Partnership Educators,
Some three thousand years ago, an iceberg broke off of Greenland proper and fell into the Jakobshavn Glacier Fjord. Its destination was the open sea. There were about ten thousand such icebergs swarming in Baffin Bay at the time. One particular iceberg wasn’t especially large in comparison to the brothers and sisters floating alongside. What was visible about the iceberg was its size. The dimensions were about 100 feet tall and 300 feet long. Most of it was beneath the water reaching some 500 feet below the surface. The measurements for this floating ice mountain didn’t do justice to the beauty of it. As it floated along it appeared brilliantly crystalline in the sunlight with the beams refracting off the ice bubbles trapped within.
Marine Biologist Richard Brown retrospectively tracked this particular iceberg and noted that it would have to make a monumental voyage. In his book, Voyage of the Iceberg, Richard followed the ice palace along the coast of Greenland for many months. Most assuredly, while it made its trek, it sang and squealed musically in the wind and weather. It also became a living zoo. Seals nestled in its crevasses and bowhead whales hid themselves in its shadow. He noted the various dramas in history that it must have witnessed as it made its way to warmer waters. It diminished to the size of a coffee table and finally disappeared off the coast of Bermuda.
That was the fate of the beautiful floating palace of ice that first fell from Greenland some three thousand years earlier. However, before it finalized its destiny in the warm waters, it met another floating behemoth. It sank the Titanic.
The beautiful work that we do today to find more and more ways to reach our variety of stewards isn’t always appreciated or finished. The time we are allotted gives us the opportunity to help mold our students. Nevertheless, is short retrospectively. We will not know, for many of them, what our efforts helped to support. As they float through our school halls, each one has their own beautiful characteristics and unique nuances. We are also not afforded the knowledge of what future impact they will have. The ripples that they make will change the course of history. We all assuredly affect the nature of history through our actions. It is a guarantee that our students will as well.
Thanks for all of your efforts to continue to make a difference in the future lives of our students and all of those that they will come in contact with. These efforts, to build programs that prepare them for their future, will not go unnoticed. As our students begin to make ripples in the fabric of history, your hard and dedicated work will become visible through their lives.
Have a fantastic weekend,
Rob