Dear Greene Street Friends School Families and Caregivers,

As we prepare to begin another school year, it is a joy to welcome both new and returning families to Greene Street Friends. I hope the summer has brought your family time for rest, joy, exploration, and connection. On campus, these months have been full ones. Faculty, staff, and school leaders have been planning, learning, refining curriculum, and preparing for another year of joyful, challenging, and meaningful learning.

Our Quaker theme for 2026–27 is Community. At Greene Street Friends, community is about more than simply being together. It is shaped by relationships, shared responsibility, deep listening, care for one another, and the recognition that each person has something important to contribute. Throughout the year, we will invite students to consider questions such as: What does it mean to belong? What responsibilities do we have to one another? How do we build community across difference? And how might we use our gifts and learning in service of others?

Our faculty have been wrestling with these questions, too. A significant portion of this summer’s work has focused on our Quaker life and on how students experience our testimonies and traditions throughout their time at Greene Street Friends. Meeting for Worship is an important part of that experience, but Quaker life also shows up in classrooms, relationships, decision-making, conflict, service, and the ways we engage with Germantown and the wider Philadelphia community. I am excited about the depth of this work and what it will mean for students across the school.

Alongside this reflection, teachers have continued the careful work of strengthening our academic program. A few areas I am especially excited about this year are:

• Illustrative Mathematics in 1st–3rd grades. After beginning with 7th and 8th grades and then expanding into grades 4–6, Illustrative Math will now extend into 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. Students in 1st–8th grade will therefore share a more connected approach to mathematics, one that emphasizes conceptual understanding, problem-solving, mathematical reasoning, discussion, and multiple ways of making sense of a problem. Just as importantly, teachers will continue to ensure that instruction remains developmentally appropriate at every age.
• Literacy and handwriting in Lower School. Teachers have been looking carefully at how handwriting develops across the elementary years, including expectations for both manuscript and cursive. This is one part of our larger literacy work, which continues to include reading development, writing instruction, language mechanics, and helping students become increasingly clear and confident communicators.
• Continued work in ELA and Social Studies. Across grades, faculty are examining how reading, writing, discussion, research, and analysis develop from year to year. Our social studies work continues as well, with particular attention to alignment and to how students encounter ideas such as identity, belonging, history, culture, justice, and civic participation with increasing depth as they grow. We want students to build knowledge and skills over time while still having room for curiosity, inquiry, and thoughtful engagement with different perspectives.

Faculty and academic leaders have also been examining some of the systems that support teaching and learning: how we understand student progress, share information, identify needs, and ensure that teachers have useful information to support students well. Much of this work happens behind the scenes, but strong systems help us respond more thoughtfully when a student needs additional support, greater challenge, or a different entry point into learning.

We are also thinking carefully about what community means in an increasingly digital world. Across Lower and Middle School, our work with technology and digital citizenship will draw more intentionally from Life Skills, social-emotional learning, and our Quaker testimonies. We want students to become capable users of technology, but we also want them to become thoughtful ones: young people who consider how they communicate, what they share, how they evaluate information, how their choices affect others, and what it means to be a good steward of digital spaces.

There is exciting growth in our early childhood program as well. We are delighted to return to two sections of PreK, allowing us to continue building a program grounded in relationships, play, inquiry, foundational skill development, and belonging. As our early childhood program grows, we are also thinking carefully about how our youngest students develop an identity of their own while becoming part of the traditions and rhythms of the larger school.

We are fortunate to welcome several new lead teachers into this work. Emma Jerrehian joins us as our 1st Grade Lead Teacher, Courtney Zemsky as a PreK Lead Teacher, and Annabella Capaccio as our PreK–6 Spanish Teacher. Each brings experience, care, and a strong commitment to children, and I am excited for the ways their perspectives will contribute to our program and community.

Across these areas, a common thread is our commitment to creating a learning experience that feels connected and intentional as students grow through Greene Street Friends. Math, literacy, Quaker life, technology, early childhood, student support, and teacher collaboration are different parts of our program, but for students and families, they should add up to a coherent whole. We want students to build on what they have learned from year to year, encounter shared values across classrooms and experiences, and know that the adults around them are working together to understand and support their growth. Ultimately, our goal is for every child to experience Greene Street as a connected learning community where they are known, challenged, supported, and continually growing.

That is also why Community feels like such a fitting theme for this year. Learning is deeply relational. Students are more willing to ask questions, take intellectual risks, persist through difficulty, and contribute their ideas when they know they belong. A strong academic program and a strong community are not competing priorities. At their best, they strengthen one another.

As we begin the 2026–27 school year, I am grateful for the trust you place in Greene Street Friends and for the partnership families and caregivers bring to our school. I hope this year encourages all of us, students, educators, and families alike, to think not only about what it means to belong to a community, but also about what each of us can do to help build and care for one.

I look forward to welcoming new and familiar faces back to campus and to all that we will learn and experience together this year.

With warm regards,

Darien N. Headen
Associate Head of School