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.

With Skype, students can learn from other students, connect with other cultures and expand their knowledge in amazing ways.

After a successful first connection with a school in Toledo, Spain, the following are some of the impressions from our students about their experience.

“It was amazing how we could both see each other. More amazing that we could have a conversation!”

“They learn almost the same things we do, and they like the same things that we like.”

“I can’t wait until we connect with them again!”

“I think that the Skype session today with Toledo was eye-opening.”

“The classes in Spain are just like ours, but they speak Spanish.”

“I will always remember this day.”

In the near future, both schools will collaborate on a cultural project.

The American writer Madeleine L’Engle once said, “The great thing about getting old is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” And so it was at Harbor as grandfriends visited campus to peer into the lives of young students at Harbor.

About 60 grandfriends were on hand for a morning of activities that included classroom visits with teachers, students and administrators.

Contrasts were revealing, as grandfriends recalled their own youth when idle time was filled with stickball, roller-skating, jumping rope and pitching baseball cards. Several recalled the early days of television, when viewing choices were limited to three networks. “The Shadow” was on the radio, as were Connie Francis and Frankie Avalon. Gasoline cost 25 cents a gallon. One Long Island grandfriend recalled that cars were so scarce that she and her friends would pass the time counting them as they passed on the Montauk Highway.

Toward the end of the morning, an ensemble of students performed several songs on recorders before the day’s assembly concluded.

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.

In spite of its name, Frost Valley did not give Harbor 5th and 6th graders a cool reception on their journey last week to the Catskills.  Amid balmy temperatures and superb leadership from their counselor Dan d'Echellis, the students and chaperones eagerly participated in team-building and wilderness activities, from a half-day hike to an evening trek to the observatory to learn about the night sky.

Students were also challenged to become more self-reliant and to take on responsibilities to help their classmates. At mealtime, students handled food service and cleanup.

Chaperone Mrs. Grass artfully crafted a system for the girls to organize their belongings in the bunkhouse, and Señora Williams skillfully acclimated the students to their new surroundings. Mr. Prario gamely kept up with the rest of the group, and his off-beat humor kept the mood light.

This excursion into the wilds of upstate New York was truly memorable, for Frost Valley is a kingdom unto itself, all 6,000 acres of it:  mountains, valleys, woods and streams, complete with a 1915 mansion and the ruins of the mid-19th century village of Ladleton.

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.

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