oakleaves Fall 2013
Why PLAY Matters And what it looks like at every age and stage at AFS
INSIDE: Report of Gifts Alumni Reunions Class Notes
THE AFS
annual fund Help us meet the AFS Challenge!
upcoming alumni events Homecoming at AFS
James Turrell Skyspace
MLK Day of Service
November 27, 2013 Come back to campus for one of the most-loved alumni events of the year.
Saturday, October 26, 2013 5:30 - 7:30 pm Chestnut Hill Friends Meetinghouse Join the AFS Alumni Association at the new Chestnut Hill Friends Meetinghouse to watch the sun set from inside Philadelphia’s only James Turrell Skyspace. James Turrell is an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist whose medium is light and perception. The Skyspace, one of Turrell’s best-known forms, is part of the first new Quaker meetinghouse built in Philadelphia in the last 80 years.
Monday, January 20, 2014 Abington Friends School Bring Dr. King’s vision of the ‘beloved community’ to life by participating in the multitude of service projects organized by AFS on MLK Day. Opportunities for all ages and abilities available.
9:30 am
Alumni Faculty Breakfast with Head of School, Rich Nourie
10:00 am All Alumni Association Breakfast
Together we can reach our goals of $525,000 and 1,000 donors
EVERY GIFT MATTERS Help us surpass last year’s successful $502,209 campaign by giving online at http://www.abingtonfriends.net/giveonline
11:15 am
Meeting for Worship with Upper School
12:30 pm
2nd Annual Alumni, Faculty, and Student Theater & Music Jam; Alumni Faculty and Varsity Soccer Game and Cookout
PHS Flower Show Preview Saturday, February 22 2:00 - 4:00 pm Meadowbrook Farm Join the AFS Alumni Association at Meadowbrook Farm in Abington Township for a behind-the-scenes look at 12 greenhouses full of flowers just before they are shipped off to the Flower Show.
Questions? Please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Affairs at jbastien@abingtonfriends.net or 215-576-3966. Please see the AFS website, www.abingtonfriends.net, or the AFS Facebook Group “Alumni of Abington Friends School” for additional event details.
in this issue 16
3 11 13
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Why Play Matters
Life at AFS:
Six Month Scrapbook
Annual Report of Gifts
Alumni Report of Gifts
Volunteer Spotlight: Alix and Nick Davatzes
Oak Leaves is a publication of the AFS Communications and Development Offices. Richard F. Nourie Debbie Stauffer Jon Harris Judy Hill Gabrielle Giddings David Eldridge Jordan Bastien
Head of School Associate Head of School Assistant Head for Institutional Advancement Director of Communications, Editor Director of Marketing Director of Annual Giving Director of Alumni Affairs
Peapod Design
Publication Design
30 34 36 44
Alumni Spotlight
Alumni Reunions
Classnotes
In Memoriam 1
letter from the
head of school This issue of Oak Leaves abounds with stories of intellectual play in and out of the AFS classrooms from Early Childhood through senior year. Each page makes me smile in recognition of what it feels like to be here on campus day to day. But what is play anyway? This is actually a serious academic question among developmental psychologists. It may be hard to define empirically, but we know its elements: Creativity Challenge Give and take Immersion Rapt attention Heightened senses Imagination Intensity Joyfulness Wordplay Role-playing Physicality Problem solving Risk-taking Laughter Freedom What a list! Play is fuel for exploration, for pushing boundaries, for entering new territory—emotionally, socially, intellectually and physically. It is infectious in its call to be active, to open oneself, to embrace uncertainty. Play is empowering.
Not every learning environment is so richly inspired by intellectual playfulness. Schools
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have varying purposes across cultures and regions of the world. Some school systems are dominated by a drive to conformity or the development of narrow academic skills, often a vestige of preparing students for roles in an earlier industrial economy. But we are clear that we are educating children for a world of continual change and novel challenges, of open opportunity for those able to see new pathways and possibilities. The gifts of authentic motivation, confidence as constant learners, skillful collaboration and the ability to turn imagination into reality make for the richest contributions in a creative economy spanning divergent fields. Paired with clear values and the ability to form the rich, satisfying relationships that are also foundational to an AFS education, our students are well prepared to define their lives in the 21st century. Thank you to all, creative teachers, playful children, parents and generous supporters who make ours such a joyful and powerful place in which to grow up and learn.
life at AFS:
Candlelight Dinner
»
During the Upper School Candlelight Dinner, the torch of leadership was symbolically passed to the class of 2014. The evening celebration included student appreciations of their advisors, a delicious meal and a moving candle lighting ceremony in the Meetinghouse. Upper School History Teacher Drew Benfer and Upper School English Teacher Mary Lynn Ellis were honored this year by the students.
