Dear Harbor Families,

With the first day of school upon us in just over a week, there is a buzz of excitement in the Harbor building! Teachers are busy setting up classrooms, participating in professional development workshops, organizing activities for the first weeks of school, engaging in health and safety training, and collaboratively planning in teaching teams.  We have been settling into the newly renovated spaces, which has been wonderful!  There is much to do as we prepare for the students’ arrival, and we can’t wait to welcome the students back soon! 

As the beginning of the school year brings new routines and plenty of tasks, we have prepared a guide to beginning of the year announcements, logistics, and tasks. This document (LINK REMOVED) is your one stop shop for the information you will need, including class lists and teacher assignments, health forms, the family handbook and directory, the calendar and curriculum overview, and registration for extended day care, hot lunch, and enrichment classes. We have included a “to do” list of tasks for you as well; please take the time to look through everything carefully and complete each task before the first day of school. 

Building on last year’s theme of connection, I am pleased to introduce our 2025–26 theme of empathy. Our children are growing up in a world where polarization of viewpoints makes it harder to find common ground, where emerging technologies like AI are reshaping how we live and interact, and where confirmation bias can limit appreciation of perspectives different from our own. While we cannot predict exactly how these shifts will affect our children as adults, one thing is certain: the world needs more empathy. Raising children who value and practice perspective-taking, equity, curiosity, inquiry, and inclusion has never been more essential.

You may have noticed the vertical “empathy” signs posted on utility poles and lampposts around the DC area. I recently learned there are more than 2,000 of these signs -  all created and installed by a single artist whose simple goal is to spread messages of kindness and compassion. At Harbor, we look forward to contributing to that same goal as we help young children learn to consider multiple perspectives, understand the feelings of others, and engage with respect, care, and kindness — all of which are central to our mission and our diversity, equity, and inclusion philosophy. At our opening meeting this week, teachers reflected on how empathy can shape classroom culture, inform school-wide routines, and strengthen our professional relationships with one another. We are eager to carry this theme forward and to highlight empathy with our students, families, and the full Harbor community throughout the year ahead.

We are also excited to share some focus areas of the upcoming school year, which will further enhance our mission to develop kind, capable, confident learners, to embrace the uniqueness of each young child, and to teach them to celebrate this in themselves and each other:

• As part of our commitment to nurturing best practices in early childhood education, our teachers are engaging in Project Zero professional development with fellow local educators this year. Project Zero, based at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, is a longstanding research initiative that examines how children learn, think, and create. Its work has shaped innovative approaches—such as “Visible Thinking” routines—that help even our youngest learners articulate their ideas, make their thinking visible, and build empathy in their interactions with others. Yesterday, our faculty worked with local educators from the Washington International School Institute for Teachers (WISIT) to explore ways to foster “cultures of thinking” through storytelling and classroom routines - with a particular focus on empathy. Earlier this month, four Harbor teachers also attended a local institute, and with additional sessions planned throughout the year, we are excited to bring these powerful, research-based practices into our classrooms for the benefit of every child.

• Christina Dabulskis, our Learning and Literacy Specialist, has been working to build upon our support systems with speech/language and occupational therapy support in our classrooms for the coming year. Cortney Mosle from The Point Occupational Therapy and Allison Hughes from Speechtree Therapy will be working directly with small groups of students, and providing professional support and tools for teachers to implement in their classrooms. We are also excited to be offering social skills groups for students with Rachel Siegel Gould from Growing Minds, to begin after the winter break. We look forward to sharing more about this ongoing support for our students throughout the school year.

• We are pleased to be partnering with Dr. Dan Shapiro, a well respected developmental and behavioral pediatrician  in our region, to offer a parenting course, called Parent Child Journey, on nine Thursday evenings this fall, in our newly renovated multipurpose space. These sessions are designed to teach strategies for working with challenges and behaviors in the home, and have been widely regarded for their comprehensive and individualized approach. More information can be found at this link. 

We can’t wait to get started on a wonderful school year, during which each of our students will grow and thrive! We hope to see you next Thursday afternoon at our Open House, and look forward to the first day of school on the 2nd! (And now, don’t forget to dig into the Back to School Announcements and Logistics document!)

Warm regards,

Leah Musico
Head of School
The Harbor School