Each spring at Oak Grove School, we take time to pause, reflect, and reconnect as a community through our annual Theme Week, which offers us a chance to revisit and deepen our engagement with the central question guiding our school year. This year’s theme, drawn from the teachings of the school’s founder, is: “A light to oneself, a light to the world.”

Carrying the Theme Throughout the Year

In August, on the opening day of a new school year, teachers and staff met at Pine Cottage to begin an exploration into the 2024-25 school theme. Over the school year, these explorations have continued within the classrooms, during parent meetings, school events, and faculty and staff meetings, culminating in our Theme Week.

Theme Week is an opportunity for us, as a community, to circle back to the theme and to, perhaps, deepen our exploration into the intent of the school and the teachings of our founder. Krishnamurti said: “When you are a light to yourself you are a light to the world, because the world is you, and you are the world. How one conducts one’s life, what one does in daily life – not at a moment of great crisis but actually every day – is of the highest importance. Relationship is life, and this relationship is a constant movement.”

Theme Week, held this April, offered a dedicated space for students, teachers, and families to return to the theme intentionally: to reflect, inquire, and express what this teaching means within the context of their daily lives.

Middle School Candle Lighting Ceremony

In a quiet and reflective moment, our Middle School students gathered for a candle lighting ceremony, reading a passage from Krishnamurti: “The human who is a light to oneself turns one’s back on the sun.”

To help illuminate this message, 6th, 7th and 8th grade students were given a small candle and sat side by side in a large circle. As each candle was lit, their gaze dropped to the flame flickering in front of them. We asked that everyone challenge themselves to focus on and protect the light they held. Silence grew as students observed how their candle grew brighter, changed shape, or sometimes risked being extinguished.

Students were prompted to reflect, questioning: What are ways of being that keep that flame alive and what are ways of being that blow out or dim the light? The assembly concluded with everyone blowing out their candle and making a ceremonial wish to honor the light within.

Guest Speaker Gaye Theresa Johnson on Justice and Light

We were honored to welcome Gaye Theresa Johnson, Associate Professor at UCLA, to share her perspective on the theme through the lens of social justice. Meeting with faculty, parents, and high school students, Johnson spoke about how personal awareness and action can extend into broader systems; how being a “light to oneself” also carries the potential to spark meaningful change in the world.

Student Art Installation: Sculptures That Reflect Light

Theme week concluded with a three-dimensional art installation at Main House. Created by students in the upper elementary program, the abstract sculptures were made from wood, wire, foam tubing, plaster cloth, and acrylic paint.

Although the original assignment was to explore abstract form and color, the creative energy of the students resonated beautifully with the theme. Art Teacher Brian said: “I didn’t have the theme in mind when we started the project, but the kids enjoyed themselves immensely while making them. I think that when students are fully engaged in creating, they radiate a kind of joy – and that becomes a light they share with others.”

Returning to the Questions

Theme Week offers a meaningful pause in the school year – an opportunity for students, teachers, and families to reconnect with the ideas that lie at the heart of Oak Grove and its founder’s intent of the school. It’s a time to step back from routine and reflect more intentionally on how the school’s guiding questions show up in everyday life.

This year’s theme invited us to consider not just personal insight, but how that insight shapes our relationships, choices, and contributions to the broader community. Whether through conversation, creative work, or shared experiences, we explored what it means to stay aware and engaged – both within ourselves and with the world around us.

J. Krishnamurti – Saanen 1976 – Public Talk 7 »