The talent, the bling, the sequins, the runway… Harbor’s Celebrities had it all, and more.  Thirty-one performances--each, it seemed, better than the last. The classics shared the stage with hip-hopsters, while Tae Kwan Do and Karate kicks punctuated the afternoon.

And when the dust settled, there were a few more stars in the firmament.

Dave Essex and Donna Siani kicked things off with “Wipeout.”  Certainly, a tough act to follow.  But for the next two hours, MC Travis Zuckerman kept the acts coming… and coming, and coming.

There was Isai Bala knocking out his rendition of “Ragtime Do-si-do,” and Robert Monticciolo’s rapid-fire humor (Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground? A: To get to the other slide).  Carina Cristobal and Jade Silverstein’s Hula Hooped their way through “We Found Love” by Rihanna.  Zoe Rizzo sang “Seven Feet of Snow” (here’s to dreaming) and Evelyn Beltrani won the Harbor crowd over with her take on “Safe and Sound” by Taylor Swift.

All in all, so many performers and so much talent to mention everyone.  But what an afternoon!

Ms. Foetis's history class and Ms. Huang-Ernst's second grade shared information about Black History Month. The Upper School wrote and illustrated its own story about slavery, and the second grade presented its research on famous African-American women in history. It was a great collaboration!

In celebration of International Mother Language Day, and to honor the diversity of nations represented at Harbor, the modern language department recently organized a wide-ranging, all-school assembly.

Several students addressed the school in the mother tongues of their parents: Turkish, German, Russian, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. All 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade language students pledged to the American flag in French and Spanish and also spoke about their posters celebrating the theme, “Many Languages, One World.”

The celebration also extended the theme to include traditional apparel, foods and cultures of various nations.

First graders sang in Spanish, 3^rd and 4^th graders in French, and six students from grade 5 put on puppet shows in Spanish. The assembly concluded with a rollicking sing-along of “Waving Flag.”

Public speaking at Harbor begins at the earliest age. Speaking before an audience helps children develop confidence and effective communication skills such as retrieving information, presenting ideas in an organized fashion, speaking with appropriate volume and focusing on the audience. These are skills they will use forever.

Beginning in preschool, our youngest students learn how to collect information (with the help of their families) and to present that information to an audience in a clear and informative manner. Weekly Show and Tell opportunities are the rudiments of public speaking in pre-school classrooms. Moving forward, the pre-school children apply their understanding of public speaking by presenting information to an audience about a topic they have researched. Each preschool child selects one of 17 species of penguins, and prepares information they learned on poster-sized paper. After practicing their presentations in the classroom, the children present their penguin projects to audiences of kindergarten and first-grade schoolmates. These confident and well-informed young orators are truly impressive! Bravo, preschoolers!

Faced with the challenge of delivering a speech at the all-school meeting on Friday, can you guess the favorite topic? Answer: The challenge of delivering a speech at the all-school meeting on Friday.

Actually, the subject of Harbor’s second annual public speaking contest was, What would I do if I knew I could not fail? Answers abounded from 14 students, ranging from fourth-to-eighth grade, who participated.

--Be a comedian; help myself get over my fear of speaking in front of big crowds, and make people laugh.

--Do things I wouldn’t usually do.

--Fail a little in your life so you can appreciate success.

--Make a new friend every day.

--Present a great speech that makes me and others happy.

--Swim with fishes.

--Sing like the king, Elvis Presley. I would know it’s now or never.

--Be a major leaguer.

One contestant invoked the advice that Eleanor Roosevelt, who once said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” For the brave students who participated in Friday’s event, all came away winners.

Jama and I have instituted Marshmallow Mondays (although they began on a Tuesday due to the Monday holiday last week) into the winter schedule to give us an opportunity to connect with Harbor students and enjoy a little rap session together. Last week, we began with the Kindergarten by serving hot cocoa in the dining room at the end of the day and discussing whatever topic the students generate. We had a wonderful time together, and look forward to greeting each class through the winter months. Of course, marshmallow was offered for their cocoa (yes, we know it is not the most nutritional snack!) but why else would we call it Marshmallow Monday?

