On a seasonably warm early fall day this week in Southborough, students arrived on campus to officially kick off Fay’s 144th school year. The landscaping is fresh, the gym floor has been repainted, and new signs adorn the campus. But that’s only part of what’s new at Fay this year.

In his opening of school remarks, which followed the ribbon-cutting of the new Primary School, Head of School Rob Gustavson reflected on some of the changes on campus.

“Having just officially launched the Primary School, Fay is now composed of three divisions,” he said. “We have two new grades, Pre-K and Kindergarten. We have 40 more students than we ended the year with last spring. And we just met the twenty-seven new teachers, staff, and administrators who have joined our school community. Our campus feels bigger, as well, since our first and second grades have moved to the new Primary Building. Last spring, with all of these changes in mind, we decided that this year’s school theme would be ‘Making Connections,’ with the hope that it would guide and inspire us in our work to maintain a strong sense of community.”

Mr. Gustavson noted that the school theme is not simply “Connections,” but rather “Making Connections,” and this is an intentional choice. “Making connections is active,” he said. “It means not just sitting back and enjoying the benefits of feeling connected, but instead taking the initiative to re-establish old connections, finding opportunities to build new connections, and reaching out to new members of our school community.

“Making connections also means being actively engaged in our own learning, seeking ways to organize our experiences, and finding the relationship between ideas and concepts. At times, courses may even be structured specifically with this purpose in mind. Our new ninth grade course, Diagnosing the Modern World, is one excellent example. This course, which is a combination of science and history, will focus on topics that are prevalent in the news today, giving students the skills necessary to understand issues affecting their lives and encouraging them to examine their roles as global citizens. It will focus on skills such as media literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and innovation. These enduring skills will be presented in relation to science and history, yet they will benefit students in other academic subjects and years to come as they navigate an ever-changing world.”