible outlook on life? Does this person show appreciation for the opportunities that they are given? Does this person actively pursue his/her own passion(s)? Does this person exhibit leadership when the situation calls for it? Is he or she confident in striking up a conversation with anyone in the community? Does he or she contribute to the well-being of the community, even when not asked? Does he or she understand his or her impact on the natural environment and is proactive towards a sustainable goal? Does he/she have the courage to ask questions and go outside of his/her comfort zone? Does he or she accept challenges and execute them to the best of his or her abilities? Does he or she motivate without dictating? Does he or she respect others’ opinions while still staying true to his/her own? Do they respect their peers and elders? Are they appreciative of what they are given? Are they afraid to ask for help? Do they take initiative? Do they give up when challenged? Do they motivate others who want to quit? Do they look at a problem and try to solve it logically? Do they have an open mind? Is the student readily adaptable to new situations? Is the student able to do things outside of their comfort zone? Can you understand your community/culture/sense of place? Can you relate to and tolerate people who are completely different from you? Can you connect with every person in your community? Does the student voluntarily assist others? Is the person aware of all the ways their actions will impact others? Can the student make decisions for themselves? Can the student be considerate of other people’s values and ideas? Has the student ever done something they told themselves they couldn’t do?

Concentric circles of questions echo around my mind like the eddies pooling around our bodies the next morning in Swim Track. It is our second extra-long morning exercise block—we have them each Saturday—and after swimming three quarters of a mile along the shore, we enter the The Current Cut. Years ago when they were developing the marina, a long stretch was dredged to connect two small carved-out harbors. Now, as the tide shifts around Powell Point on the southern-most tip of Eleuthera, a fast current pulls water from one end to another. Between pulls the water calms for slack tide.  Then the current picks up, reverses, and the force of the tide causes the river to run backward. Over and over each day, The Current Cut shifts like an aquatic teeter-totter.  The odds were against us as we entered the mouth of The Cut.

Having traversed the small harbor inlet, dragging the big cumbersome swim weenie (one of the mechanisms in place to support student safety in the water) behind me like a buoyant parachute, I came upon AJ, Jamie, and Katie H. standing up on the shallow rocks under the bridge that marks the entrance to The Cut, the current was ripping and they were holding on to the bridge pillars thinking about the impossibility of making it any further through the motion of a swim stroke. Has the student ever done something they told themselves they couldn’t do? I swam up next to them and through the open-eyed protection of my swim goggles, I watch their balancing feet on the rocks below me as I pull harder and harder with my stroke against the current. I passed them, stood, and looked back.

“If I can swim against the current while dragging this big weenie, then you definitely can…” AJ laughs.

“There is no way,” she says, still laughing and nervous.

“What do you remember about swimming against current? What is the best approach?” I remind them of a briefing they were given before the swim. Do they look at a problem and try to solve it logically?

“Stay close to the edge and out of the middle of the channel,” Jamie responds.

“So, where it is bubbling right ahead of us, not in the smooth water in the middle?” AJ confirms. On my skin, I can feel the vibration of the little water circles coming toward us. I point out the crux of the swim, a single corner just ten feet ahead.

“Swim as hard as you can, it’s going to feel like you are not going anywhere, but you will be moving by inches. I promise. It will take a minute or two of sustained sprinting but you can do it.” They look at each other. Is this person engaged fully in activities?

“Okay,” agrees AJ as Katie and Jamie wave their heads in agreement. “Jamie, you go first; you are the fastest,” AJ points out. Does this person exhibit leadership when the situation calls for it? Jamie takes a deep breath and lunges her body forward arms stroking ahead of her pulling forward and barely, just, slowly, moving, forward.  A minute passes like this. AJ and Katie are screaming and cheering, things about how Jamie can do it, and swim harder, and you’ve got it! Does this person urge others to challenge themselves? She makes it to the corner, the crux, and grabs on to the rocks, her body flailing in the water rushing past her like an aquatic windsock. She is breathing and yelling about how hard she was swimming and how impossible it is to make it around the corner. AJ, Katie and I are all screaming and cheering back at her. As she catches her breath, AJ decides it is her time to try. Following in suite, she lunges toward the point where Jamie is recovering, ten feet up stream. AJ is thrashing and pulling and kicking and reaching—which are not necessarily the best strategies to swimming hydrodynamically through the water, but are certainly indicative that she is going for it. Does he or she accept challenges and execute them to the best of his or her abilities? Ready to try again, Jamie’s hands forget the rocks and return to the water rushing past her.  Jamie is moving by the centimeter, AJ creeping up by the inch. Katie and I are cheering.  AJ joins Jamie at the point where the current is almost too strong, they both grab onto the rocks again, to rest, again. Now, its Katie’s turn. Following the path measured out in front of her, she begins inching along.  This time, as their bodies wave out behind them, arms outreached and holding on tight, AJ and Jamie are doing the cheering.  It goes on like this: inches of swims, hands creeping along rocks, lurching forward, current resisting, always cheering.

