Until We Meet Again, Take Care!

Learning at Fayerweather is active, joyful, and deeply connected to the community, offering students both mirrors that reflect their own identities and experiences, and windows into the lives and perspectives of others. It’s a vibrant and inspiring way to learn, grow, cultivate empathy, curiosity, and develop a deep sense of value for self and others.

This year has brought meaningful growth and transformation, both planned and unexpected. We completed our new Strategic Plan, a living document that reflects our shared hopes and priorities, and we laid the groundwork for our new six-day schedule, which we’ll introduce next school year.  This new schedule supports our strategic efforts and desire to enhance learning through implementing placed-based learning opportunities. 

Place-based learning turns the community into the classroom, both locally and globally, by helping students explore how people’s experiences are shaped by the places, systems, and structures around them. This approach grounds academic learning in real-world experiences, encouraging students to engage with their environment, ask meaningful questions, and connect their studies to the world beyond school walls.  This approach to learning sparks curiosity, deepens understanding, and helps students see the relevance of what they are learning. Most importantly, it empowers students to see themselves as active contributors to their communities and responsible stewards of their world. Families will learn more about the schedule shift in the months ahead, and we’re excited about the deeper learning and smoother rhythms it will bring.

We are also incredibly grateful for your generosity, and thanks to your support next year’s Unit students will travel to Puerto Rico, expanding their learning beyond the classroom in powerful, place-based ways. We are excited that this opportunity will expand and grow our experiential learning model by elevating more place-based learning opportunities and cross-disciplinary learning. 

Of course, like every school year, this one had its hills to climb, valleys to dwell in, and moments of stillness. We questioned, disagreed, collaborated, struggled, and found resolution. We empathized, we reflected, and above all, we kept showing up – for ourselves, for each other, and for our students. Together, we moved through it all, and we made it here, to the end of this year’s journey, with more clarity, connection, and possibility than when we began.

As you step into summer, I hope you find time to slow down, be with loved ones, and ask yourself: What do I need in order to return as my best self in the year ahead? It’s a powerful question that is rooted in care and self-awareness. We know the journey ahead will be an uphill climb as we are learning and living within a challenging political time, as we all work to define and evolve our definition of what it means to be a citizen of the United States and the role that education plays in that definition. 

I’ll leave you with this reminder from adrienne maree brown, who writes in Emergent Strategy: “Meaningful collaboration both relies on and deepens relationship—the stronger the bond between the people or groups in collaboration, the more possibility we can hold.”

Collaboration is our superpower at Fayerweather. Let’s stick together as we work hard to live our mission.  It’s how we dream bigger, build stronger, and make more possible, for ourselves and our children, the beloved community we believe should exist. 

Wishing you a restful and joyful summer,

Kim