Many people dislike Valentine’s Day. Often dismissed as a Hallmark holiday, I see value in taking a day to reflect on who and what you love.

For me, Valentine’s Day was extra special this year. My day began at breakfast with former trustee members from as far back as the early ’80s. It was a wonderful testament to the power of the GUS experience and to the value of connection around shared experiences. Whether it had been 20 years or a few months since their child graduated, the affection for Glen Urquhart School was palpable. There was a lot of love in that room and there is a lot of love every day here at GUS!

You can feel the love at GUS beginning at morning drop off. Greeting students in the morning, it is always nice to see how excited our kids are to come to school every day. Yesterday, I saw a student skipping down the path to enter the building! One of my favorite morning rituals is when students see each other in the morning and will walk hand in hand into the lower school. It warms your heart! Former parents often comment that their child’s GUS friends continue to be their closest friends, long after they’ve graduated from GUS. What I think is also special about GUS is that students have friends they might not have had otherwise. Often, in middle school especially, friend groups are made around interests like sports. Groups can feel exclusive and hard to break into. Here at GUS, we work to deliberately make connections between students. As a result, GUS kids have an amazing sense of empathy, they love and respect their classmates, and find life-long friends. 

You can also find love in the classroom - a sincere love of learning. As students raise their hands, ask great questions, and engage in activities, they develop a desire to know more, a passion for understanding. Whether it is creating in the art room, planning an experiment in science, or playing an active game of Kahoot in Spanish, students are out of their seats excited to participate and inspired to know more. Their learning is fun, engaging, and challenging. Our students love learning and for me the reason is clear: because our teachers love teaching. 

Teaching is an act of love. For every teacher, love is a part of what they do every day. Perhaps they are passionate about the subject matter or care deeply about helping grow young minds, maybe it’s both, but teachers’ hearts are full of the sincere desire to do something beyond themselves. We see this in the way a GUS teacher helps students find success. Our teachers are so committed they will try anything to help their students learn and grow. Maybe that is extra-help, redesigning a lesson, or offering the information in another way, I am in awe of the lengths GUS teachers go for student growth. 

Love comes together in so many ways here at GUS. Through teaching, through relationships, through community building, love at GUS is what leads to our success. Author bell hooks wrote in her book Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, “When teachers teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter, which is knowing what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning.” GUS is an ideal climate for learning. 

So as we reflect on love, I reflect on all the love that fills our school buildings. The love that parents feel for GUS, the love classmates feel for each other, the love of learning that develops here, and of course, the love and passion for teaching demonstrated every day by such a  talented group of faculty members. GUS is a special place and I appreciate all the care that goes into the work. The love at GUS makes a difference and that is something worth celebrating, not just one day in February, but every day.

Trust and Go Forward,

Gretchen Forsyth
Head of School