Harford Friends Lower School program cultivates wonder and a love of learning that will span a lifetime.  Appropriately challenging and authentic hands-on experiences stimulates each child’s natural curiosity.  As they explore, ask questions, solve problems, make decisions, express ideas, and communicate, students develop essential skills and knowledge as identified in the skill and content standards of the Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum.  As an independent school, Harford Friends School is able to create unique, interdisciplinary, inquiry-based vehicles for teaching state standards. Students, teachers, and parents work collaboratively to take healthy risks, resolve conflicts, and accept responsibility.  As a Friends community guided by Quaker testimonies, we help one another discover and nurture the spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of our lives.  The school broadens perspectives and deepens a connection with the natural world, enriching each child’s capacity to be a steward of nature, an agent of change, a friend.  Above all, a Harford Friends School education celebrates and fosters each child’s potential, recognizing and honoring ‘that of God’ in each of us.

Values:

In order to foster a purposeful and loving learning community in which each individual grows and shines, we expect students to:

• Be truthful
  • Be honest with themselves and others
• Be kind
  • Listen
  • Take care of themselves and others
• Be courageous
  • Ask questions
  • Try
  • Be creative
  • Make mistakes
  • Stretch
• Be aware
  • Find ways to make their home, class, school, and world a more peaceful and happy place
  • Before speaking, ask themselves…
    • Is it true?
    • Is it kind?
    • Is it necessary?