Commuting & Community: Thoughts on a New School Year
Growing up, I spent a lot of time buckled up in a car. I was raised in a small town near Annapolis, Maryland, where my family was 1 of 1 non-white families in our neighborhood. This was a deliberate calculation by my father who, having immigrated from the Philippines, prioritized assimilation. It was very important to him that our family represent the “model minority,” and that, to him, meant distancing ourselves from other Filipinos, who are generally known to be unapologetically raucous and unruly. They travel in packs and love a good (loud) time.
And yet, every weekend, he would drive my family an hour—sometimes two in Beltway traffic—to visit his sister who, by contrast, had chosen to settle in a Virginia town populated mostly by Filipino-Americans. There we would find familiar foods piled high on banquet-sized tables, surrounded by aunts and uncles (everyone was an aunt or uncle) engrossed in gossip, and the inevitable karaoke mic passed around at midnight on full volume. Though my father valued acculturation, he still understood the importance of community. As stubborn as he was in his pursuit to quietly blend into our new home, he nevertheless felt the pull of a space where we belonged. He put a lot of miles on our little gray Chevrolet in our first few years in America, traveling back and forth from a place where he believed that, in order to thrive, we must quiet ourselves, to a place where, as loud as it was, we felt like we belonged.
As I sit to reflect on the beginning of a new school year, I am reminded of that commute. Not unlike my father, TVS parents drive back and forth from homes built on a purposeful set of priorities, values, and beliefs to a school where, despite our differences, we all feel like we belong. Those two contrasting ideals—individuality and community—drive the core of our learning model: to teach children how to think, not what to think, and to build a community of lifelong learners, individual in their character, pursuits, and passions. This year, my hope is that we can provide a space where you can further ground your family in the values that are uniquely yours, while also feeling a firm sense of community. We are all so different and yet bound by the common thread of just wanting to do right by these learners. I hope we can celebrate our varied definitions of “right” and count on each other if ever things go “wrong”.
So here’s to a new school year. It will at times feel raucous and unruly. It will definitely get loud. It will be a good time. Buckle up.
