With Appreciation

Dear Students,

As you embark on Thanksgiving break, I’m writing to say thank you for all you have done this fall to move Brearley forward during the pandemic. I understand it hasn’t been easy to return to a more normal schedule of school work and extracurricular activities while navigating Covid-19 protocols. And yet together you have demonstrated patience and fortitude. For that and for all the excitement, love and joy you have brought to our community (remember Mountain Day!), I want to share my sincere appreciation.  There are many people to thank. Our facilities, food service, technology and administrative staff members have kept us connected, nourished and warm. Our health, counseling, student support and security teams have kept us healthy and safe. Our administration has kept the entire enterprise moving forward despite the daily obstacles community members collectively and individually face. It has taken a village, as they say, and Brearley’s village is a bustling one! Thank you, all!

Finally, I’d like to say thank you to our faculty. They have had to change the way they have delivered a Brearley education more times than they can count over the last twenty months—online, hybrid, in person six feet apart—and they have found unique ways to offer co-curricular programs in compliance with our Covid guidelines. It hasn’t always been smooth, but they, too, have persevered. Moreover, they have stayed true to their mission of challenging your adventurous intellect, supporting your identity development and nurturing a true sense of confidence—one that comes from doing not the easy thing but the thing you think you cannot do. 

Last week a group of alumnae trustees spoke about the way their Brearley education has unfolded over their lifetime. As adults they can see how Brearley has prepared them for life beyond college or graduate school and how what they learned continues to be relevant today. They are deeply grateful for the positive difference their teachers have made in their lives and, in a couple of cases, their daughters’ lives. Their experiences are theirs alone, but in the spirit of Thanksgiving I thought I would share this video with you and say to these women, too, thank you. 

Sincerely yours,
Ms. Fried