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In May, the board of trustees welcomed Joe Ronan '72 as president, Patricia Torosian as vice president, and Michael Purcell as treasurer – and thanked outgoing president Paul Steege for his leadership and dedication on behalf of the school. The endorsement of a new slate of officers underscored for me the board’s fundamental role in setting the policies that guide the school’s current operation and determine its future. Since this important work happens without fanfare, I thought parents might appreciate a recap of how the board is staffed and structured.
The board is comprised of 22 individuals, each with a strong tie to Friends Select School. Five are alumni/ae, spanning almost five decades: Calvin Morris ’59, Robin Bernstein ’67, Joe Ronan ’72, John Chin ’83, and Josh Piven ’89. (If Josh had graduated one year later, five decades would be represented!) Nine trustees are parents of current or former students. In keeping with the school’s bylaws, the majority of the trustees serve at the request of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (Race Street) and the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia (Arch Street), the Quaker Meetings that jointly oversee the school.
In its role as mindful steward of the school, the board of trustees concentrates on three broad areas: strategic planning, fiduciary oversight, and policy-setting. (Day-to-day operational management is delegated to the head of school and the management team.) The board conducts its work through a system of committees:
- The finance committee approves the budget, and oversees the audit process and management of the endowment.
- The financial aid committee sets policies regarding the amount and distribution of funds.
- The development committee determines the scope of annual.
- The enrollment committee sets broad enrollment policy.
- The Quaker life committee oversees the spiritual dimension of the school.
- The committee on trustees solicits, nominates and orients new board members.
- The property committee advises on management of the school’s physical plant.
- The heads advisory committee consults with the head of school on major policy issues.
This summary of the board's structure and responsibilities is merely the frame. The richness of the picture lies in the spirit of governance and the quality of the trustees' relationships with the school. School governance is carried out in the manner of Friends, characterized by mutual respect and camaraderie. Always taking the long view and delegating the day-to-day management to school personnel, the board focuses on and thereby secures the school's health and longevity.
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Word Power
by Michael Zimmerman, director of lower school
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Writing is a potent tool for communication. The writing process affords opportunities to seize and order otherwise fleeting and disorderly ideas. The written word has the power to immortalize the thoughts of its author.
During their lower school years, students evolve from “listener-speakers” to “listener-speaker-reader-writers.” At Friends Select, young writers begin composing even before they can encode their feelings and beliefs. At first, teachers take dictation. Later on, they gently decipher their students’ squiggles and random letter strings. In time, students represent the sounds within words using letters. Vocabularies grow and students begin to employ the conventions of spelling. They learn that complete thoughts (nothing less than a subject and a verb) are represented by sentences. They come to understand that a collection of related sentences comprise a paragraph, and that paragraphs are assembled into essays.
Interestingly, those who love writing best are not necessarily those for whom it comes most easily. For all writers, there is a threshold one must cross between vague notions and actual print on paper (or on screen). The gap cannot be too wide or it produces incapacitating frustration, so teachers carefully monitor their students’ progress. For some students, however, writing is the favorite activity of the day. These are the writers who take solace in putting their feelings down, who organize their thoughts by writing them out, who revel in putting themselves forward, who thrill to the discovery of rich collections of facts...and for whom stories are powerful magic. These fervent writers are four years old, 14 years old, and 40 years old.
Opportunities to write are everywhere. Students invent wild tales. They draft five-paragraph essays. They research and report upon a wide variety of subjects. They jot their feelings down in journals. They reflect in writing upon the books they have read and the math they have learned. Their intended audiences invariably color and shape the writing, influencing the words students chose from the panoply of available options.
At Friends Select, students do not simply practice writing; they are writers. Whether writing to a future self or preparing a speech for public delivery, they write for an identified and authentic purpose, with a specific audience in mind. It is my hope that throughout your child’s life, you have the privilege to be that audience.
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At a recent faculty meeting, Maureen Haurin, the middle and upper school librarian, showed us the good work middle school students have been doing in digital storytelling during their research and technology class. But first, she had to define digital storytelling for some of us. According to two Web sites Tr. Maureen cited, digital storytelling is “first-person narrative, meaningful workshop processes, and participatory production methods” (http://www.storycenter.org), “using computer-based tools to tell stories” (http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/).
