My first day of school at Parker was heartfelt, but I wouldn’t realize why until I walked into my last high school class fourteen years later.

During my first day of school at Parker I was excited but nervous not to be with my family. I knew preschool was just a prerequisite for a longer experience of school. Nonetheless, I walked into junior kindergarten. The doors I was walking through would be the doors I would walk through for the next fourteen years of my life. So, as a reasonable four year old, I cried. My teacher led me to a welcoming wooden table that had all sorts of amazing crayons. I knew my siblings were in the same building as I, however it felt like an eternity away at the time. I still had some tears rolling down my face, and my teacher asked me a question. “Do you know how to draw a heart?” I replied no. She then took a crayon and drew a heart on my paper. I loved it. It was warm and welcoming, and heartfelt. The first ever lesson I learned at Parker was to draw a heart. As a child this is common. It is a part of the subset of childhood doodles that many children learn: a smiley face, a star, a cloud, a sun, and a heart. I find it fitting that my first lesson would be a heart, not the alphabet, or vowels, or the number line. It was a heart. And Parker is a school that is grounded with love and care. Love and care for learning, love and care for the world, and love and care for the community that I have been a part of for fourteen years.

As I was walking to my last ever class at Parker it was bittersweet. No more “Parker Weekly” deadlines. No more rushing to the fourth floor from the science wing. No more frustration that I can’t eat my amazingly warm Parker bagel in the library.

However, this also meant no more feeling this Parker love and Parker care constantly for seven hours a day, five days a week, for 14 years. If you exclude summer, that is 2450 days at Parker where I have felt this Parker love and Parker care. 2450 days where the heart I drew in JK glowed. However, there is a flaw to my math and my idea of the heart I drew fourteen years ago. The love and care will never stop, even if I am an alum. Parker continues to connect and communicate this heart in many ways, one of which is through “the Parker Weekly.”

My time on “the Parker Weekly” staff has been an effort to archive, write about, and communicate this heart with the rest of the Parker community. I am proud to have been on this staff, and I cannot wait to see the way it continues to draw, redraw, and change the heart for the Parker family.

Best,
Sophia Rosenkranz