A Message from the Head of School
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If you come together with a mission, and it’s grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make — JOHN LEWIS the impossible possible.
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ike children, schools mature in their identity, their personality, and physically. While children grow organically (and whether you want them to or not), schools must grow with intention and purpose. At Harbor Day School, that purpose is conveyed through its mission statement and Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan that you will learn about in this issue of The Beacon took several years to create and had input from hundreds of people. A significant aspect of the new plan is the refreshed mission statement for HDS. Rewriting the mission statement took a fair amount of thought and collaboration. Our school’s multifaceted program strives to do a great deal, and distilling our many goals and dreams for our students into a concise statement proved to be a considerable challenge. The new statement contains many familiar elements that we considered too important to leave behind. These appear in both the former and new statements as: • • • • • • • • •
ACADEMICALLY CHALLENGING FAMILY- CENTERED WELL- BALANCED NURTURING TRADITIONAL INNOVATIVE CONFIDENCE COLLABORATIVE STRONG MORAL CHARACTER
New words and phrases in our new mission statement that reflect our goals are: • • • • • • • •
INCLUSIVE CURIOSITY DESIRE TO LEARN PERSEVERANCE
Six Core Values accompany our mission statement, and the Strategic Plan addresses each of those values. Two values that appear prominently in this Beacon are Excellent Teachers and Vibrant Community. You will read about physical education teacher and department chair Pam Coleman, who retired after 42 years of teaching and coaching at HDS. Thousands of students learned how to jump rope and jump serve from Mrs. Coleman. Hundreds of colleagues benefitted from her dedication and collegiality. Without question, Pam Coleman is an example of an excellent teacher. Additionally, our vibrant community is highly evident at graduation. We held graduation ceremonies outdoors this year and confidently sent the class of 2021 off to high school. As always, we urged these newest members of our alumni community to stay in touch and return to visit. We hope to see many of them as we open our new building, especially since they gave future eighth grade classes a foosball table to enjoy on the new Eighth Grade Deck.
THRIVE DIVERSITY COMMUNITY LIFELONG RELATIONSHIPS
You can see that we promise a lot in our mission, and we are honored to work toward achieving that mission every day.
I hope that you enjoy reading this issue of The Beacon. As members of our vibrant community, I urge any of you who no longer regularly visit the campus as a student or current parent to stay in touch with us, also. Gradatim ad Summum, Angi Evans Read the updated mission statement on the opposite page.
BEACON SPRING/SUMMER 2021
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