Along the opposite bank of The Cut another group fights the resistance of the tidal creek. Swimming. Trying. Cheering. Together. I stand waist deep, swim support weenie pulling at the harness around my back, thinking about the incredible level of real support I am witnessing, as students pull each other forward.  Again, I find myself with an agape mouth and an admiring mind, totally awed at what they are capable of.

By the time turn around time comes, all three girls had made it around the corner.  I watch as they reappear beyond the point, enjoying the tidal ride downstream.  They are giggling, exhausted and proud. I hear AJ as they pass: “That was sooo worth it.” Does this person show appreciation for the opportunities that they are given? Feeling the echoes of the questions in my mind, I turn and head backward towards school thinking about our design.

When I signed that contract, just before the Oregon spring rains were about to relent, just over a year ago, there were many things that I did not know, anticipate, or expect to be a part of my reality here.  This place is full of firsts. I saw a ray here, in the ocean, for the first time.  I saw a ray breech with its flat planed body expanding like a parachute, five feet above the water, twenty feet in front of me.  I ate guava duff and conch fritters for the first time.  I drove on the left hand side of the road for the first time. I took my first freestyle stroke, with my face in the water, instead of inefficiently, like a dog paddling.  I sprained my ankle, worked for eighteen continuous hours, and made proud parents cry… and all for the first time.

And this week, I was shut up inside a storm-shuttered, candlelit home, stuffed with seven of my faculty friends for almost 24 continuous hours.  I experienced my first ever hurricane.  Another unanticipated first.

At times, the hurricane itself was just as boring as any winter day in Oregon. Locked inside, we looked around at each other thinking: what are we going to do next? Play scrabble again? Watch a movie (though our laptops are starting to run low on batteries…) Is it time to eat again? (I was lucky to be locked into the house of our new sustainable chef, Emery, who spent Hurricane Irene preparing incredibly delicious feasts for our boarded-up crew). Does anyone want to play backgammon? Or maybe, just sit and listen… which was always my favorite option.

The sound of a hurricane is like a freight train turning in circles on your roof like a 20 ton ballerina.  It’s The Nutcracker, gone nuts. It is loud and intense and scary in a really exciting and kind of really terrifying way. Sometimes, the gusts, booms, and breaks become background noise; you can’t see what’s going on out there.  It’s just a mess of loudness. The peak of the hurricane approached overnight as we slept, or tried to sleep.  Between the stuffiness of the boarded up house, holding eight sweating and respirating bodies, and the intensity of trying to sleep under a theater of boxcar ballet, sleep was broken and forced. Then, as the eye of the hurricane passed it was QUIET. The loudest quiet imaginable. It was so quiet, it woke me up. Then, it reversed on itself. The winds picked up from the opposite direction and Irene almost unwinded herself.  Then the winds and rains slowly faded, over hours and hours, just like they came. Peaking out of the backdoor, hours after the eye passed, I saw sheet metal siding bent sideways off of a nearby garage roof, debris everywhere of every kind, a child’s shoe next to the fallen clothesline in the backyard, palm trees down and coconuts dotting the ground in all directions.  We stayed inside until it was safe to leave, waiting for the winds to die down to manageable gusts.

I immerged grateful to find that everyone was safe and okay. We weathered Irene as well as could be hoped for. Some homes in Deep Creek lost roofs; some only lost shingles.  The Island School was peppered with shrubbery. We spent days preparing and stabilizing the campus for Irene’s arrival: everything from taking down the wind turbine to packing classrooms full of plants from the nursery.  And, we have spent the days following tidying up after her departure.