For the first time this year 5th graders were part of the Middle School musical, and Theatre Teacher Mary Carpenter celebrated their addition with a lively production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” based on the story of the princess and the pea. Fun choreography and funny old-fashioned songs made this an audience favorite.
Tim Jahnigen
»
Once Upon a Mattress
»
month scrapbook
We were delighted to welcome this year’s Rudin lecturer Tim Jahnigen from One World Futbol. After seeing footage of a group of children in Darfur playing a game of soccer using a ball of trash tied up with twine, Jahnigen was inspired to invent a soccer ball that never goes flat and never needs pumping.
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Roobotics
»
march
For the second year, our Roobotics team entered the fray at the FIRST Robotics District Competition. The charge for this year’s competition was to build a robot that could hurl Frisbees into a goal and climb a nine-foot pyramid. Our team of 12 students had just six weeks to transform a kit of parts and motors into a viable contestant.
Colonial Trade Fair « Capping an in-depth study of the Colonial era, 4th graders transformed their classrooms into a bustling Colonial Trade Fair, with shoemakers, milliners, silversmiths and more. The students explained their trades in impressive detail to an enthusiastic crowd of visitors.
Arcadia Conference » Several AFS Faculty members presented at Arcadia University's Creating Safe and Welcoming Schools conference. In a presentation called “Q is for Questioning: Inviting Courageous Conversations” April Tvarok, Carol Wolf, Jason Novak, Leslie Tran, Rachel Kane and Tamara Clark shared their experiences working with students and families around topics of gender and sexuality.
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LIFE AT AFS : SIX MONTH SCRAPBOOK
The Laramie Project
Seder and Mimouna
»
Upper School Theatre Teacher Megan Hollinger chose The Laramie Project as the division’s spring production because of the dynamic conversation our country is having around the issue of marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. The Laramie Project was created after the brutal beating and death in 1998 of Matthew Shepard, a young University of Wyoming student who was gay.
More than 20 AFS students gathered in the Faulkner Reading Room to participate in a Seder to mark the close of the Jewish holiday of Passover. French Teacher Dina Cohen also talked about the Moroccan tradition of Mimouna, which originates from the Arab and Berber families who delivered flour and yeast to their Jewish neighbors following sundown after Passover.
»
School Committee Visiting Day
Science Night
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The School Committee, the governing body of the School, spent time in the classrooms and also had the opportunity to attend the Upper School’s Meeting for Worship. At lunch, our School Committee visitors spent time with Upper School students from the Student Agenda Committee. Pictured are former AFS Spanish Teacher Cyndi Silverman and School Committee member Carol Frieder. Students from Lower to Upper School shared the results of science projects engaged in throughout the year.
Ursula Rucker « We had the great good fortune to welcome poet Ursula Rucker (mother of Sudan Green ’13) to campus. Known for her strong stage presence and intensely powerful spoken word poetry, Ursula is also a recording artist who has collaborated with The Roots, King Britt, Josh Wink and others.
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Arbor Day »
CSA Spring Trial
AFS participated in a pilot CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program offered by Delaware Valley Farm Share. Fifty-two families took part in the spring trial, picking up a box of vegetables and eggs every week from the back porch of Tyson House.
AFS eighth graders took the spotlight as they presented the results of their yearlong adventure in self-directed learning. Projects for the Eighth Grade Independent Study ranged from learning to play the ukulele to grappling with the art of graffiti painting.
Jump Rope for Heart
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»
EGIS Night
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On Arbor Day, the whole school—students, faculty, staff and families—gathered to celebrate the blessings of spring and reaffirm the School’s commitment to caring for the earth. For graduating seniors and their 1st grade pages, this is the first in a series of events culminating in Commencement. Juniors also step up on Arbor Day to accept their leadership responsibilities for the coming year.
For the third year in a row, AFS’s Health and Physical Education Department led 3rd through 5th graders in a Jump Rope for Heart event on the AFS tennis courts intended to raise awareness about childhood cardiac illnesses.
