Support the North Branch School
October 2022
Dear Friends, Families, and Supporters of the North Branch School,
Just a few days ago on the Doug Walker Field, under the blazing autumn trees, we had our Fall Alumni and Family gathering, now known as Burning School.
The current students had built a massive house—a 16-foot tall rickety structure of scrap wood, cut-offs, and 2 x 4s. Upon this skeletal behemoth, each student stapled dozens of poems, old letters, new letters, quotes, song lyrics, ticket stubs, diplomas, prayers, remembrances, old photos, mementos of the past, present, and future—fragments assembled into a temple of meaning.
At the appointed hour, before over a hundred alums, friends, family, siblings, neighbors, grandparents, and dogs, the students placed the structure onto the pyre and set it alight to burn up into the night. But not before the ninth-grade class recited a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, which in part reads:
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
In this glorious shouting absence, this year’s students build anew, creating from what came before. The school exists in this space—in the wild freedom of creation, action, and meaning-making. All of which feeds the gains that come from growing, the arrivals of children becoming ever more of themselves. And a whole year laying before us—the space to begin again.
We are in the midst of our twenty-second year. We have not made it this far alone. The school has been carried over the years by the generosity of families and friends from near and far. This support—no matter the amount—has helped us grow and thrive. Truly, we could not make this school without your help and commitment to the cause.
In celebration and support, we are hoping you can make a donation to the school. Financial assistance keeps our tuition low and makes the school available for the broadest possible span of families. It makes it so the school can keep going, doing the work we have always done.
The very first donation to the school came to me from a former student in Atlanta. She enclosed a ten-dollar bill with a note that said "good luck and best wishes, and please use this money to buy the first copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.”
That wish and that donation meant the world. It helped to seed this wonderful and rare school. We hope you will join us to support the North Branch School as we embark on our next score of amazing and transformational years.
With love and gratitude,
Tal & the NBS
Dear Friends, Families, and Supporters of the North Branch School,
Just a few days ago on the Doug Walker Field, under the blazing autumn trees, we had our Fall Alumni and Family gathering, now known as Burning School.
The current students had built a massive house—a 16-foot tall rickety structure of scrap wood, cut-offs, and 2 x 4s. Upon this skeletal behemoth, each student stapled dozens of poems, old letters, new letters, quotes, song lyrics, ticket stubs, diplomas, prayers, remembrances, old photos, mementos of the past, present, and future—fragments assembled into a temple of meaning.
At the appointed hour, before over a hundred alums, friends, family, siblings, neighbors, grandparents, and dogs, the students placed the structure onto the pyre and set it alight to burn up into the night. But not before the ninth-grade class recited a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, which in part reads:
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
In this glorious shouting absence, this year’s students build anew, creating from what came before. The school exists in this space—in the wild freedom of creation, action, and meaning-making. All of which feeds the gains that come from growing, the arrivals of children becoming ever more of themselves. And a whole year laying before us—the space to begin again.
We are in the midst of our twenty-second year. We have not made it this far alone. The school has been carried over the years by the generosity of families and friends from near and far. This support—no matter the amount—has helped us grow and thrive. Truly, we could not make this school without your help and commitment to the cause.
In celebration and support, we are hoping you can make a donation to the school. Financial assistance keeps our tuition low and makes the school available for the broadest possible span of families. It makes it so the school can keep going, doing the work we have always done.
The very first donation to the school came to me from a former student in Atlanta. She enclosed a ten-dollar bill with a note that said "good luck and best wishes, and please use this money to buy the first copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.”
That wish and that donation meant the world. It helped to seed this wonderful and rare school. We hope you will join us to support the North Branch School as we embark on our next score of amazing and transformational years.
With love and gratitude,
Tal & the NBS