Now we shift our attention to preparing for another storm, of sorts. Starting this Monday we will be receiving a flood of new students for our fall 2011 semester.  My perspective shifts away from my own experience, looking forward to all of the firsts that await them here at school: from the first step they take off the plane at the Rocksound Airport to, to the first pull of a paddle on Kayak, to the last night they will spend here together this December.  Let me be the first to tell you (F.11) there are some incredible, unexpected surprises in store for you here. So, we are ready for you F.11, and welcome to a community of individuals, ready and willing to work together, and prepared to handle the many firsts to come.

Last week, Alec may have been one of the only sixteen year old boys in the entire western hemisphere looking forward to three continuous hours of study.  Except of course, for the other 20 boys who live here in the dorms with him.

And this got me thinking about all of the funny things that Island School has done to me.  I am excited when I have time to clean my toilet.  Cleaning my toilet feels like a day at the spa: refreshing and so luxurious.  I am a brand new woman with a fresh clean toilet.  I appreciate the littlest of things like I would appreciate winning a brand new car on The Price is Right.  A curtain opens and Ta Da: my bright shining toilet.  What a gift! This is my Island School perspective.

I remember one day last fall, I woke up and looked around. I was dressed as a pirate, screaming “Yarr’s!” at students during Pirate Day morning exercise. I realized that I had spent the last 4 months screaming things at students between the hours of 6:30-7:30 a.m.  I had screamed so many things at students: “Just one more minute, you’ve got it!” or “This isn’t WALK-track!” that I thought that maybe I was the single person who screamed more things at teenagers between the hours of 6:30-7:30 a.m., than anyone else on the planet.  I never thought I had so much yell in me; I don’t even like the sound of my loud voice.  But there I was yelling “Yarr!” as my boss was wallowing in the sand, eye-patched and parrot shoulders, “Yarr! We yelled, together.  “Yarr!” And, I remember thinking to myself: “How did I get here?… isn’t this funny?”  But the funny thing about Island School is more than the silly things we do.

Alec’s clever insight got me thinking about all of the funny things that Island School does to the people who live here, to every single person who steps foot on this campus, who comes to know and feel the incredible energy and force of this place.  Mail day is like Christmas.  Sunday is a week long holiday.  A ripe banana shines yellow like gold.  My advisee Elizabeth recently wrote “This place is INTENSE. But, I am honestly loving it right now!”  This is a curious way to feel about a place.  She has also described it to me as “the good kind of hard.”  Funny, Maxey said that very same thing to me just a few weeks ago: “Hard is good.”

I made two students cry yesterday.  That was really hard.  That was not funny at all.  But it was unexpected, and I think that is what Alec meant by funny.

The Island School changes your perspective in unexpected ways.

Yesterday we had mid-term student-teacher meetings.  In ten minute blocks, over the span of five hours, each student met with each of his or her teachers.  I met with twenty-four students.  And mostly, I told them the same things. I spent hours asking students to speak their voices.  The same feedback, over and over: put yourself into your words.  Find your voice.  Speak yourself.  Be liberated.  Share.  Yourself.  Your words.  Speak.  Speak!

Just one student I told to hush.  The hush was crushing.  Yesterday, I told a student that “the greatest thing that words can do is empower others.”  Except that the hidden message of that message was: stop oppressing others with your dominant voice in class.  This was a hard thing to tell a kid, even if it needed to be said, even if she needed to hush in order for her silence to give space to the timid.

As she sat in front of me in pain, I thought of another student who had sat across from me just an hour before: a more timid, soft spoken student.  This girl had cried because she had so much voice that she could not speak.

I returned to the second student, crying because she spoke so much that that no one could hear her voice.  I could not help but notice the irony.  I sat watching, welling with empathy, as the funny things that Island School had done to them, rolled out of their eyes, like unspoken jokes.  How funny.

The funny thing that Island School has done to me is make students cry.  As far as I know I have never made students cry before.  I believe that my students can never be told enough the gifts they possess for the world, the good they can do, the way that they inspire others, or the power they have inside them.  I am not the kind of teacher that makes students cry.  But there I was: one lion, one lamb, both crying in front of me.  How unexpected.

My first semester at Island School sometimes felt like I was at Island School, like a student.  Sometimes it feels like the only difference between the students and the faculty is that we stay. We face all the same struggles: the funny thing that Island School has done to me is that I am looking forward to three continuous hours for lesson prep tomorrow, that yesterday I cried over the power of words.  I see myself reflected in my students.

