A Letter to the Community from Mary Lou Cobb, Head of School at The Cobb School, Montessori

Tonight we launch the debut performance of William and Hollis Bokhout’s children’s opera The Miracle Tree.  I am honored that The Cobb School will be showcasing this world premier and humbled to be part of the School’s 13^th annual opera. 

I offer my deepest thanks in this public forum to The Cobb School’s Elementary teachers who have poured their hearts into this effort.  Watching my colleagues thoughtfully and tirelessly guide their students through what we fondly refer to as “Opera Week” reaffirms what I have always known: teaching is the noblest profession.  This week Cobb’s dedicated teachers became artists, acting coaches, stage managers, and lighting technicians.  There was no task they weren’t willing to tackle and that is what makes them teachers to the core.  Each day I marveled at their commitment to the children and ability to pull every element of this production together.

Moreover, every year I marvel at the hard work our students devote to Opera Week, and every year I am prouder than the year before.  You’d think I couldn’t marvel any more or get any prouder, but I do.  Perhaps it’s because with every passing year my senses are heightened, my understanding that we are teaching to the potential of every child grows deeper, and my awareness that each child is transforming before my eyes is keener.

This concept that we must simultaneously see before us the child as he is and the child he will become is one of the most important elements of the Montessori philosophy.   Throughout this formative experience of producing an opera, as I see every child being herself – her committed self, her hard-working self, even her tired self – and, at the same time, I see that child of the future: the child she will be next year, the year after, the year after and so on, I know I am seeing what Dr. Montessori meant in the word “transformation.”

Montessori wrote, “It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.”  In this profound statement we teachers find our path.  The children performing tonight at 7pm in the Ethel Walker School’s Ferguson Theater have spent hours of serious work preparing.  They were constructing themselves with every moment of this endeavor.  Every ounce of patience, concentration, effort, and good will is now part of who they are.  At the same time, and more important, it is now who they will become.

Best of luck to The Cobb School’s Elementary students in this evening’s premiere performance of The Miracle Tree.  Congratulations to writer and director Bill Bokhout and choreographer Hollis Bokhout.  And thank you, thank you, thank you to The Cobb School’s Elementary teachers, and to teachers all over the globe.

Best regards,

Mary Lou Cobb

Head of School

NOTE: For a sneak peek at The Cobb School, Montessori’s Opera Week and upcoming performance of The Miracle Tree, click HERE.  To read the Hartford Courant’s article on The Miracle Tree’s debut, click HERE, and to view press photos, click HERE.  Lastly, to purchase tickets to tonight’s show, please call Beth Rumsey at The Cobb School at 860.658.1144.