Madrona families,
Welcome to the 2023-2024 school year! We hope the summer was both restorative and adventuresome for you all. We look forward to hearing stories and catching up in person with you and your students next week.
September is always the busiest month of the school year with the transition back into school routines, activities after school, gatherings, and meetings. We take time the first couple weeks of school to ease into all of these transitions. As we prepare the environment for Madrona’s arrival, we’ll be keeping this in mind.
From Jaclyn:
This summer, my family and I set out to lay low and not plan much at all after our cross-country road-trip last summer. But, as it sometimes goes, the calendar got filled. We hosted friends visiting from San Francisco, Teton Valley, Portland, and Oakland; which provided us the opportunity to show them places we love on Bainbridge and in the Olympics, while making fun excursions into Seattle. We traveled to Sunriver, Oregon for David’s extended family reunion and enjoyed climbing at Smith, rafting the river, biking, and meals with 70+ family members. A highlight from summer was an overnight train trip from Seattle to Oakland, CA where we stayed with friends and revisited old favorite neighborhoods. Summer break usually ends for us with celebrating our daughters,’ August and Jude, birthday (both on the 14th) and blackberry jam-making.
Wishing for a few more afternoons at Lytle or Pritchard before fall weather takes us inside more, but otherwise looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with the students!
From Zach:
Hey Everyone! This summer felt like a strange sandwich of rest and relaxation into something more intense and then melding back into a sense of ease. During July (and even part of June) I was attending a training for Montessori Teachers in Spokane, WA. It was a purgatory of hundred and five degree heat mixed with a high intensity course load hosted by Montessori Northwest. After coming out of the crucible, enriching and fulfilling as it was, I was able to take a breath for almost all of August and get back to the more pressing issues of rolling dice, writing and reading for pleasure, and of course spending days on end with Aubrey and our two cats, Max and Mia. The four of us spent as much time as we could manage either napping, cooking or finding new games to play.
I’m anticipating another year of encouraging minds to be most excellent and can’t wait to meet a few new faces and welcome back those more familiar to our space.