The Island School has changed my perspective in unexpected ways.

I believe that hard is good.  I believe that hard makes easy look like winning the lottery, like a shiny new porcelain trophy, like it is The Price is Right and “Come on down…You win!”  I think that we need to appreciate the growth and humility that results from profound struggle.  We should find joy and deep gratitude in little small bits of things.  I think that three hours of continuous time to study can be something to look forward to.  I think that there is a good kind of hard.

I believe that tears are as necessary as clean toilets.  And, I think that is a pretty funny thing to think about the world.

Everyday: during lunch, after breakfast, in exploration time, during study hours (with a headlamp spotlight illuminating the performance) I met students in the locations they chose and learned about every emotional inch of this campus.  There was not a single speech that did not make me choke with pride, well-up with gratitude, or grow big eyed in awe of the momentous moments that these students are experiencing each day. And I thought to myself this morning, about to embark on my first Parent’s Weekend as a member of the Island School faculty, that there are a few things you should know about this place, before your arrival:

On girls dorm deck, someone talks to God, to the piercing bright glory of each twinkle looking down on her from the starry night skies. On the boathouse dock someone talks to her father, deceased. She heard him there, and realized there, that if he was there, then he will always be everywhere. A young man led me to a little sprouting palm, humble and barely a foot high.  The tiny palm taught him about strength, about hard-work and manual labor. He learned from planting a little palm, how to be a big man and work hard each day.  A girl learned to dance in the boathouse, to spin in silly abandon, to fall giggling, and not to care what others around her think.  She used to stand on the sidelines, laughing at people who danced at home. She can show you the moment that her foot began to tap, her shoulders began to sway, and she took her first courageous step into a life more free to dance. It happened here.  Six students stood by the flag pole, and told about the moments where their hands met their goal: slapping the pole after a run-swim, an eight-mile run, and loop run, a morning where someone thought that they could not do something, and did. To many students our flag pole feels like a triumphant trophy when held in the hands. It is a marker of their glory, strength and resiliency. Inside the dining hall is the kitchen to the left, to the right is the sinks, stacks of dishes drying, and memories like shiny scrubbed dish pans.  Here a girl found home, hands elbow deep in grease alongside other hands. Hands like homes in soapy water.  Each phone on our campus has broken a heart, made someone cry. Each phone has said something someone did not want to hear. Each phone has been clutched hard by a hand as a face fought back tears.  There is not a square inch of this campus that has not hosted tears. There is not a single inch of this campus that has not been home to laughs, either.  Every place here is a memory, for someone.

Think about this as you come to this place, as you come to know these places. As we welcome you to our campus, we are so excited to have you here, I ask you to open your eyes. Think about the moments of sheer unbridled personal growth and community bonding that cover this land like a quilt. Honor our students and their stories. Because, for them, for us, every conch lined path, every sand-flea covered deck, every dishwater sprinkled kitchen, for us every place here is A Place of Meaning.

“You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment,” –Annie Dillard

And I begin to think about my own astonishment and I begin to think that this might be an incredible way to explain what it is like to teach and live here.  And I begin to think about recent moments where I found myself completely immersed in awe, big eyed, and astounded…

As a teacher at The Island School, I was made and set here to give voice to this:

Tuesday morning run-track we ran the loop: four miles with various add-ons.  We can take a longer loop running away from the main loop, which will return to intersect the main loop: a side street like a boomerang.  If the loop were the circumference of a flower bud, you add distance by running around the petals.  Everyone begins and ends at the flower stem, they just trace the flower differently. Tuesday’s run did not feel like a flower, more like one of the sand spurs that get stuck in my socks here: painful.  We complicated the run by adding a sprint schedule.  Every four minutes we were to sprint for thirty seconds.  Justin Symington says that this is how you get faster.  I do not yet know if this is true, but this is certainly a great way to make your muscles burn, get more out of breath, and increase your exhaustion.