»
CNN Reporter Ben Wedeman
CNN's Ben Wedeman (uncle of AFS senior Christopher Feagans) visited campus to spend time in the Upper School history classrooms and meet interested students over lunch in Tyson House. CNN’s senior international correspondent based in Rome, Ben was previously based in Cairo, Egypt and led CNN's coverage of the uprising against then-President Hosni Mubarak as well as the broader unrest in the Middle East.
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LIFE AT AFS : SIX MONTH SCRAPBOOK
Nature Playdate « In partnership with our friends at Briar Bush Nature Center and to celebrate the first spring season for our new nature playground, we presented a day of imaginative play and crafts for children ages 3-10.
Greek Day
LS Program
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Following their study unit on Greek mythology, fifth grade students spent a fun and educational day celebrating all things Greek. After Greek Olympics in the Hallowell Gym, the students dined on a typical Greek feast of chicken souvlaki, orzo pasta, hummus and pita bread, with baklava for dessert.
8th Grade Moving Up
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Our Lower School community came together for a joyful and inspiring performance of music and dance to celebrate the culmination of the school year.
We honored our 8th grade class in a special gathering in the Meeting House where an appreciation of every student was read and the class passed the light of leadership on to the 7th grade class.
Farewell Cyndi Fellow faculty, staff and alumni gathered at the Abington Art Center to say a fond farewell to Cyndi Silverman, who retired in June after 32 years in the AFS community. Head of School Rich Nourie paid tribute to Cyndi as an exceptional Spanish teacher as well as a powerful force for connection in the community. Upper School Director Martha Holland talked about Cyndi’s unparalleled ability to create an atmosphere of warmth and safety in her classroom, allowing her students to blossom and grow under her care. Martha and Language Department Chair Brian Cassady presented Cyndi with the collected works of Pablo Neruda.
june 7
commencement
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LIFE AT AFS : SIX MONTH SCRAPBOOK
On June 12, family and friends gathered in the Grove on a beautiful late spring day to honor the members of the Class of 2013. The junior class formed the traditional daisy chain and 1st-grade pages enchanted all assembled as they walked down the aisle to join the seniors on stage, where they sang the traditional song, “Make New Friends.” Our senior student speakers Vin Manta and Sarah Nourie spoke powerfully about their years at AFS and Gabrielle Garza introduced Keynote Speaker and AFS alum Matt Pillischer ’96, a social justice activist, licensed attorney and filmmaker. Matt, who studied filmmaking at Bennington College and law at Temple University, recently completed “Broken On All Sides,” a widely praised documentary about mass incarceration and systemic racism.
Terez Sanogo presented the class gift, a bench for the Upper School hallway, to Upper School Director Martha Holland. Musical accompaniment included the Upper School Chorus singing “The Irish Blessing.”
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Âť
New Parents Meeting for Worship
Jenkintown Festival of the Arts Winners
Âť
We welcomed parents new to the AFS community to a special Meeting for Worship followed by a luncheon in the Grove, with student speakers and musical entertainment provided by senior Alex Woods and sophomore Lucy Silbaugh.
Upper School Art Teacher Amy Diaz Newman was proud of all her students who displayed artwork at the Jenkintown Festival of the Arts. Senior Joyce Dong came away with the second place award, while sophomore Maya Salvacion was awarded third place.
october Book Fair Once again, the Book Fair took up residence in the Faulkner Library and many took advantage of this opportunity to browse a specially selected treasure trove of books for all ages. The traditional Human Chess Match added to the entertainment. Students in all divisions also enjoyed visits from authors to their classrooms. Lower School had a visit from picture book author/ illustrator Lee Harper, Middle School welcomed young adult novelist Josh Berk and Upper School hosted poet Iain Pollock.
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LIFE AT AFS : SIX MONTH SCRAPBOOK
annual report of gifts
Annual Fund
Highlights We did it! In 2012-2013, 837 donors raised $502,209, the most ever and well above our $450,000 goal We met two challenges, which raised nearly $200,000 Gifts ranged from $1 to $27,000 and included many from current students $600 was the average gift per donor, a 24% increase 84 of our donors gave leadership gifts of $1,000 or more 100% of our School Committee members, 80% of our faculty and staff, 50% of our parents and 12% of our alumni participated Please see p. 13 for our new Alumni Giving report Our deepest thanks to our 837 donors for being such an important part of the 20122013 school year. Our goals for 2013-2014 are $525,000 by 1,000 donors – keep a look out for information about this year’s AFS Challenge.
