Brendan Largay, Head of School
Post Date: June 10, 2022

These are exciting days here at Belmont Day as we are in the flurry of celebrations and traditions that will close out the school year. It will be exciting to experience an in-person Moving Up Assembly where we marvel at our students’ physical and academic growth. Teachers have been hard at work drafting final student reports that will serve as the closing punctuation for each learner this year. Soon enough, they will be available for you to read and reflect on your child’s growth and progress over the semester.

I encourage you to take a close look at your child’s school photo that appears on the cover of their report. Many of you may find yourself looking rather wistfully at that photo that is a reminder of ‘how young’ they once were. Especially during these formative elementary and middle school years, a single year can bring extraordinary growth.

Alongside the physical evidence of the changes students have experienced, our reports explicate the learning they have experienced. The change between now and then is rooted in the excellence of the program they have experienced in the interim. It is the byproduct of classes spent in the BDS garden, Singapore math, PE classes in the Barn, or learning how to play violin during ensembles. It is the novel they read, the poem they wrote, the quiz they took, the language they learned, and the lines they memorized. It is the vowel sound they learned or the letter they’ve written. It is a heartbreaking loss under the lights or a thrilling overtime win.

The difference in your child today from that picture on their report is also shaped by the relationships they have crafted since those early fall days—relationships with classmates, teachers, and a school that strives to make six core values visible to each student every day and inspire those values within them. What you see is the development of respect, honesty, responsibility, caring, and joy. What you see there is the excellence that comes with another year gone by at Belmont Day.

From all of us at Belmont Day—the very folks responsible for some of the changes you see in your child today and for the reports you will read—we wish you a happy, healthy, joyful, and wonderful summer.