At its simplest, it can look like this "public service announcement" created by seventh graders Kayla and Lou based on an English assignment. At its most profound, it can be a work of art, a memoir. The story “My Shoes” at the Center for Digital Storytelling site really struck me. http://www.storycenter.org/stories/
According to Marc Prensky, author of the books Digital Game-Based Learning and Don’t Bother Me, Mom, I’m Learning, we teachers are “digital immigrants who speak an outdated language, that of the pre-digital age…struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.” What I took away from Tr. Maureen’s presentation is that we have a responsibility to teach the skills necessary for our students to tell their stories in their own ways. To accomplish that goal, we teachers have a lot of skills to learn.
We took a big step forward this year with a three-part, in-house Web 2.0 workshop, sponsored by the school’s Academic Technology Integration committee, clerked by Sandy Guild, director of libraries and academic technology, and organized by Jim Brubaker, director of technology. After reading and discussing Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, the faculty and staff group broke into small groups, each of which selected a specific digital technology to explore. At the final meeting, the groups presented their end products, which included wikis, social bookmarking, sound/music mixing, and video blogs.
Unlike our students, most faculty are not native speakers of digital technology. But we teachers are looking forward to learning a new language.
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A large gathering of stakeholders spent a weekend this past fall putting the finishing touches on a strategic plan for Friends Select School. Part of the plan focuses on co-curricular activities, including athletics. As dean of students, I was thrilled to see that everyone understands and supports the value that activities which happen outside of classrooms bring to our students and the community of the school.
Each year the upper school students design and participate in approximately 30 clubs. Some are traditional Friends Select clubs such as Worship and Ministry, which helps with Quaker programming and various “drives,” such as the mitten tree; Math Club, which organizes our annual Math Day celebration (think Pi); the Black Student Union, one of our “affinity group” organizations; and Green Notebook, our science and environmental club. Others are unique and last for the time period of the interested students’ tenures in the upper school.
One of my favorites for the last several years has been Connections. Connections meets once a week over lunch to discuss ways to break down barriers among students or between students and faculty in order to facilitate community-building. The initiatives the students take on are subtle, yet make a positive difference. Recently, faculty members were moved to tears by notes left by Connections members expressing gratitude for the work faculty do everyday. And last year, members of Connections agreed that small, common courtesies like opening the door for someone, picking up a piece of litter, saying hello to someone passing in the hallway, or letting a classmate borrow a pencil can make a difference in the overall tone of the upper school. They agreed to make sure that they were engaged in common courtesies regularly.
Clubs support significant community-building across grade levels. Retro Games, a club begun this year by several juniors, is responsible for the ubiquitous presence of the foosball table over which many friendly competitions have taken place. While the alcove outside of the Ruth Hallowell Gray library is typically a junior class enclave, the foosball table opened it up to students outside of the junior class who now regularly hang out, encouraging friends or participating in a spirited table soccer game.
Friends Select’s philosophy is to educate for “the whole of life.” While reading, writing, and 'rithmatic are all important and the college process is always looming, clubs offer a respite from the pace and rigor. Co-curricular activities, including athletics, clubs and performances, allow students to explore passions, express opinions, show off talents and practice leadership. But most importantly, they allow students and faculty to play. Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, 2005) discusses play as one of the six essential “senses” to develop in order to be successful in what he terms the “conceptual age.” Pink says that there is “… a move away from sober seriousness as a measure of ability…” and that “when you are playful, you are activating the right side of your brain. The right side is unlimited. You can be anything you want.” By allowing our students to be playful, we are helping develop an essential skill for the type of world – a much more creative, multi-tasking and much less linear world – our students will inhabit. And, we are providing something we all can always use a bit more of, namely balance.
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We would like to thank everyone for the opportunity to have served Friends Select as the Parent Association co-presidents for 2008-2009 school year. Our special thanks go to all the parents whose volunteer efforts made the year such a success. As the school year winds down, we are glad to be leaving the PA in very good hands, with an impressive slate of officers for 2009-2010. They are:
Co-president Jessica Shapiro
Co-president Rita Ann Lamb
Co-vice president Sonya Lawrence
Co-vice president Mara Mills
Co-secretary Christine Piven
Treasurer Ilene Griff
Upper School co-vice president Dena Herrin
Upper School co-vice president Ken Scott
Middle School co-vice president Sofia Adams
Middle School co-vice president Suzann Frantz
Lower School co-vice president Liz Porter
Lower School co-vice president Heather Rennie
Stephanie Fooks Parker, co-chair (with Sonya Lawrence), Families of Color
Cynthia Schneider, co-chair (with Mara Mills), LGBT
We wish everyone a wonderful summer. Look for the school calendar to arrive in the mail. Don’t forget to note the Welcome Back Party, the PA-sponsored swims and our first PA meeting of the year.
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