Welcome back, everyone!
On Wednesday (the first day of school!), Belmont Day was buzzing in all the best ways. Students reconnected with classmates after a long summer apart. Parents beamed with joy as their children shifted from the free form of summer to the schedule and promise of the school day. And faculty, fresh from the summer months of restoration, eagerly welcomed their students, ready to challenge and support each of them in the weeks and months ahead. It was everything we wanted it to be and more. It was a fantastic way to kick off the 2025-26 school year!
Last week, before students and parents arrived to start the year, the faculty returned to campus for opening meetings. I introduced our theme for the year: building bridges. As an English teacher, I love a good metaphor, and bridge building certainly does the trick. I asked the faculty what bridges signified to them, and the answers came back fast and furious. These are some of their responses.
Bridges…
- Provide access
- Are the product of collaboration, design, problem-solving, and engineering
- Bring people together across differences
- Require energy from both sides
- Are hard to build, but worth the effort
- Need to be structurally sound to work effectively
- Can be beautiful
And finally, “If they fall, the damage is far-reaching and lasting.”
The answers are all spot on, of course, and are significant when we consider the important and beautiful bridges we are building here at Belmont Day today. In this, our 99th year as an institution, we are building a bridge from our past to a future we’ll celebrate with our Centennial in 2027. We are building a programmatic bridge between the rigor and challenge of our program and the individualized care and understanding we promise. We are building a bridge between learning and joy, and as we do every year, we are building that critical bridge between school and home.
So, as we reach the end of our first week of the school year, let the construction begin. May this be a year filled with connection, collaboration, positive energy, and beauty. Welcome back, Belmont Day. We’ve missed you.
