Pride, excellence, and teamwork continue to be the hallmarks of the Holland Brook School. We celebrated our fourteenth year by strengthening a spirit and purpose for community within our school, supporting a foundation for lifelong learning, and gathering data to assess our school goals and district initiatives. Holland Brook School includes 17 homerooms for grades four and five. Respective grade level wings represent a community within our school. We have special area teachers for art, library media, music, innovation/design, physical education, enrichment, gifted/talented, and instrumental music in fifth grade. World language instruction in Spanish is provided for all students. Our special area teachers work collaboratively with classroom teachers to design and integrate special thematic curriculum activities. Our school-wide enrichment model challenges and enhances all students’ interests, talents and abilities. The Holland Brook School has approximately 50 teaching staff members. Our teachers value professional development and demonstrate this by participating in after-school continuing education courses, writing summer curricula, attending training sessions through the Merck Institute for Science Education, and by participating in faculty study groups. These processes help teachers to deepen their knowledge base, reflect on practices, refine skills, and enhance best practices. We value teacher leadership, and many of our staff facilitate professional development on curriculum days and through Continuing Education Units (CEU) courses, which are held throughout the school year. We strive to work collaboratively to provide meaningful learning opportunities for all students. We work hard to develop the curriculum and promote school initiatives. Special theme days, curriculum demonstrations, and cultural events are held throughout the year to enrich the curriculum. Teacher leaders work with their grade level teams to address the curriculum by implementing special thematic grade level events such as “Colonial Trades” and “Electricity.” The reading/language arts program at HBS cultivates an appreciation for literature and exposes students to different genres along with developing writing skills. Writing is integrated across the curriculum and enhanced by technology. The Math Expressions and Connected Math programs reflect the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics Standards and use a hands-on approach to motivate and promote mastery of concepts. Students are expected not only to solve math problems but also to write and talk about their mathematical reasoning. In social studies, students analyze, synthesize, and interpret issues and events related to their community, state, country and world. Through experiential activities, our student