Year-End Reflection: Outgrowing the Nest

May 14, 2026

With the end of the school year rapidly approaching, CommuiCATE sat down with Head of School Alex Lockett to reflect on the gravity of this moment.

Q: How are you thinking about the end of the year?

A: I’ve been thinking about the metaphor of an empty nest. I almost biked over a bird’s nest recently that had fallen from a tree near Cook House West, so it’s been on my mind. When parents send their kids to boarding school, they experience their own empty nest. And then we, in turn, experience an empty nest when our students graduate.

Recency bias orients our attention disproportionately. The final chapter, the final sentence, feels summative. And yet there is no way an ending reflects the whole story. Because of that, I find myself lingering in specific moments throughout the year, watching students quite literally outgrow this nest. What is so profound about a boarding school is how deeply invested we are in each student’s life. Our job is to have students outgrow us, and yet they are still like our children. Our nest empties, just like the parents’.

Q: This year’s inquiry question was “How does power work?” When you look back at the school year and this question, what moments stand out?

A: At the start of the year, I talked about how power is defined in physics as the rate of doing work or transferring energy over time. That translates to the ability to make an impact, and an even bigger impact when it is collective. Power working well does not always feel comfortable or aligned at first. But that is what makes it powerful.

One moment that stands out is the walkout organized by our Hispanic Latinx Association (HLA) in response to concerns around immigration, deportation, and displacement. Even though our life experiences differ, we all understand what it means to feel afraid, separated, or targeted. It was not a political moment so much as a powerful moment of shared humanity and empathy.

Revisit Day is another. One class prepares to leave as the next generation of students arrives. This school is made up of its students, and that day is a genuinely powerful moment of generational continuity where our work continues over time.

I would also point to how we have been grappling with AI and how to learn well, live well, and work well with it. There is no single answer, but there is a collective embrace of real ambiguity, centered on values around connection, voice, and distinctness that have always existed here.

Q: How would you characterize the rhythm of these final weeks, and what matters most during this time?

A: There is a crescendo, and then there is the landing. Our job is to complete the year in a way that allows everyone to have a true summer for rest and renewal. What is beautiful and unusual about schools is that we take collective breaks. We are collectively on, and then collectively off.

Without true rest, we cannot be at our best. I am very invested in allowing people, students and adults alike, to really put down their work over the summer in whatever ways they can.

Q: If you had to describe this year in a single word, what would it be?

A: Unexpected. I sometimes think about my time here in parallel to our students. In that sense, I just finished my junior year. What seemed more simple at first, I now see in its full complexity. And I actually like the unexpected. It is a sign that there is so much more to learn. Our job is not to predict what is going to happen. It is to work together to make sense of what is happening.

I believe change happens at the pace of nature. Sometimes very fast, sometimes as slowly as the evolution of a landscape. I’m still learning the rhythms of life on the Mesa: what moves quickly, what moves slowly, and how to read the ecosystem.

Q: What is fueling your optimism right now?

A: I have never felt more optimistic about a school than I do about this one, right now. As we face tremendous change and uncertainty in the world outside, there are things here that are so enduring and positive: our sense of awe, our sense of connection, our commitment to authenticity. Those feel core and unchangeable, in a good way.

There is so much care here. So much caring for and caring about. My sense of Cate is that it’s never been interested in being trendy. It’s interested in being itself, and helping everyone here be themselves. That is so powerful. There is an alignment that comes from a good place and will constantly orient us toward what matters, and where we can continue to grow and outgrow our nests.