This Week at TDS – August 23, 2019

Welcome (back) to TDS. It was so wonderful to once again see smiling faces and hear laughing in the halls yesterday. While many of us were here for much of the summer, school never feels like school until the kids arrive! Thank you for entrusting us with the care and education of your children. If a picture is worth one thousand words, then click below to see a 41,000-word essay documenting our first day at TDS! Thanks to Ms. Farrer for putting it together.

Yesterday afternoon, we gathered in the HAC Commons for our first all-school assembly of the year. We introduced new faculty and students, challenged our older students to learn the names of everyone in the school, and then I offered a few thoughts for this year. Building on the first-day themes from the past two years – kindness and courage – I began by showing this three-minute video. Below are excerpts from my remarks:

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What did this man do? He REACHED OUT TO OTHERS. This is what I’d like you to focus on this week, this month, and this year – REACHING OUT TO OTHERS. It takes kindness and courage, but in return you get so much. You get love, and understanding, and happiness, and the feeling that you are helping to make the world a better place.

There are so many ways to REACH OUT TO OTHERS, and most of the ways are so simple. While the man in the movie did offer some money, offering help and kindness doesn’t cost a thing. To the returning students in the room, you have now been introduced to all the new students at TDS this year. You were once in their shoes. Reach out to them. Ask them to join your lunch table. Include them in your games at recess. Pull them into our TDS community. Our assembly concluded with our eighth graders reaching out to our TK by walking our youngest students back to their classroom.

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Our assembly concluded with our eighth graders reaching out to our TK by walking our youngest students back to their classroom.

I hope to see many of you tomorrow evening at our All-School Picnic, beginning at 5:30 in the gym. To our veteran parents, please model this year’s theme by making a point to REACH OUT and meet our new parents at this event. I’ll be revisiting this theme at Back to School Night (September 5 for Lower School, September 12 for Middle School) as well.