A Note to You…Doing the Work that Is Real

Every single day of this unreal but all-too-real year, you have shared your gifts of education, transformation, inspiration, motivation, and celebration with our students, with each other and with me.

As I’ve reflected on these months and how unbelievably proud I am to work alongside you, a poem by Marge Piercy, “To be of use,” kept coming to mind:

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Every year, you do the “work that is real,” the work that makes NOVA a bright star for our students, one that shimmers with hope. This year, zoom after zoom, email after email, you have kept NOVA’s star shining for our students even when the world seemed determined to dim it. This has not been easy, and I thank you for doing what has to be done, again and again.

As 2020 comes to an end, I wish you and your families the joy of a quiet holiday, one with plenty of time to do nothing—and do it well.