Dear GFS Students, Faculty, Family & Friends,

I’m excited to share the November edition of our Boyce Bulletin and update you on the happenings in the Boyce Center for Learning & Thriving! The Center is regularly buzzing with activity now, especially during our 3-4pm Learning Lab, when Middle School and Upper School students can drop in for organizational or academic support. The Learning Lab has become so popular that we have added additional supports in the form of our Math Department Chair and several Upper School Academic Mentors, who are now regularly on hand to help us support more students across various grade levels! We have also been hard at work reimagining our Lower School Boyce Satellite Office, which will soon feature round whiteboard tables, colorful flexible seating and a beautiful whiteboard room divider for when multiple groups are using the space with Mrs. Bitz & Mrs. Holt.

This Wellness Wednesday, we launched November's gratitude campaign, which you can read more about below. As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday, I invite you to join our students and faculty in our 1,000 Thanks Campaign by embracing gratitude practices at home. Brighten a faculty member’s day by sending a nice note or email–kind words are truly the best gift! Consider incorporating a gratitude jar or journal at home to encourage daily gratitude during breakfast, dinner, car rides or even bedtime routines. You can even decorate for the holidays with a gratitude paper chain with what your family is thankful for written on each link. Check out our gratitude Bingo card below for more inspiration and join us in posting our gratitude for the GFS community here.

On a personal note, I am incredibly grateful for all of you–parents, students, faculty and friends in the community for all of your support over the past few months. I am honored to be a part of such an incredible community and am proud of the impact the Boyce Center is already having for our students. I am especially thankful for our incredible faculty; the success of the Boyce Center is a reflection of their enthusiasm, expertise, grace, flexibility, and genuine desire to support students. Thank you all for your continued support and partnership!

Best,

Shannon

The Boyce Center for Learning & Thriving supports learners across divisions, working alongside divisional Academic Resource Coordinators and faculty. Our Reading & Math Specialists spend the first few hours of each day in the Lower School, working in classrooms and with small groups of students, before working with Middle & Upper Schoolers in the afternoons and during our daily Learning Lab. We are grateful to be able to support students across campus at each stage of their educational journey at GFS!

On Wednesday, November 6th, the Garrison Forest school community kicked off our 1,000 Thanks campaign by writing gratitude postcards in Lower School homerooms and Middle & Upper School advisories. In addition to our postcard campaign, many classrooms started Gratitude Jars and incorporated gratitude activities into their classes. Students were also grateful to welcome Pets on Wheels back to campus with their adorable therapy dogs! In the evening, our Residential Life community joined together for a service project led by Upper School Counselor Nicole Gerstein. Students colored pop art designs to be used to make colorful trash cans that are sold in Art With A Heart's social enterprise store.

We are currently 49% of the way to our goal and will continue collecting postcards throughout the month of November! You can join the campaign by picking up a postcard from your divisional office, dropping off a thank you card of your choosing in the box in your divisional office or submitting an electronic note of thanks here.

The Boyce Center for Learning & Thriving, together with our Counseling Department, is excited to bring a special Parent Education program on navigating childhood anxiety to campus on Wednesday, November 20 at 7pm. SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions and is a parent-based treatment program developed by researchers at Yale University to help children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems. Our Preschool, Lower School and Middle School faculty received training on SPACE methods during our 11/1 PD Day and found it to be very helpful and applicable to children of all ages. Please RSVP here for this special program, which is open to Garrison Forest families and friends in the community.

The Boyce Center is committed to supporting, expanding and promoting enrichment opportunities at GFS and is excited to promote one enrichment opportunity each month in the Boyce Bulletin! This month, we want to celebrate a new Middle School enrichment opportunity: Forest Scholars!

Our Sixth Grade Forest Scholars program is an immersive outdoor education program comprised of hands-on experiences, hiking expeditions and focused observations within our school's forests, meadows and wetlands. The program fosters a sense of curiosity and stewardship and cultivates a generation of environmental leaders who appreciate, protect and advocate for the natural world. All sixth graders participate in the Forest Scholars program, which is taught by Rebecca Harris, our 8th grade and Advanced Placement Environmental Science teacher. Mrs. Harris began teaching at GFS in 2022 after spending twelve years working as an Environmental Scientist & Engineer. Rebecca worked on building the Forest Scholars curriculum this summer, alongside Nedria Walker, Middle School Science Teacher & Science Department Chair. The program is aligned to the 6th grade Environmental Engineering class, taught by Mrs. Walker, and uses the GFS campus as a learning lab to further explore and apply the lessons learned in science class.

What does it mean to raise a grateful child? Developmental scientist and psychologist Andrea Hussong from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says it’s a lot more than teaching your child about basic manners. In fact, it’s a lot deeper than that and parents play a crucial role in modeling gratitude, how they create opportunities for children to experience gratefulness, and even talking to their children about it.

In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Hussong shares strategies that can help your child develop a deeper understanding of gratitude, how you can foster it in the hearts and minds of your children, and the way to pivot as your child becomes a teenager. She also addresses the potential impact of gratitude on mental health.