On Friday, the 20th, the Harbor community said good bye to our two January interns, Miss Hannah and Miss Sarah, who have covered a lot of territory in their two weeks on campus helping us out with various projects from development to athletics, and classroom activity. We are happy to have had them share their positive energy with us, and the children enjoyed their daily presence. I know the interns enjoyed their time at Harbor and certain they learned a great deal from the experience. One of my goals for the future is to establish an intern program at Harbor to bring in new energy, fresh ideas and the latest in thinking in education. There are many areas within the community where interns can assist in daily life as researchers in development and admissions, teaching and project assistants, special events staff and marketing, etc.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind our parents about the annual Harbor Fund, which allows us to be forward thinking about our curriculum each year. We have had great success with 100% participation by trustees and our faculty. Let's keep the momentum going by working toward increasing the percentage of contributions from parents this year. The percentage of parent gifts is an important statistic when we take our fundraising to the next level to seek funding from outside sources including foundations for our programs. I hope that every one of you will give Harbor students your consideration for a gift. We intend to surpass our goal this year!

With every good wish...

James J. Young III
Head of School

Monday, January 16th is, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  This day, the third Monday in January of each year, was first set aside in 1983, by President Ronald Reagan to remember Dr. King and the cause he passionately embraced. The fourth grade has been reading about Dr. King, learning about what he stood for, and discussing key words related to the Civil Rights Movement: equality, respect, freedom and liberty.  We watched an interesting film about Dr. King, which taught how he became the national face of the Civil Rights Movement.

See the link below to watch this powerful video. http://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086

See, also, this link for Dr. King’s famous, “I Have a Dream” speech from August,1963. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

The fourth grade learned that as a child, Dr. King was shielded from discrimination by his parents, Alberta Williams King and Martin Luther King Sr., a minister at Ebenezar Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His first experience with discrimination was as a school-aged boy when a former friend suddenly stopped playing with him, “because he was black.” At the time, young Martin didn’t understand this. Then, his mother told him about segregation. This lesson would stay with Martin Luther King Jr., for the rest of his life.

It seems as if his younger years prepared King for his future as the national face of the Civil Rights Movement. He attended a segregated high school and was accelerated through the grade levels more than once. He studied at Crozer Seminary School in Pennsylvania and went on to attend graduate school at Boston College. While in seminary school, Dr. King learned about the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of civil disobedience in India's struggle for independence from Great Britain.  The idea of civil disobedience shaped King's views during the Civil Rights Movement.  He used non-violent protests to raise the consciousness of a society where Jim Crow Laws, racial discrimination and segregation were common.  He once said, “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” After graduation, King moved to Montgomery, Alabama with his wife, Coretta Scott King, where he became a minister at the Dexter Baptist Church. There, King developed excellent skills as a communicator and public speaker.

In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat to on a Montgomery, Alabama bus and the Montgomery Bus Boycott began soon after that. Dr. King was there to help organize the bus boycott. For 381 days, Alabama’s black citizens walked to work, to school and to church. The boycott finally ended on December 20, 1956, when the Supreme Court ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional. With his eloquence, quiet dignity and talk of civil disobedience, Martin Luther King Jr. had become the spiritual leader of this generation.

For nearly ten more years, King traveled around the country to walk with, pray with, and speak to, huge crowds of people who were inspired by his words and his ideas. He made nearly 2,500 speeches, wrote five books and many articles, was selected as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, met with President John F. Kennedy to discuss civil rights, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

One of Dr. King’s most famous speeches was his ”I Have a Dream” speech, given on August 28, 1963. After a march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, a gathering of 250,000 people listened to Dr. King as he spoke about how the U.S. Constitution promised “all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” He spoke of the black citizen who “languished in the corners of society” in “shameful conditions.” It is not until 13 minutes into his 18-minute speech that Dr. King utters his memorialized words, “I have a dream,” and extemporaneously shares his vision of a nation united in equality and liberty for all.

Shortly after this momentous speech, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act, putting an end to lawful segregation.  In April, 1968, Dr. King was shot and killed as he stood on the balcony of his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, having come to Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers.

The fourth grade was inspired by Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Together with first grade, we created a banner with cut out “clouds” filled with our own dreams for the future. The banner is on display on the second floor of the Lower School, just outside of the first grade classroom. It reminds us that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was freedom and equality for all. We invite you to write down your dream—for your school, your community or your country—on a cloud and place it on our community banner. Thank you, Dr. King, for teaching us all about peaceful protest. The classroom is a great place to learn about respecting diversity.

A $5,000 grant for a distance-learning project was formally submitted last week by Optimum Lightpath to Harbor Country Day School. The grant will allow fourth-grade students at Harbor to learn about research by the Royal Tyrell Museum into the study of fossils and pre-history.