Total Contributions and Support to AFS for the 2012-2013 Fiscal Year
$1,505,070 Please visit http://www.abingtonfriends.net/ Giving/12-13AnnualReportofGifts to view donor honor rolls. We are grateful for everyone who supports AFS financially and in many other ways.
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Dear Friends, As you peruse the information in this section of Oak Leaves, I ask you to take pride in what your school community achieved last year. By setting a record for dollars raised for the Annual Fund in a single year we have set the bar high for our philanthropic goals. In fact, at a time when many independent schools and educational institutions were experiencing a downturn in charitable giving, we had a banner year. Our Development Office sincerely appreciates the support and generosity of our donors and your role in helping us accomplish the past year’s success.
We are also pleased with the work that has been done in concert with our strategic visionary document, “Leading by Design, Education for a Changing World”. One of the first projects was the development of the outdoor campus as a resource for learning and sustainability initiatives. Phase I, a nature playground and outdoor learning center for our youngest students, has been completed, and we are now in the midst of planning Phase II, an outdoor learning center for grades 1 through 6. We hope to break ground for this important program in the summer of 2014. We also plan to examine how we might enhance our facilities for athletics and the arts. Finally, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curricular offerings have been received well as we have been able to introduce courses in genetic engineering, control systems design and CAD.
This year, the School will allocate $3,515,800 toward the tuition assistance program. Affordability is one of our greatest challenges and as a Quaker School it is one we experience as both a financial and ethical dilemma. We remain very proud of our tuition assistance program. For the present year, we have an enrollment of 570 students (in three divisions) and about 43% of our families receive financial aid. Also, we pride ourselves on our diversity. This year, 38% of our families are families of color. We are a leader in this area and we plan to stay that way.
What a lot of people don’t know is that our tuition assistance program is supplemented to a significant degree by two state programs – the Educational Improvement Tax-Credit program (EITC) and the Opportunity School Tax Credit program (OSTC). These two programs make it possible for businesses to redirect their tax dollars to AFS for financial aid. While we do our best to market the “too good to be true” aspects of these programs, we find out every year that there are always friends of AFS who don’t know about these state programs. Please feel free to call me at 215-576-3956 if you want to learn more.
In looking ahead, we are eager to partner with you on putting our resources to work for our students. Together we can continue to make AFS a source of inspiration and joy.
Jon Harris Assistant Head of School for Advancement
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ANNUAL REPORT ON GIFTS
Ever think of Planned Giving… The Light Keepers Legacy Society honors those who have arranged to support AFS through a planned or estate gift. Members of the Light Keepers Legacy Society have made a provision for AFS through a provision in their wills, named the school as a beneficiary of a life insurance policy or individual retirement account (IRA), or established trusts to benefit AFS. By establishing the Light Keepers Legacy Society, AFS enables members of the School community to plan for the future and benefit from tax advantages available through giving to AFS during their lifetimes. These legacy gifts ensure that AFS continues our work educating and young people and nurturing the light within every student now and for the future. If you have made a provision for AFS in your estate plans, please share this information with us so that your generosity can be acknowledged. For additional information on making a planned gift to support AFS, please contact Jon Harris at 215-576-3956.
AFS ALUMNI
all-stars
Thank you, alumni, for your many gifts to AFS this year. Your amazing ongoing support makes an AFS education possible for today’s students. 275 alumni collectively raised over $120,000 for the Annual Fund, leading the way to a record high. Many of you also gave gifts of time and talent, helping shape the next generation of AFS alums. We are grateful for everything you do.
Annual Fund Participation Pride 1940 1943
Annual Fund Generous Giving
100% participation!
