• The Frost Connection
     
    Frost students accepting books from the Frost Trust
       Robert L. Frost Elementary school was named after the poet Robert L. Frost.  Frost is well known by the general public for a number of his poems which most students study while in high school.  Among those are two, The Road Not Taken and Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, that speak to our situation as students and educators.

    The Road Not Taken describes a journey during which the speaker has to make a choice between two seldom travelled roads.  He surveys both as far as he can, then selects the “one less travelled by.”  “And that,” he says, “has made all the difference.”  As readers, we are left to wonder whether the difference is a positive difference or a negative difference.  The speaker doesn’t say, and in truth, it doesn’t matter.  Instead, the message is that we make choices and the choices we make make a difference. 
     
    Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening also narrates a journey. Here too, the speaker stops in his journey, but this time it’s to savor the beauty of a wood filling with snow. In both poems, choices are made which suggest something about what Frost valued.  A journey is a common symbol for life and Frost is perhaps suggesting that we make choices on life’s journey with care and that we take time along the way to enjoy the moment.  The point is not the destination, but the journey itself.  In neither poem does the speaker describe arriving, only the travel. 

    Education is similar in that it’s the journey that creates value.  There is a goal – a diploma from high school, a degree or degrees from a college or insription university – but even those are just points along the journey made by a life-long learner.  As students and educators, it’s important to recognize that the choices we make define the journey and determine which goals we reach.  But, it’s also important to savor the current moment.   

    When Robert L. Frost’s new facility opened at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, we were visited by Vincent D’Amico.  Mr. D’Amico is a retired HISD educator and along-time Robert Frost scholar and enthusiast. It’s fair to say that one of the defining moments in his life was spending the afternoon visiting with the poet at his New Hampshire home.  Mr. D’Amico presented Frost with a portraitof the poet which now hangs in the school’s Media Center/Library and with a number of photos and artifacts currently on display at the school. 
     
    Mr. D'Amico also contacted the Robert Frost Frost and described for them our new facility and its semi-rural location.  In response, the Robert Frost Farm donated four volumes in the name of the poet, Robert Frost, his family and the Trustees of the State of New Hampshire, to the school library. 
    This is a wonderful gift for which we thank them.