At the inauguration of President Joe Biden this week, the first ever National Youth Poet Laureate for the US, Amanda Gorman, performed her piece ‘The Hill We Climb’ to wide acclaim.
She was powerful, articulate and authentic in her expression of hope and of finding the light in the darkness, and it was a deeply moving few minutes, watching a young black woman lift a nation with her strength and humanity. It reasserted for me my absolute conviction that each of our young women, each and every one of our students, has the power and capacity to change the world for good, simply by becoming the most fulfilled version of their unique selves. But it also compounded our sense as a school that there is much for us to offer to others in the darkest of times. Even when separated as a school, we continue to move toward our goal of becoming a beacon of compassion and outreach in our community, and always to help lift the load of others, even as we may struggle ourselves; and I am personally making Gorman’s notion ‘That even as we tired, we tried’ something of a mantra in this mid-January, mid-lockdown period.