1938
Largest reunion year class gift, $5,100
1946
Biggest % increase in class gift: increased by 23x
1948
Best participation from a reunion year, 82% and biggest % increase in participation from a reunion year, going from 45% to 82%
1954
Biggest % increase in participation, non-reunion year, from 20% to 40%
1975
Largest class gift overall, $17,525
2008
Best young alumni participation from a reunion year, 29%
2013
First class gift, a lovely bench for Student Street
2012
Best young alumni participation from a non-reunion year, 22%
Gifts of Time and Talent Roo Roundtable speakers Robin Becker ’69 Paul Brian Osorio ’99 Stewart Rodes ’03 Sam Wolf ’00 Reunion Organizers Scott Berman '08 Anne Schreiber Collins ’48 Linda Friedrich Fogel ’63 Judy Chestnut Fuss ’63 Kerrin Green ’88 Katie Gross ’08 Jill Kaplan ’98 Cara Liuzzi ’08 Emily Patrick ’03 Andrew Pritzker ’78
Shalimar Reddy Ridenhour, ’98 Corrine Romig Roxby ’53 Adam and Melissa Schorsch ’03 Missy Gershenshon Silberman ’93 Lisa Rosen Warner ’83
SIP Mentors and SIP housing Danielle Allen ’01 Ben Barnett ’85 Sarah Deming ’91 Rachel Gitlevich ’06 Michael Rubin ’90 Ryan Samson ’07 Jeremy Sullivan ’94 Classroom visits, panels and special lectures: Najah Ali ’12 Jordan Burrell ’12 Jesse Dougherty ’12
Maddi Durbin ’12 Charles Ellison ’92 The family of Evan Greenberg ’97 Anya Hutter ’12 Tim Israel ’12 Josh Leopold ’08 The family of Diana Parks Marshall ’61 Anna McPeak ’12 John Owens ’03 Niko Regalbuto ’12 Michael Rubin ’90 Susan Rudin ’57 Adrienne Rusinko ’12 Ryan Samson ’07 Dan Siegel ’06 Please let us know if we missed anyone. We want to thank you all!
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volunteer spotlight Nick and Alix Davatzes Parents to: Lower School students Lily and Elias
Area of participation: Both Nick and Alix are on the faculty at Temple University in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science. Nick studies faults and fractures and Alix studies the early evolution of life on earth. They regularly visit the Lower School to carry out experiments with the children and have participated at Science Night. They are also actively involved with the AFS Outside initiative.
Getting involved: Nick: When Elias was in Kindergarten Alix made fossils with the class. A year after that we met Rosanne and started to do a little more. Last year we did stuff in science classes with the 1st grade and the 3rd grade. We did a fossil impression experiment and
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OAK LEAVES FALL
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for Science Night we demonstrated the earthquake cycle. When the tree came down outside Lower School we took a piece of the core and a limb and dated it. With the earthquake experiment the kids got very excited. We had a big table with sandpaper on it and bricks. The bricks are attached to elastic surgical tubing, which is attached to a crank and as you crank it the elastic stretched until it reaches a critical point when the bricks slide. It’s the same idea as an earthquake. The kids get really excited counting how many times it’s going to be before it fails. Is it going to go? They get very into it.
“One of the things about being with kids is they’re not so hindered about what is right or what they should know. They’re much more willing to make observations.”
At Science Night we set it up so we could compile statistics and the kids could see the graph evolving as we did it. In the Early Childhood classrooms they produce histograms every day. Are you wearing something red? Do you like chocolate? They’re used to looking at this. Kids are good at describing visual patterns. That said, I think graphs can be a difficult concept for a lot of people so it’s great they start at an early age here.
Why it’s rewarding: Alix: One of the things about being with kids is they’re not so hindered about what is right or what they should know. They’re much more willing to make observations. College
students want to know what the right answer is. They’re a bit more hesitant to jump to conclusions. The fun part with the little kids is that they are really just into seeing what happens without the preconceived notions, which is why they got really excited about the earthquake thing.
Why they volunteer: Alix: Elias asks us to do it. Quite honestly that’s part of it. But there’s more to it. I think we also recognize that when kids
see scientists it gives them a different perspective about what science is. Kids are not always identifying science as something they could do. When they see someone younger and wearing jeans and a little bit more accessible it tends to resonate more.
It’s great to work with Rosanne and see what the kids are doing. It’s just nice to be involved. Also we have to take advantage of the fact that our kids are at an age where they still love to see us.
“It’s great to work with Rosanne and see what the kids are doing. It’s just nice to be involved. Also we have to take advantage of the fact that our kids are at an age where they still love to see us.”
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why
A PLmatters Y A
t every age and every stage play looks different at AFS. But whether it’s a 3-year-old digging in the sand or a 12th grader donning a sombrero to role-play in history class, the benefits of play are abundant and well documented.
