Superintendent Bahr Newsletter
June 2019
June News
Dear Eatonville School District and community,
As we near the end of an amazing 2019 school year, I wish you all the best with the end of year festivities and celebrations. Eatonville has been blessed to achieve many accolades, but it is always the people that make a place special. Thank you to the awesome students who have worked hard this year and have learned so much to expand their minds and skills, and along the way have made so many special memories.
Thank you to the families for their ever present support of our schools, their children and our community. Lastly, thank you to all the very committed, positive staff who work hard every day to make Eatonville Schools a safe, innovative, and stimulating place for all children to learn.
To end the year, is to look ahead with delight and anticipation to a well deserved season. Summer – the possibilities!
When we were kids, summer was the most beautiful word in the English language: two syllables brimming with warmth, with anticipation, with possibility. Summer brought together the very best of what life had to offer. Summer was an open door. Summers were yearned for all winter long.
When we were kids, summer meant freedom.
It gave us the space to be who we truly were: a tribe of tree-climbing, high-diving, scabby-kneed kids. Summer was our reward for sitting relatively still for nine months. It was our chance to roam the town, explore the woods, and shock the neighborhood with two wheels screaming through the town bound for the local outdoor pool or the local river.
Summer was our natural habitat – our birthright – and it was the duty of our youth to make the most of it. So we drank in all the freedom that we could, we soaked it up, we basked in every second of daylight, and, when it got dark, we begged our parents to let us stay out just a little longer to play one more game of baseball, tag or whatever game we were engrossed in. Then we were back out through the screen door – off to chase our friends through the violet dusk, to grasp at summer skies and trap a bit of starlight in borrowed glass jars.
Although the specifics elude me now, the essential elements remain. Those summers smelled like sunscreen and chlorine. They tasted like watermelon; ice-cold – just out of the fridge – cut into wedges the size of Mountains. Like wild strawberries. Like an armload of wild cherries, eaten one by one, until your tummy felt like it would split.
And the sound of summer? Well, it sounded like splashing water and peals of gut-busting laughter. Summer sounded like the tides. Like cicadas in the trees. Like the pop and hiss of firecrackers in the dark of night. Those summers sounded like a symphony of bells: bicycle bells and ice cream bells and come-in-for-dinner bells. But, never, ever school bells.
Summer taught us about the passing nature of all things and the sweetness of lost time. We looked forward to it all year long and then, before we knew it, it was over. Maybe it was summer that first helped us to learn, practically, that freedom, like time, is precious, that it is both a gift and a privilege.
We get to learn this lesson year after year, young until old.
For about 90 days a year, we are all given this same gift of summer. One that brings longer days, warmer seas, an abundance of fruits, and a chance to step back from our busy lives, to slow down a bit, to try something new, to go outside and run through a sprinkler with our clothes on – to be free, just like when we were kids.(*Magnolia Journal inspiration Summer 2019)
Enjoy your summer time. See you next year – in the fall.
Sincerely,
Krestin Bahr
Class of 2019 Graduation
Eatonville Middle School State Recognized School
Weyerhaeuser Wildcat Art
Battle of the Books 2019
Just a few of the district Battle of the Books teams.
Eatonville Elementary School Fun Run
GRITS Farm Activities
EHS Students at the University Bookstore
Columbia Crest Life
Eatonville Elementary School Spring Concert 2019
Eatonville Middle School Spring Band Concert 2019
Some of the District HEROES
Dora Wilson