More than half way into the run I had pulled off a couple of flower petals and rejoined the inner circle.  This put me behind students that I often run ahead of.  I came up on a group of them jogging slower, just a mile to go and obviously weary.  I took their pace for a moment and urged them on.  I moved past and picked up my pace.  I yelled and looked back as I pass: Who wants to push it with me back to campus?  Faces bobbed up and down with their steps saying “don’t look at me,” quiet and tired.  Marianne stepped forward and agreed to the challenge.  She pushed on and took my stride, faster and she was breathing hard.  She looked like it hurt.  It did hurt.  But, suddenly less for me.  We started to talk, the casual intimacies of a run buddy: shared pain makes for great conversation.  We pushed each other on, and although we had already stopped the sprinting part of our run, I challenged her to one more: just until the gate ahead, a hundred meters or so.  And she pulled out in front of me, running faster and harder then me and I could barely keep up.  We passed the gate like a finish line and kept on going.  Now slower is okay, I told her.  Just breath, evenly, breathe.  We jogged.  Look—we can see the windmill, that means were close.  She was quiet and her white cheeks were flushed, still breathing hard and looking like it hurts.  Somewhere in my muscles, in the minutes I paced at her side, pain was replaced by total and complete admiration at her determination and will.  Down the road, we saw the school’s sign come into view, into the driveway and down we went: aches and steps and pain.  Okay, I said, when we get to these vans you better sprint, and you better not let me pass.  And she flew out in front, sprinting again, I could not pass her.  I tried, too.  I really did.  She hit the flagpole first, our official finish line for exercise.  As we walked off the sting in our muscles and gave each other a buddy high five for finishing together, sweat and pride poured out of me.

A few days later, Sarah Sasek asked me if she could interview me for her Histories class research project.  Her focus of inquiry: What makes people happy?  She flipped on her hand held recorder and began to prompt me forward with compelling questions like: How do you define happiness?  Do you believe there is a difference between true happiness and false happiness?  What is the relationship between money and happiness? Do you think you can attract happiness into your life? These are pretty big questions, for such a little recorder.  I think, and begin to articulate.  The incredible thing about questions like this is that they remind you who you are and what you believe.  So often we live life by moving within it, without commentary or reflection.  As I rambled on (as I often do with words, look here at the length of this blog, for example) she nodded her head and with a slight smile, her eyes would occasionally glimmer with flashes of brilliance.  Flashes and light like sparks of herself being forged.  It was like the more we talked the more she seemed to be creating herself and self-consciously considering her own beliefs on happiness and wellbeing.  And these were pretty big questions, for such a young lady.  I left our conversation feeling reminded of myself, with my beliefs in radiant focus.  I left too, astounded at Sarah’s curiosity.   Eventually, Sarah would articulate in her Oral Histories Report opening paragraph: “Happiness is a feeling of complete inner peace with one’s self and the world around him or her; a feeling of expansion combined with a trust that this feeling can never be taken away, and a desire for every other human being to share this state of well being and lightheartedness. I believe that that every human being’s goal in life is to achieve this happiness.” What a wonderful thing to believe.

A few nights ago, walking to dinner, I passed the boys dorm and heard the familiar strums of Will’s mandolin on the back deck.  I had some words to relay from his dad, so I cut back toward the beach to deliver them.  I came upon a three boy string band: Brandon taking a go at the mandolin and Will strumming the guitar.  Auggie was pickin’ along with Will O’s banjo.  After some finger stumbles and frustrated strums on unfamiliar instruments, Will and Brandon swapped back to more familiar strings.  The trio began a song and hit a melodic stride together measuring out notes and sounds, sweet and bluegrass fast.  They played a song I’d never heard, about lovin’ someone and pain; the kind of songs that strings were meant to sing.  Auggie hit harmonies with Will, they looked like old men on an old porch, with words with sounds like summers in hot southern places.  “Augie has the voice of an angel,” Brandon would later describe. And across the beach facing the dorm, the sand was bright orange in the setting sun.  The illuminated clouds were streaked white and red, the ocean blue.  As I sat on the steps, cheeks tight, and barely containing my smile, my heart was still and my toe was tapping.  I looked out on the passing day as the boys behind me sang into the coming night.  And in the back of my mind I heard a sound humming high, in tune, singing with them.  It was this: the voice of my own astonishment.

A simple question.

Chris Maxey posed this question to our visiting guest, Chris Irwin, tonight.  Chris was invited to speak to our young leaders this evening, addressing the topic of his choice.  Irwin chose leadership.  Irwin has led a distinguished career in the military, as an Navy Seal, cultivating the qualities of a leader.  After briefly addressing his past and experience leading groups as a Seal, Irwin opened the class up to questions.  One of the first questions that was posed to him was: “Why did you decide to become a Navy Seal?” Irwin responded, after pausing to reflect, that “it was a challenge.”