Play encourages creativity, nurtures collaboration and develops flexibility and an open mindset. Through play we learn to solve problems, empathize with others and take risks. Nobody knows the plus side of play better than our talented (and playful) teachers. So sit back and read about why they cultivate play in their classrooms, and wouldn’t have it any other way.
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PLAY in Lower School “We have to play!” A Conversation with Crissy Caceres, Lower School Director
are more able to engage in problem solving as adults when they have a rich play based development. It also affects the development of empathy. They have to think about the needs of others and aspects of sharing, not just physically but the sharing of ideas and risk taking.
Tell me about some of the different types of play. Teachers here are very aware of the different types of play: individual play, symbolic play (what if I did that? what if I tried that?), pleasurable play just for the sake of enjoying something fun in the moment.
Why is play so important for young children? Kids develop essential life skills through play and research supports the fact that brain development is affected by play. Kids
In the classroom, teachers have spaces for voluntary exploration with no predefined direction about what should happen. Then there’s directed play, which you often see where there’s a game and rules connected to
the game. Then there’s active play, which is all about engaging the physical and social development of children. Another very important type of play is one that involves a very specific process. There’s a sequence: if you do this then you can get to this.
How does play evolve through the Lower School years? One of the things we’ve found is that the partnership between younger and older children is all grounded in the experience of play. The older kids in 4th grade can still connect to their kindergarten memories, their 1st grade bodies. They’re helping the younger ones take those risks. They can say, “I know what that’s like. I can show you.” The play gains layers as they get older. There’s a level of sophistication and complexity. Their skills are greater, both creatively and physically, so they’re willing
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to try things they weren’t ready to tackle when they were younger. Play becomes increasingly a group enterprise that’s collaborative.
They’re still in a space of true imaginative exploratory play. That’s why we have blocks in the classrooms through 6th grade.
When you get to organized play you see that throughout the 3s and 4s they’re doing pretend—they have their kitchen corner, they’re selling goods to one another. By 3rd and 4th grade they’re applying that play when they’re recreating a factory experience in class or when they’re studying industrialization. There’s a purpose they’re connecting to that play. They want to know what it was like. They want to make it as authentic as possible.
How has AFS Outside changed the playscape? AFS Outside has transformed our already rich notions of play. All the spaces are designed to be defined by the child. There’s a building zone that has sticks and branches and pipes and they decide whether they’re going to create a fort, a tent, a bridge. It’s the same thing with the main play structure. The other day three children were
“Kids are more able to engage in problem solving as adults when they have a rich play based development.”
Fueling creativity Responding to young children’s natural playfulness can yield inspiring and unexpected results. That’s what Felix Chen and Karolye Eldridge discovered while teaching a 3rd grade unit on China. Realizing how much the children enjoyed reading the book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lynn, and knowing that this was a class that particularly liked to put on shows, Felix and Karolye asked the children to write their own scripts based on the book.
WHY PLAY MATTERS
How does play fit in with our values as a school? In the Lower School we couldn’t exist without play. It’s at the center of our school experience. AFS’s devotion to what play offers is so core to the honoring of children’s voices, the individuality and unique nature of what children bring, the stewardship of how we take care of one another, the establishment of a peaceful community based familial environment. All of our tenets as a Quaker school are inherent in play. To be true to who we say we are we have to play.
“Each of the students had a chapter or two,” said Felix, “and by looking at what they ended up writing about, we discovered what they thought was interesting. Some kids really used their imaginations and included new characters.” To get a feel for the different scenes, the children made detailed dioramas depicting a Chinese market, the king’s palace and the tiger cave. Since Karolye, who is an artist, has extensive experience with puppetry, she brought in some of her bottle puppets and helped the students create their own. “The whole process was a lot of fun,” says Karolye. “The kids discovered talents and interests they had along the way. Some kids had incredible character voices. Some discovered they really liked making the puppets. A couple of kids turned out to be very good at organizing and stage managing and they were all great about helping each other and encouraging each other as they learned their parts.” For the culminating performances, each puppet had a team, with one student reading and one performing. Felix documented the entire project in what turned out to be a
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underneath it and they said it was their sleepover. They brought blankets and scarves and they said they were under the stars. An adult might see wood and bolts but in their imagination they had created the open sky and the stars. The outdoor playground nurtures self-prescribed versus prescribed play.
