Second-grade teacher Dawn-Marie Ayles. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Second-grade teacher Lauren Hurley.

Kindergarten teacher Krista Lazaro.

Second-grade teacher Dawn-Marie (Starr) Ayles says that coming to work at the elementary school is like “coming home to family.” That’s because she is a 1996 graduate of Bromfield, having come from Leominster as a freshman as one of Harvard’s first-ever school-choice students. “I had a great experience in high school and I couldn’t be more excited about working in Harvard,” she says. She taught first and fourth grades at Wachusett Regional and second grade in Shirley before coming to Harvard. She lives in Lunenburg with her husband and four-year-old and four-month-old daughters.

A Brookline native, second-grade teacher Lauren Hurley is looking forward to her first year of teaching. “I love kids and I really like making a contribution,” said the graduate of UMass Amherst and Simmons Graduate School. She loves to travel and spent her junior year in Paris and London and traveled to Panama last April. Free time is spent cooking, walking, and settling into a new apartment in Cambridge.

Kindergarten teacher Krista Lazaro seems born to teach. As a child she used to make up class rosters, organize book bins, and run an imaginary library system. By the age of eight, she crossed out the last word in her “I want to be a dancer” bumper sticker and replaced it with “teacher.”

This will be her fourth year of teaching, having taught previously in Tampa, Florida, and Winchendon. “It’s so rewarding to watch kids grow as learners and individuals,” she said. Married in May at St. Theresa’s church, she lives in Leominster with her husband.