Why do we do that?  Why do we, people, want to challenge ourselves; why do we make ourselves do things that are hard when we know that we will struggle? Why?

We challenge ourselves and push our limits. We do things that are uncomfortable even though we know that they will be unpleasant, if not down right miserable.  We toe the line of failure; sometimes plummet off the cliff of failure.  We do things like come to The Island School where we will lay in bed, sun burnt, bug-bitten, and exhausted when we could be at home eating scrambled eggs in bed, cooked by mom with love.  Why not scrambled eggs?

When, minutes later, Maxey stepped in with this question, Irwin’s answer struck me:

“To see what you are made of.”

I have heard this phrase countless times in my life, but all the sudden, it seemed different and mysteriously illuminated: “What you are made of.”

Now, in my mid to late twenties, I think for the first time, that I might actually know what I am made of—that is to say, what things make me up.  What things I am and what things I am not.  I have pushed my self out of my comfort zone, light years away from what I knew and took for granted, at different times and with different results.  I have been shaken from ease and slammed into painful.  I have moved away and moved back, and away and back.  And I have struggled, and I have struggled.  And I now know what I am made of.

I am made of banana cake.

And, I am made of lemon cake too, and all of the vegetables that grew in my mom’s garden growing up.  I am made of a passionate dedication to healthful eating, and occasional treating.  I am made of dominoes that sometimes score in multiples of five, and that sometimes fall and fall and fall until everything comes crumbling down.  I am made of a sense of home and of a drive to spread that feeling everywhere.  I am made of words and expression.  I am made of competitive sports and running alongside you, too.   I am made of compassion and the way that I feel when I do something special and unexpected for someone.  I am made of wanting to show someone new, something new, each day.  I am made of knowing what makes me special, and what makes me average, and I am made of things that I am not proud of.  I am full of high expectations, and full of grace for myself when I do not live up.

I am made of the moment I almost crumbled.  I am made of the moment that I didn’t.

Every day Island School students ask themselves: What am I made of?  And each day they answer it more and more.

Forty eight young leaders arrived here almost two weeks ago.  They arrived trembling and unsure, with trepidation and uncertainty.  They arrived this way because they knew this would be difficult, and they came anyway.  They came with the dedication to grow themselves into forms not yet imagined.  They came with the spirit to look inside, reflect and decide, just what in the world they might be made of.  They knew it would be hard and they came.

But rest assured, at The Island School, we are made of wanting to help your children see they are made of; because, we know that they are made of great, powerful, and triumphant stuff.

“They just sting a little,” he replied.

“They’re like the mosquitoes of the sea.”

They have a mosquito for everywhere here, I think to myself.

Later that day, I can chart the mosquito bites, from ankle to knee: from “Orion’s Belt of Irritation” to “The Southern Cross of Misery”  There is “Scratchy Major” and also “Scratchy Minor.” I sit at my new desk, in my new office, in my new home, at The Island School, navigating my celestial star-studded skin.  My calf and shin tingle with trepidation, as I hold back, because as we all know: itching only makes it worse.  I let my mind wander into the space across my skin, thinking of the starry sky we studied last night, on a star-gazing walk, on the most star-streaked night of the annual Perseids meteor shower.

The night before, we had sat in the sand and watched with wonderment as flashes peaked through the darkness at us: elusive, fleeting, magical.  I wished upon each one.  But leave it to a math teacher to make it all more practical, Matt began with a lesson in celestial navigation.  He made the earth into a compass, oriented toward the North Star, measured out degrees, and then asked how far I would sail in which direction, mindfully noting, just where on earth we were.  I imagined the planet like a figure someone would use to measure a hypotenuse, a form with axis wrought with dimension.  Degrees defined, just waiting for me to find my path.

And I thought of your path, my new students’ paths, arriving in just weeks, and of the degrees and directions that would bring them here.  I thought of the navigating, planning and preparation that they must be negotiating.  And I wondered if any of them looked to the stars for direction, as they would soon learn to.

As the stars passed, flashed, and disappeared, I wished on each one.  And I made these wishes for them, our students, as they come:

May your goodbyes be sweet promises for future hellos;

May your bags be packed perfectly, holding all you will need;

May your last moments at home be calm, precious, and pristine;

May your travels be safe and guided by the stars;

May your mosquito bites be minimal,

and if not, may you have the power to not scratch them.