45-minute movie, which he set to Chinese music. Felix sees it as a great example of emergent curriculum. “We were teaching them how to map China and we thought if they could map a story that would help. But it was through their interest in making the dioramas that it spiraled. We had no idea we were going to do that. With this age group we always know we’re going to do something creative and it depends when it fits in the curriculum. How big it becomes depends on their interest.”
“What is Jason doing?”
LOCKED INTO THE EXPERIENCE
I was with the 2nd grade and Calid said to me, “Jason I want to play what you’re playing.” We were doing a song “All Around the Buttercup.” All the students were keeping the beat and he heard me improvising on the melody. This started a whole conversation about what it means to improvise. “What is Jason doing?”
The way kids this age see the world, the idea of academic time or play time doesn’t make sense. There’s just the world, and it’s a fascinating, fun place to be.
So we sat down and started to talk about the structure of melody and I went to a simpler song with a three-note melody and I started to play it and I asked Calid if he could turn around and figure out the sequence of notes. I played it and he turned around and played the same sequence. It evolved into this whole game of understanding how melody is formed. Even though it was a simple three-note melody they didn’t care. Every student wanted to have a turn. At the end of the lesson I said I’ve never played this game before and I don’t have a name for it. So they started throwing out different things like Melody Match or Melody Memory or Melody Mix-Up and it became a really joyful experience. They’re having this highly intellectual process about discovering tonal memory and at no point did I mention any of those higherlevel concepts but I was noticing they were already ready for this skill development. Now I have to figure out how to take this game developed by students a step further to challenge them but still have it feel like an aspect of play.
We sculpt academic activities to be play-like so they develop a joyful relationship with learning. If they have that in kindergarten then when they start to do more academic work they’ll have a positive relationship with learning. They’ll understand there’s an element of fun in learning and it’s all about play. When we talk about letters and numbers it’s part of our play. As teachers we say, “You know it’s amazing, when you learn how to write you can think it in your head, write it on paper and people know what you’re saying without you saying anything. Isn’t that amazing?” Part of it is the way we present it to them. If we model that it’s exciting and fun they buy into it because they see it naturally that way. The fun thing about not knowing something is that you can then learn something new. When something feels challenging we can reinforce that and model the joy of discovery when they do learn a new skill.
They were working on the pentatonic scale and they didn’t realize it. We were taking different patterns and incorporating them into the experience. Already in that game we were using Me, Re and Do. So in the next one I might add in So and La. They can now become more independent and realize that all these songs they know have tonal patterns to them. It could be “Frère Jaques,” “Row your Boat” or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
With math it’s easy to do games. We’ll have a frame with two rows of five squares with circles in them. The idea is to instantly recognize quantities without having to count them. I call it number magic. You can figure out how many are there without counting, so it’s magic.
Often I’ll go in with the intention of weaving specific skills into a lesson. That day was a case where the lesson itself had a basis of play and skills emerged out of that. Now as I plan the next couple of weeks I can take those aspects and start to incorporate them into the lesson. This came from one student’s excitement and curiosity around what I was playing and how they could do it too. As soon as it evolved all the kids wanted a turn to see if they could figure out the patterns.
Playing outside they’re fully locked into the experience. They’re thinking, feeling, evaluating, collaborating, compromising, gathering sensory input about what’s happening. I see a qualitative difference in play when it’s outside. They run more when they’re out there and everyone is so excited to be touching dirt and digging in the sand. When you’re inside looking at a screen your range of perception is very narrow. Close the laptop and all of a sudden your perceptual field broadens to the walls around you and then you come outside and all this depth perception starts happening. There’s an expansive quality to it that’s exciting and fun but also deeply engaging.
Jason Novak Lower School Music and Movement Teacher and Assistant Director of Lower School
Raji Malik Kindergarten Teacher
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PLAY in Middle School “Because we normalize play, kids continue to do it.” A Conversation with Middle School Director Rachel Kane
How does play surface in Middle School? During recess they play all sorts of games, like wall ball, tetherball, soccer, basketball, four square. Really anything with a ball. There’s a little less of the pretend play of younger grades. A lot of games are used in advisory, like mancala or Apples to Apples. In the winter when some kids are in athletics and some aren’t we have a winter games club. What’s appealing is that there’s a certain structure and rules but it also allows them to be social. At this age there’s a shift away from making up their own rules. When rules are created they take them on and then they maybe tweak them.
