A Message from Dr. Boyd: November 1, 2026

Dear Parents and Families,

Coming off a week of community events including Fall Fest, STEM Night, Spirit Night, and Halloween festivities, there can be little doubt that we owe so much gratitude to so many who did so much in such a short space of time, which makes it feel very fitting that we are about to enter the season of Thanksgiving. 

The English language being the hybrid Anglo-Saxon / Latin construction that it is, the roots of these two key principles - gratitude and giving thanks - are very different, but they nonetheless capture so much of what has been happening at Harding and what we have to look forward to this month.

“Thanking” comes from a middle English term and originally meant “to hold a positive thought towards” - hence why in both English and German “thanks” (“dankt”) and “thinks” (“denkt”) are so similar. On the other hand, “gratitude” is from the Latin “gratia,” meaning “welcome” or "pleasing,” and between the two of them, these concepts have spun off many words that are highly relevant to this stage of the semester.

For instance, last Tuesday we had our Class of 2030 sweatshirt ceremony, which was an opportunity to congratulate (“to offer thanks together”) our fifth graders on their new role as leaders of the lower school.

Across all of last week we benefited from the tireless work of so many people working behind the scenes to make all those wonderful events possible in a way that reminds us of the value of showing grace (“offering goodwill and thanks”) to those around us who support so much of what we do.

We also formally launched this year’s Harding Fund campaign, and have already received so many gratuities (“gifts given freely”) from across the community for which we are in turn incredibly thankful.

And of course, our lower school will soon be hard at work preparing for Grandparents Chocolate, which is the ultimate opportunity for us to show how grateful (“feeling blessed by one’s circumstances”) we are to our families and special friends for the love and support you all show to us.

 

In short, we have so much to be thankful for here at Harding, and I hope that we will never take that for granted, even as we contemplate the potentially gratuitous (“given without reason or necessity”) levels of candy acquired during the course of this weekend’s trick-or-treating.

 

Go Hawks,