Steve Zurell joined the MWS community in 2015 and is a rising second grade parent.
My wife and I were introduced to Waldorf education when we visited the Honolulu school, where a friend of ours taught, years before we were married, or even thought about having children. Many years later, we visited the San Diego school when our child was ready to begin school. We were awestruck by the beauty of the schools and how incredible the students were. When my job brought us to Rhode Island, we knew that we had to live close to the only Waldorf school in the area so our daughter could attend. We visited and interviewed with the admissions staff at Meadowbrook and got her enrolled as soon as we could. What we weren’t expecting was the incredible school community that Meadowbrook has.
Fast forward two years to July 29th, 2018. Our family had just returned from picking blueberries on a quiet Sunday morning when I found out that there was a fire at our daughter’s school. My heart sank, but I still hoped for the best. As the day went on, I listened in to the fire departments’ radio calls for more help and more water and knew that the day would not end well for our little school in the woods.
With the tragedy that just struck our school, we were heartbroken to think about how different school would be this year. But then I thought back to the history of the school; moving and growing for the last 39 years, from a tiny seed to the future of adding a high school building that we heard about at the all-school meeting last fall. Our family had only joined the school at the very latest chapter of a book that is still being written. The members of this school’s community are not easily shaken. Many of them have been doing this more years than they care to mention and they’re not about to give up. If any community could handle a situation like this, Meadowbrook is certainly the one that can do it.
Before the embers cooled, the staff, faculty, and families all pulled together into an incredible force as if they had done this all before. They came to the school to help recover what they could from the ashes, the board met with the community and selected a site to rent for the school year, and all the buzz was how awesome the new school is going to be. Yes, we had lost an incredible building and all kinds of stuff inside. But it was just that, a building and material things. The heart of Waldorf education doesn’t live in a building, it lives in the community; the teachers, the children, and the families that built this community into what it is today.
As terrible as that Sunday morning was for all of us, I think we’ve all shed as many tears of sadness as we possibly could have. Now we’re chomping at the bit, eager to meet this new and challenging school year the same way our children are; excited to start something new, ready to meet up with our friends, make some new friends, and build something new and awesome together. We have a long road ahead of us, but knowing that this community is going to do this all together, even closer than before, brings a renewed sense of purpose to why we are all here in the first place: to give our children the best education we possibly can.
We are heartened by the generous outpouring of support from around the world. To make a contribution to the school rebuild and recovery, please visit our Meadowbrook Rising Go Fund Me page. Donated goods & services can be offered here or email us at rebuild@meadowbrookschool.com.
