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Leadership Blog

Capstone Week 2024: Learn, Do, Share

By Brendan Largay, Head of School | April 12, 2024

Every year, the build-up to Capstone Week is palpable. Students carefully finalize their presentations, mentors shuffle schedules to ensure a final touchpoint with their mentees, and communication from the dynamic Capstone partners and guides Dean Spencer and Jen Friborg picks up in coordination and with a true anticipatory buzz. This week, Capstone arrived in all […]

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Seeing Science, Society, and So Much More in the Solar Eclipse

By Anthea Lavergne, Director of Curriculum and the Associate Teacher Program | April 05, 2024

Teachers and students are preparing to observe Monday’s forthcoming total solar eclipse. The excitement behind what’s on the horizon will fuel learning and ignite sparks of joy throughout our community. Our school’s approach to teaching and learning about the eclipse culminates with students in grades first through eighth adorning special lenses to experience, through their […]

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Blank Walls Transformed By Student Art, In a BIG! Way

By Jen James, Assistant to the Head of School; Registrar; Director of Special Projects | March 29, 2024

No doubt about it. This week has been dark, drab, and dreary outside our walls. It seems there are only shades of gray on Mother Nature’s palette as we say goodbye to March. Thankfully, inside our walls, we’re surrounded by a growing gallery of the vibrant colors we seek from spring.  From our school counselor’s […]

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Brendan Largay

At Belmont Day, the FOMO Is Real

By Brendan Largay, Head of School | March 22, 2024

As a head of school, you learn that when you take a bit of time away, there is never a “perfect” week for your travels. Something is always happening at school, something special that you will miss, a moment of learning, sharing, caring, and joy that you wish you had experienced firsthand. The school is […]

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Rachel Starks Chaves

Changing How We Talk About Math Adds Up to Positive Results

By Rachel Starks Chaves, Grade 8 Math Teacher | March 14, 2024

In my first teaching position, one of my seventh grade math students was a colleague’s son. The colleague regularly connected to assure me that her son was getting by okay in math, saying things like, “I don’t expect him to get great grades.” and “I always tell him: ‘I’m not good at math, and it’s […]

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Liz Gray, middle school head

The Quiet Power of Narrative Nonfiction

By Liz Gray, Middle School Head; Grade 7 Social Studies Teacher | March 08, 2024

Last week, I attended the NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) conference in St. Louis (my hometown!), where the theme was “thrive.” Speakers, presenters, and attendees like me found renewed joy and inspiration in the work we do in independent schools. The most profound lessons from this great conference came from a talk by a […]

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By Brendan Largay, Head of School |

May 19, 2023

After a wonderfully full week that has emphasized community, connections, and celebrations at every turn, I’m taking a brief break today from offering my own words, to instead offer in this space, the beautifully constructed words of someone else–the poem,…

By Brendan Largay, head of school |

April 28, 2023

Years ago, before I arrived at Belmont Day, I was fortunate to attend a professional development conference in Hillsborough, CA, at the Nueva School. The conference featured the process of design thinking as a novel and alternate method of delivering…
Brendan Largay, head of school

By Brendan Largay, head of school |

April 14, 2023

During opening remarks for this year’s presentations, the culminating part of our eighth graders’ seminal Capstone experience, Jen Friborg, who coordinates the program like a symphony conductor, explained that Belmont Day might have the longest-running Capstone program in the country.…

By Heather Woodcock, director of professional growth and development |

April 6, 2023

While on a recent walk in the woods, a friend told me that a tree planted in a small clearing of an old forest has a much better chance of growing successfully than a tree planted in an open field.…
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