Interior Masthead

Welcome to Upper School

 

As you peruse our department, program, and student life pages, I want you to imagine a day in the life of a Friends Select student. Here’s what you might see:

  • Disembarking from a train in Suburban Station at 7:45 a.m. and getting a cup of coffee or tea at the cafe where the barista knows your name;
  • Bumping into friends as you cross the Ben Franklin Parkway and enter the school building; saying “hi” to at least 15 people before you go to your advisory where your advisor greets you with sign-up sheets for student government;
  • In your first period class, you will dissect a sheep’s brain to find the different parts of the brain in your study of neurology in biology;
  • In your second period class, students are presenting on whether or not Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, achieves a level of empathy for the narrator;
  • During your twenty minute break, you head to the grassy area in front of the school and talk with friends just steps away from an Alexander Calder sculpture;
  • After break and until lunch, you will paint a still life, learn a new song for chorus, and research a modern issue for history;
  • During lunch, you go to the Diversity Club to plan an activity for the whole student body next week;
  • In your double-period after lunch, you take a test for precalculus and then begin work on a new series of problems while the teacher helps students one-on-one;
  • After getting changed for sports, you head up to the playing field and practice on the field hockey team for tomorrow’s big game;
  • After heading home, showering, and eating, you have homework to do so you log into the school’s learning management system where all of your work is organized by due date and subject and you get to work.

Friends Select is a place that holds the tensions of school and teenage years in a fruitful balance: the need for rest and space is balanced against a productive and deep learning approach to studying; the desire for increased freedom is steadied by the connection to the community and others; the pull of the world is embraced while still retaining a small-school feel in the city.

If you can see yourself or your child loving the connections, the community, the critical thinking, the arts as integral to school, and a whole child and whole life approach to school, then Friends Select is the place for you.

I am proud of our teachers, our students, and our school, and I think you’ll be impressed by what you see.

All the best,

Chris Singler

 

 

Chris Singler
Upper School Director