So Long, but Not Goodbye - and Thanks for Everything!

Peter Gow

​Once upon a time I had a summer job at a Girl Scout camp on Martha’s Vineyard, and my first season there was happiest of my life to that point. I found a community, good and lifelong friends, and an ethos of caring for an ideal, an enterprise of the heart and soul, that introduced me to the ways that “mission-driven” and “values-aligned” can shape lives.

I was staggered to discover, on the last day of the season, that the final night campfire of the final session was one of the most emotional events I had ever experienced. Later, when my late spouse and I worked together at Girl Scout camps she directed, this closing ritual, with weeping campers and weeping counselors, remained a powerful, often wrenching reminder of the strength of a community of purpose. As the last embers of the fire died out, the words of one song would hit me especially hard, and they have stayed with me: “This is so long, but not goodbye.”

For the Independent Curriculum Group, this newsletter is our final campfire. It’s a time to remember the great times we’ve had, to express our gratitude and deep affection for those who have supported us, and to make a wish. It’s also a time to look forward, to reassure ourselves that the mission and values of “independent curriculum” abide—not just in our hearts and minds, as touchstones of what the future of education ought to look like, but in the ongoing work and purposes of our new partners at One Schoolhouse.

So thank you, thank you all: to the educators and friends of education who have found resonance in our ideas; to the schools whose leaders have seen fit to join in our work; to those who have worked with us at our events and made common purpose with us; to all those whom I have gotten to know at Academic Leaders Retreats, at our conference presentations, and through our correspondence and conversations on policy, practice, big questions, and big ideas.

I also thank those who have given of their time and energy over the years first as the steering committee behind the body that became the Independent Curriculum Group and then as members of our board. Without your dedication, I would not be writing this almost twenty years after the idea of independent curriculum was born.

Above all I thank my predecessor, Bruce Hammond, whose idea the ICG was and who as executive director molded a loose bunch of starry-eyed idealists into a strong and purposeful nonprofit that has contributed much to the educational conversation. Along with Mark Salkind, our founding board chair, Bruce made the ICG a reality.

And in the spirit of looking forward, I must thank Brad Rathgeber, head of school at One Schoolhouse, and the One Schoolhouse board for recognizing our common bonds and for your willingness to help sustain our ideals into the future.

In accordance with final night campfire tradition, I offer a wish: I wish that our highest ideals as educators and their essence as expressed in the ICG’s Principles of Independent Curriculum might one day come to define the educational experience of every child, in every kind of school, everywhere.
The Vineyard Sailing Camp is closed now, but when old campers or staff get together we remember and honor what made the place and our times there so special. We can still sing the songs and feel the power of their words to take us not backward but deeply into ourselves and the sources of lifelong hopes and dreams that still energize and give purpose to our lives today and will continue to do so as long as we live.

This is so long from the me at the Independent Curriculum Group, but this is in no way a goodbye to the community of purpose we idealists have been and will ever be.

You will hear from us (and from me) and our ideals again, through One Schoolhouse surely, and perhaps even in the songs from your own past that still bring you hope and joy.

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