A Boomerang Launch From All Seasons

2011 graduate volunteering in the preschool

As June approaches, teachers feel the approaching transition. Seeing our graduates head out the little door for the last time as our students is bittersweet, but we take comfort knowing what they carry with them as they leave and the knowledge that they will be back. Deep down, though they cannot articulate it, our students understand that they are an important member of the community, that they have been seen and heard as individuals; in essence, they matter. Those little people launch with an inner competence that they will share with the next community, lucky enough to get them.

What we know from our former families is that our students head out into the larger world with a unique social adeptness gained through repeated interactions with our grandmas and grandpas. We know that our students leave with the understanding that they matter, not only to their own family members, but to their teachers and to the seniors upstairs. Little people truly do big things. Our students will not only arrive at their next school with the self-help skills to put on and take off their outdoor gear but will then turn to a peer and help them. They will fully show up where they land. In their next community, they will bring a curiosity and can-do attitude from the opportunities they have had to problem-solve with peers, expand their personal curiosities with long-term projects, and learn that their actions are consequential to themselves and to others.

2011 graduate visiting an original senior

We know all this because it is our hope and our practice to stay connected long after our students graduate. Since 2009, our philosophy has been, “Once an All Seasons family, always an All Seasons family.” Please interpret that to say, “You are always welcome here.” Please read, “Come back to visit us, send us your holiday cards, share notable milestones, invite us to the graduation party.”

Graduation is not “goodbye” but “see you later.” Come back, as has been the tradition from our beginning.

2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 graduates visiting the seniors and preschoolers