Dear Advent Community,

I cannot contain how excited I am to open this school year! Our buildings are alive with the faculty and staff gearing up for the year ahead. As I officially start my 10th year at the Advent School, I think about the next decade ahead and the opportunities before us.

This year, we will open with quite a few changes within our academic team, community connections, and classrooms. With new roles for our Department of Teaching & Learning, the team has been working all summer on reframing what it means to be a progressive school rooted in social justice and inspired by the Reggio Emilia pedagogy. As we lean into what are truly the most important foundations for children, this reframe is built on the Reggio pedagogy of the importance of partnership and collaboration. This year, we will ask big questions to explore what partnership means for our community after three years of unknowns.

I am mindful that each of us - faculty, staff, students, families, caregivers, and friends- after three years, still have wonder, excitement, curiosity, anticipation, anxiety, and intention as we have navigated a world beyond COVID and all that comes as we consider what it means to be in community.

For me, the idea that my Advent child will enter his 10th-grade year at Boston Latin School, no longer part of the everyday life of this building, is still settling in even after three years. I am thoughtful of the life of our class of 2024, who will embark on their Next School journeys as they are just getting settled back into a building and all that the Advent School has to offer without the limitations of the last three years. To our ECC and K families that have a different sense of school community, as they continue to introduce their own personal communities into the lives of their youngest children.

Friends, I am excited to engage in who this community is and, within our AISNE Accreditation, who this community wants to be. How we live in the mission, how we fund the mission, how we grow and learn in the mission as partners in building the foundations so that our children, all of our children, "learn with passion, act with courage, and change the world." We will ask you this year to be more than proximal. We will ask each of us to fully understand the partnership our children deserve to build in the opportunity that an Advent School education can only provide. A place that sees, hears, values, and amplifies children's voices, advocacy, learning, and growth as one community.

Have a wonderful long weekend. I look forward to seeing each of you at Family Visit Day. Rest well, LIONS! See you soon.

Warmly,
 
Nicole

Nicole A. DuFauchard P'20
Head of School
Goldstein Family Chair