Back in February, a few teachers and I were riding the elevator at the Water Garden, St. Matthew’s Parish School’s temporary K-8 campus in Santa Monica. A gentleman who worked on the sixth floor asked how much longer we’d be in the building. We smiled and shared that after 18 months, we were finally going home to the Palisades in the fall. That meant he and his colleagues would soon get their peace and quiet back (though I suspect they secretly loved hearing 150 children singing the school prayer at 8:30 a.m. every Monday morning!).
He paused, reflected for a moment, and said, “You know…someday, one of these kids is going to walk in here for a job interview and tell me they went to elementary school in this building. That’s going to be wild.”
After a good laugh and a brief realization of how old we’d all be when that moment came, the doors opened and we went our separate ways. But that moment has stuck with me.
For the past year and a half, St. Matthew’s has carried on in the wake of the 2025 Palisades Fire. Yet beyond the immediate hardship, this season did something extraordinary: it set our School in motion toward a future we never could have imagined.
Circumstances can shape a chapter of your story, but they do not get to decide who you become. That part belongs to you.
This past school year, as strange and unexpected as it was, is forever a part of our School community’s individual and collective story. What makes this chapter meaningful is not what happened. It is what happens next.
Our smaller temporary campus pushed our students to resolve conflict faster, open the doors of friendship, and play alongside kids in different grades in a way that perhaps never would have happened back in the comfort of our 30-acre campus. Students learned how to greet each other and make small talk with adults as they rode the elevator up and down every day. Parents leaned into a level of flexibility and trust as they navigated unique pick-up and drop-off patterns and traveled back and forth between our Early Childhood and K-8 temporary campuses. Faculty and staff tapped into a new level of creativity in an effort to maintain traditions and experiences that are unique and special to St. Matthew’s.
St. Matthew’s students, parents, faculty, and staff are stronger communicators and better teammates not because of where we spent this past school year, but because of how we chose to show up for one another.
This past year, the heartbreaking loss of our Parish Rector, The Reverend Bruce Freeman, left many of us, myself included, searching for the strength and the courage to move forward. What started as another tragedy to add to our list transformed into a collaborative effort of Church and School, leaning on each other and learning from each other to bring our community back to the Palisades again. Our beloved Rector Bruce preached lessons of unity, teamwork, optimism, and unconditional love, and his presence and legacy are felt deeply as we, united as one Parish and School family, embark on our campus rebuild.
It takes profound faith and courage to navigate the unknown, but our community took hold of one another and stepped forward together.
St. Matthew’s now carries a story that few schools will ever share. Yet every school, at some point, faces moments that shake its foundation. Tragedy may alter your landscape, but it does not have to define your identity: your response does. And the response from our students, families, faculty, staff, and Parish is something that fills my heart with pride.
We adapted.
We welcomed others.
We found joy in unexpected places.
We kept moving forward.
While we may have been in a temporary location, nothing about this past school year was temporary. The lessons we learned, the relationships we forged, and the community all return with us this fall to our Pacific Palisades campus. They will shape the experience of every new and returning family who joins us there.
We are not defined by what happens to us.
We are defined by what we do next.
Alley Michaelson ’02 is Head of School at St. Matthew’s Parish School in Pacific Palisades, CA.