Mr. Artie Weissbach, the school’s director of technology, and Ms. Christine McBrien, the fourth-grade teacher, accepted the grant on behalf of the school. It was presented by Joan Boccieri Gilroy, director of government affairs for Cablevision, and Todd Cammarota, enterprise account executive. Smithtown Councilman Kevin Malloy was also on hand for the presentation.

Led by the National Junior Honor Society, Harbor's 7th and 8th graders are continuing the school's connection to the Pax Christi Homeless Shelter in Port Jefferson. Twice every month the students prepare and serve lunches to the residents of the center, which is tucked away behind the Port Jefferson train station.  Pax Christi is one of the many outreach activities of Hope House, a non-denominational self-help organization serving those in need in the Port Jeff area. 

David Krause first went to Madagascar, the island nation of 21 million people, in search of pre-historic fossils. In fact, Madagascar has yielded fossils of species that existed no where else on earth. But what the paleontologist also saw around him – poverty, illiteracy and suffering – brought forth a new cause: the development of schools, clinics, and a spirit that the sub-standard living conditions for many children in this island nation can be improved.

Dr. Krause recently visited Harbor to speak with students about the challenges ahead for him and the doctors, dentists and other medical volunteers from Stony Brook University who make regular trips to Madagascar. He explained the Madagascar Ankizy Fund was established to finance a variety of projects including building schools, holding clinics, and distributing healthcare supplies in remote areas of Madagascar.

Dr. David Krause is a vertebrate paleontologist currently working as a Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University. He is also the Founder and Executive Director of the Madagascar Ankizy Fund (ankizy means children in the Malagasy language), www.ankizy.org.

This year’s multicultural program at Harbor Country Day School is designed to enhance student life and create broader diversity awareness in the Harbor Community. To illustrate Harbor’s diversity, faculty, staff and families are creating leaves rich in color and design and adding them to a Diversity Tree on display at the School entrance. Blended together beautifully, the “Leaf Project” is blossoming into a tree of many colors, a genuine reflection of the diverse world in which we live. The multicolored leaves tell a personal story of where we come from and who we are and proudly represent the diverse cultural heritage of the Harbor Country Day School community.

Last week, fourth graders took a marine science field trip to Long Beach in nearby Nissequogue. Marine biologist Kristin Colavito met us there with buckets, a seine net, and plant life identification packets. We first studied plant life along the shoreline, then turned our attention to the water.  Using a seine net, we combed the water close to shore, scooping up different types of marine life, and quickly placed them in water-filled buckets. We learned about pipe fish, a close relative to the sea horse; found Asian shore crabs, an invasive species that competes with native animal species in Long Island Sound; and caught countless sheepshead minnows and silver sides.

Ms. Colavito waded into the water and found a beautiful adult male horseshoe crab, an exciting finish to our wonderful and educational trip. 
After studying the creatures we found, we returned our discoveries to the water. We all agreed that one of the most important parts of our research was leaving the environment undisturbed.

On October 14th in the company of students, parents, faculty and staff, current and past trustees and friends, Jim Young was formally installed as the 10^th Head of Harbor Country Day School. Mr. Young used the occasion to underscore Harbor’s unique status to frame the thinking, enthusiasm and character of its students and to prepare them well for a fast-paced world ahead.   New York State Senator John J. Flanagan was on hand to offer a proclamation welcoming the Head of School to his new position and the community. Sen. Flanagan is chairman of the Education Committee of the State Senate.

Seventh and eighth graders traveled to Huguenot, NY, to spend three days and two nights at the Greenkill outdoor experience camp. The excursion was three days packed with a wide range of physical and emotional challenges.

The first day began with the group learning to work as a team through low-ropes challenges called the Electric Fence and Nitro-walk, among others, and ended with a night walk in the woods without any artificial light. In the morning of day two, the group hiked six miles to a beautiful overlook where they learned to start a fire without matches and later conquered a high ropes course that ended in a 100-yard zip line descent. Finally, on day three, the weary but eager campers worked as a team to climb a 40-foot "Giant Ladder" as high as possible in 20 minutes.

By the time the group returned to St. James, they were happy to be home, but proud of all they accomplished.

The preschool children have made a wonderful transition to life at Harbor Country Day School. New friends play cooperatively together, and many are discovering some interesting uses for classroom toys and equipment. The children have all learned each other’s names, as well as the names of their teachers. In a very short time they have become like a "family," caring about one another's happiness and well-being. The new snack program offers lots of healthy and creative nourishment. We want to thank all the parents for their support of this program. Stay tuned for some new and innovative ideas that encourage healthy food choices for children.

