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When it comes to leading a school, there are several indicators that a head must keep on their radar. These indicators vary according to context; in many schools throughout the States, one of the most crucial gauges is the amount raised through fundraising. Michael, Coco and Gala’s dad, told me recently that the majority of my counterparts in New York (aka fundraisers-in-chief) spend their evenings soliciting fat checks from families—I don’t envy them for a second.

I made a quick reference to today’s topic toward the end of a letter sent at the start of the school year–it’s time for The École to devise a new strategic plan and a new vision for the future. Fear not; bilingualism and multiculturalism will remain at the heart of our project, but it is time for us to define more clearly the skills and competencies we wish our students to develop–with the trifold objective of integrating those skills and competencies into our curricula at every level, putting projects in place that promote them, and being in a position to effectively measure the progress we make.

Let me be frank: the decision to close school for two days for the parent-teacher conferences (PTCs) will probably not feature in my top 10 most popular decisions ever. My ears are burning in a record-breaking fashion—and being an incurable hypochondriac, I’m beginning to worry I’ve got a ruptured eardrum.

I’ve already written to you about the village I grew up in and the mapped-out futures on offer for me and my classmates when we were kids. As I wrote, living in New York was not within my conceivable realm of possibilities as a child. And yet, I remember my first English class with Brother Roche–I was educated by Marist Brothers–and the sudden, unexpected, long-burning passion it ignited in me for the English language.

Yesterday, I was John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. I danced – with the confidence that comes with having long hair and being married to Andria / Uma Thurman – amidst manga pirates, cowboys, zombies, Kens, Barbies, Cruellas, witches, and many others. I don’t know what the desire to dress up occasionally says about grown-ups – our psychologist, Stéphanie, is better placed than me to comment on the phenomenon – but I do know that children do it all the time. As it says in the French Ministry of Education’s curriculum documents, children love costumes.