Meaning through Service
We send warm wishes to our families who begin celebrating Diwali today. May your hearts and homes be filled with light and laughter.
We will pause BUA classes on Wednesday to mark Veterans Day. To all of you receiving this message who have served our country or who have family members in the armed forces, thank you. I have been inspired by my conversations with BUA graduates who have served our country in this way – several of whom have spoken powerfully at all-school meetings over the years. In those talks, many of them describe the sense of purpose that comes from service. They talk about what we know from decades of research: meaning in our lives comes from our relationships to one another and from contributing to something bigger than ourselves.
Our mission calls on students “to engage meaningfully in our community and beyond.” That engagement takes many forms, but we have made a focused effort recently to create opportunities for our students to fan out in the local communities around BUA and be of service. We are now in the third year of our afterschool service fellows program, where cohorts of BUA students volunteer as afterschool helpers at local elementary and middle schools. In collaboration with student leaders, we are creating one-day service opportunities for students periodically on weekends with local nonprofit partners. Increasingly, students are organizing grade-wide service efforts, and several extracurricular clubs are considering how they might extend their reach outside of our walls. My hope is that through these programs or in any number of other ways, every student at BUA leaves here having experienced the sense of purpose that comes from service to others and carries that feeling with them – inspiring them to lead lives of meaning and fulfillment.