Contemplations from Kim: Thoughts at the Start of a New Year

8/25/2025 By Kim Wargo, Head of School

The weather gods have smiled on us a bit by mitigating the intense heat and humidity of a few weeks ago. The cooler breeze and moderate temperatures have added to our team’s excitement of being back on campus as we prepare to begin the 2025-26 academic year.

My summer was filled with a combination of time with family and “framily” (my chosen family of dear friends) and substantive work on planning for this year and beyond. I also experienced an unexpected injury while traveling abroad (I took a fall in Barcelona and fractured a bone in my foot!), but I am happy to report that I am on the mend (although you’ll likely notice me wearing some “different for me” footwear in the next few months).

I hope that your summer months provided an inspirational mix of downtime and time doing whatever recharges your batteries as a family. I hope you had time with the people you love and the people who make you laugh.

In a few days, you’ll receive an introduction to the new members of Lab’s team for 2025-26. We are fortunate to have a stellar group of educators and professionals who have chosen Lab as the place to share their inspiring gifts.

As we look ahead to the school year before us, the world continues to be a tumultuous, complex, and challenging place. These complicated times impact our school directly - we have community members who have experienced family and community loss and turmoil, job uncertainty, unexpected relocations, and financial stress.  

When so much is out of our control, I believe that it is vitally important to focus on what we can control. For me, that means acting with intention to foster an environment of belonging for every member of our community.

With this in mind, I’m setting “kindness” as our theme for the year. I’m asking every member of our community to begin this school year with the shared goal of centering kindness in all of our interactions, decisions, and relationships. 

In 2024-25, our Board of Trustees adopted a new iteration of our mission statement: At Lab, we embrace differences as advantages.  

While the statement is new, the meaning of our mission is unchanged. We remain true to Sally Smith’s original purpose of building a school where students with learning differences are empowered to understand that different thinkers solve difficult problems. Our simple, declarative mission statement fully answers the question “why does Lab exist?”  

We are here because we are committed to the vision of a world that embraces differences as extraordinary.

Executing on this mission and vision requires empathy, patience, and trust.  Kindness is the fuel that powers us. When we choose kindness, we create an environment where students feel safe to take academic risks, where colleagues feel valued for their contributions, where families feel certain their children are respected and cared for, and where every interaction builds belonging.

I am encouraging us to see kindness as a courageous act - and to make kindness the foundation of how we teach, learn, and lead at Lab.

This year represents an important moment in our school’s story. We are charting an ambitious course for our future as we prepare to celebrate 60 years of educating students with language-based learning differences in the academic year 2027-28.  

In June, after a comprehensive, inclusive 18-month process, our Board of Trustees approved Lab 2030, our new strategic plan. This plan challenges us to set the national standard for specialized education by:

• Strengthening our long-term sustainability;
• Enhancing the student experience with more personalized and innovative approaches;
• Making Lab the destination school for teachers in our field; and
• Sharing our story with clarity and pride.

We are beginning to develop the action plan that will allow us to achieve these ambitious strategic priorities, and we look forward to sharing more of that process with you (including opportunities for you to participate in the work) in the days, months, and years to come.

Our mission, values, vision, and priorities aren’t just statements on paper—they are a promise we live out daily. With kindness as our compass, we will experience how that promise transforms our classrooms, conversations, and the culture we share.

As part of our strategic goals, we continue to build upon our commitment to continuous growth and improvement as educational professionals. This summer, all of our student-facing employees completed a 10-hour online “refresher” course, created by our peer school - the Landmark School - on effective strategies for working with students with language-based learning differences. This course provided a great kick off to our newly inaugurated professional learning communities (PLCs), which are cross-disciplinary, cross-divisional groups focused on improving our practice as teachers and clinicians.

A few years ago, a group of our teachers embarked on the task of defining what it takes to be a teacher of excellence at Lab - through this work, they produced The Art of Teaching, a set of tenets that we seek to find and enhance in the teachers who choose Lab. This year, we will expand on this work by bringing these tenets into our daily conversations about our practice. 

We will devote Wednesday morning professional development time to cross-divisional, cross-disciplinary professional learning communities that will make our teaching environment a richer one for the professionals who have chosen Lab, while also enhancing the experience of our students and families.

We are grateful for the trust you place in us as we seek–with your partnership–to provide the best possible educational environment and outcomes for our students. Your commitment to our school and your countless acts of kindness—seen and unseen— make Lab a place where every student, teacher, and family can thrive. I’m grateful to begin another year alongside you.

With appreciation for our amazing students, families and teachers, excitement about our shared commitment to Lab’s inspiring mission, and gratitude for your partnership in this journey,

My best regards,

Kim
Kim Wargo
Head of School