After over a year of diligent preparation, a thorough review from the NYSAIS visiting committee and countless contributions from the faculty, staff and board of trustees, Harbor is pleased to report that that the Committee on Accreditation of the New York State Association of Independent Schools, has voted to grant decennial accreditation to Harbor Country Day School until the year 2021. There will be a standard five-year review in 2016.

When was the last time you logged on to Harbor Currents, Harbor's Blog? While the site often receives between 60-90 individual hits per day, our thinking is that our dedicated readers are not directly associated with Harbor. If you subscribe to our RSS feed, you will quickly be notified by email regarding the latest post. We would love to hear your feedback on the site as well.

Similar to Harbor Country Day and our teaching pedagogy, Harbor Currents is dedicated to the promotion of dynamic teaching methodologies and the establishment of productive, healthy learning environments. Each week, I post a new article that helps promote the mission of our school, but equally important, each post promotes the mission of dynamic, innovative teaching and raising children in a healthy learning environment. The sidebar contains videos, articles and books I suggest for further study. Ever since our screening of Race To Nowhere back in January, Harbor has been an ardent supporter of the cause. Subsequently, Harbor Currents was born and quickly became touted as the model blog for independent school heads.

Our website design firm, Finalsite, uses Harbor Currents in their advertising and as a model online learning environment for independent schools. We receive phone calls and emails from other schools across the country that want to learn from us, and I have spoken at national conferences about the benefits of educational blogging as a school community. Each day, visitors log on to Harbor Currents via Twitter and our online newspaper, The Harbor Country Day Daily. The link to the website is linked to several other school blogs and people around the country comment on the articles. Perhaps the most important reason for you to subscribe to Harbor Currents is that it teaches us all about the nature of independent school teaching and why we teach the way in which we teach. In addition, it exposes potential online social media dangers for children, it discusses the war on homework, and it encourages a positive and open forum for discussion, not just for our Harbor community, but for the whole world. Soon we will be hosting guest bloggers, specialists in their field and other heads of school.

This link will take you directly to the site and you can subscribe to our RSS feed. You don't want to miss a single post! Click here for Harbor Currents.

January through May have always been the most active months in admissions and this year is shaping up to be no different. The Admissions season at Harbor Country Day School is off to the best start in years. Overall admissions inquiries are up almost 30%, Open House attendance was up a full 50% and visits to the Harbor Country Day School website have increased a staggering 187% since the beginning of January. We attribute this to many things, chief among them is the extraordinary marketing efforts on behalf of our team and the tremendous support our current families are offering our school. Thank you so much for your support. Many parents are taking advantage of the Recruitment Incentive Program we initiated recently. If you have not heard of it yet, please pick up some literature at school, call us for information, or please click here. Also, please see our information on the new Merit Scholarship Program to pass along to any friends of yours who may be interested in Harbor.

Re-enrollment contracts will be sent out next week with a return deadline date of March 11th. With the admissions season going so well, we anticipate adding a significant number of new capable students of character to our school. We strongly encourage you to meet the deadline to ensure enrollment for the 2011-2012 Academic Year.

Dates to Remember:

New Student Application Deadline – February 28th

Tuition Assistance Applications Due – March 1st

New Student Acceptances Mailed – March 10th

Re-Enrollment Deadline – March 11th

Merit Scholarship SSAT Test – March 19th

Merit Scholarship SSAT Test (second session) – April 9th

Tuition Assistance Decisions Announced – April 15th

Once these dates are passed, the admissions process works on a rolling basis. If you know of anyone interested in admissions at Harbor, please have them call the school and speak with Chris Pryor or Sally Dessart and make sure they mention your name for the Recruitment Incentive Program.

If you are interested in learning more about our generous Tuition Assistance program, please click here for details.

To Members of the Harbor Country Day School Community:

It is with great enthusiasm that I look forward to joining the Harbor Country Day School community as its tenth Head of School. HCDS is a purposeful, dynamic and intimate academic community with a talented and dedicated faculty, energetic and inspiring students, in addition to a passionate and committed parent organization. I anticipate meeting more alumni in the coming months. The visits that I made to campus during the fall elicited interesting discussions among all constituencies about the opportunities for growth at Harbor. The thoughts expressed by the people that I met resonated with my own educational philosophy and values, and inspired and affirmed for me my interest in leading Harbor, so that we can work together to evolve the School. While we discussed the mission of Harbor, there will be increased dialogue in our future about how the mission of Harbor can and will be fulfilled. Our immediate focus will be on Harbor students and their needs, including the development of innovative ideas relating to teaching and learning, and increasing the enrollment numbers.

When my wife, Jama and I first arrived on campus, we were immediately impressed with the charm and location of the School, the quality of the differentiated teaching and learning as we moved from class to class, and the clear sense that Harbor Country Day School is a school that offers children a strong foundation for a bright future. Students were actively engaged in their learning within the classrooms in which we participated and observed; classes in various grades across the curriculum. Our experiences served to validate for us that there is an abiding commitment to the school's Mission Statement, and that respectful interaction among students and teachers is at the core of a HCDS experience. Whether it was student projects in art, the Kindergarten children stretching after lunch, the science class identifying forces that attract plants to grow toward light, the bake sale in the hallway, sports in the gym, or the identification of research topics at the 8th grade Harkness table, it was obvious that Harbor students are inquisitive and actively involved in the fun of hands-on learning. Students in the upper grades are discovering their own voices, and beginning to grasp the importance of becoming self-advocates in their own learning. There is a rejuvenating, palpable pulse to the daily activity at Harbor.

As I appreciate history, I share your dedication and commitment to maintaining tradition as Harbor moves forward. I am eager to learn and I hope that you are, too. A plethora of commonalities exists in small independent schools, but a school's ethos is what sets it apart and helps us to identify its unique qualities. I am already discovering what is unique about Harbor. Articulating those qualities is essential to understanding the School's mission and culture. None of you should be surprised to learn that a school is a microcosm of the broader community. Thus, Harbor is an extension of your own wonderful families. I love this about Harbor because it feels like family as soon as you step onto campus. I know schools from every angle, and I intend to embrace the opportunities and the challenges, and build on tradition and the founding principles of Harbor Country Day School.

If you are reading this letter, you must have an interest in Harbor Country Day School. Hopefully, that interest extends to children and their families, the role of school choice for parents, and the endless possibilities that a Harbor education has to offer its' students. Evolving Harbor Country Day requires positive community energy as we fulfill our mission, and I am certain that everyone is ready to pull their oar. As 2011 progresses, I look forward to being on campus, when appropriate, to meet with teachers individually and collectively, to observe more of the Harbor day, and to converse with additional members of the community as we begin looking toward the future for HCDS. I conclude my own current position as Headmaster of Rocky Hill School, a college preparatory, coeducational preK-12th grade day school in June, and will continue to be busy with responsibilities here through the spring. I eagerly await our arrival at HCDS in July, and welcome the opportunity to work with all of you at that time.

Onward Harbor!

Sincerely,

James J. Young III

Over the course of the last four years, the faculty and I have been unwavering in our efforts to define, develop, broaden, deepen and articulate our curriculum to our community. We established committees, hired consultants, and we digitally mapped almost every course, which is an ongoing curriculum mapping process. We spent countless hours in professional development meetings, and adopted new programs for reading and writing, grammar, vocabulary, literature and science, to name a few. The culminating effect was a transformed curriculum that placed the student at the center of their learning. We redesigned classrooms to use space in a more efficient manner. We integrated state-of-the-art technology into the classrooms. Consequently, we saw a substantial increase in test scores at all levels. We are proud of our accomplishments and see students reaching success in all areas. Equally important, our students are acquiring the 21st Century skills that are so critical to daily life.

Last year, we published our curriculum, teaching philosophy and satellite programs, like the science colloquium, in an informative handbook format for all to read. This was a first for Harbor, as the curricular and co-curricular program had never been documented and published in this manner before. We still have many curriculum handbooks left, and we offer one to each prospective family during the admissions process. This year, rather than reprinting copies for both current and prospective parents, we opted to publish it on our website in its entireity. By doing so, we reinforced our commitment to the environment by eliminating the printing of hard copies; we also saved money on the printing, and we are successfully marketing our program to the outside world by highlighting it on our website. If you click here on Curriculum, you will be taken directly to the document. You can even share this set of pages with friends if you are encouraging them to consider Harbor as an educational option. As you know we would love to talk to as many of your friends as possible. I am most impressed with this document as it reflects several years of research, thought and hard work. I applaud this faculty for their ongoing effort to consistently improve our program and focus on your children. Read, share, enjoy.

Chris Pryor
Head of School