Why is play important with this age group? Sometimes it’s through play that we best express ourselves. This is an age group that’s still open to being silly and putting themselves out there. Kids grow socially through play. Our job is not just to educate them academically but also socially. Play is a big component.
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WHY PLAY MATTERS
And in the classroom? In the classroom it plays out in so many ways. Justin’s project with the train puzzle, is a great example, where he took a game and made it into a math problem(see story on p. 24). Kids are exploring material in debates and role-plays throughout the curriculum.
For Greek Day the students come up with their own skits and write their own plays. The ways we ask kids to write creatively is also part of play. We ask them to play with words, play with this image, play with that color. It’s all in the vocabulary we use and the idea that when you play with something it should be fun. I think it’s very true in the science curriculum, too. In science you should be able to define a question, design an experiment and then answer that question. That only comes with a lot of playing around with the elements to figure out what’s going to work. In math they’re always playing with numbers. If they’re not sure how to dive into fractions a teacher might encourage them to play around with different numbers and come up with a picture that could illustrate it. Play means not having a fixed mindset on things. That’s one of the things we try to develop, moving away from the idea that there’s one way of doing things.
What if a child is self-conscious about role-playing or being silly? Sometimes we’ll see a student who will say it’s hard for them to take on a role. We try to highlight that for most students something about what we’re asking them to do is going to be out of their comfort zone. For some it’s comfortable for some it’s challenging. Part of what we’re asking kids every day is to push themselves and by making it not an option, by making it accepted that this is one way they will regularly be challenged, we can say, ‘Remember how you did this in that theater class or in that game?’ When we get to EGIS Night, every student has to get up in front of the entire audience and explain their project. By that point they have repeatedly been asked through play, games and role-play to put themselves in places of vulnerability. Hopefully over time that feels less scary. This is a community where it’s safe to do that and safe to take risks. When we ask them to take other risks hopefully it feels more comfortable.
Play counteracts young teenagers’ natural tendencies toward being self-conscious and takes them out of themselves. Because we normalize play, kids continue to do it.
“This is an age group that’s still open to being silly and putting themselves out there.”
One of the places I love seeing our kids play is in our service learning groups where they work with younger kids at the Community Partnership School and with our own early childhood students here. It’s so natural for our students to get on the floor and play with much younger students and read in silly voices. They love those opportunities to just genuinely play with their younger counterparts and it’s really great to see.
BEING IN THE MOMENT Basically improvisation is the art of spontaneous theater, making things up as you go along. I’ve been doing it for about 25 years since studying theater at Northwestern. Improv started in the 1950s. Viola Spolin developed games to free up kids in the classroom. Her son, Paul Sills, who was at the University of Chicago, took her games and through his company Compass Players introduced them to people like Elaine May and Mike Nichols. It was very edgy and avant-garde and people flocked to it. When you study improv you’re studying how to play again and how to access that part of your mind that’s not judgmental. You absorb what someone is giving you and then add something of your own. You need to embody the spirit of being able to play in the moment, of being present. It teaches the students to actively listen and accept what another person says as a great idea and the basis of something that can grow. It’s about truly collaborating, not just having your own agenda. You also have to be non judgmental about your own ideas. For teenage girls it’s gigantic. Boys, too, are afraid of being wrong or not being clever or interesting enough. It’s a gradual process. One of my 7th grade classes is working on ensemble building. We play a game where I tell them to name five vice presidents by the time I walk around the circle. If you run out, make up a name. At first it locks them up because they don’t want to sound stupid or silly. A lot of it is creating an atmosphere where they don’t have the time or opportunity to judge themselves. I try to reinforce the idea that you don’t have to know where you’re going when you begin. It’s about developing the ability to be focused but to be loose enough to let go of how things should be. I tell my students it doesn’t always have to be funny. The best thing a teacher ever said to me was to make the scene about the other person so your focus is outward, not about you. If somebody laughs at the person on stage with you that’s great. You need to let go of your sense of validation. That’s a key lesson for anybody. When they do something scary and realize it’s not as bad as they thought, a smile creeps over their face that’s kind of amazing. Mary Carpenter Middle School Theater Teacher
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Getting to the Aha! Moment In math when we get to the section where we’re adding positive and negative numbers that can become challenging. Up until now they’re used to thinking of it as, for example, 3 minus 8 and I want them to see it as 3 plus negative eight. I’ll take them out front with a ball and have them make a line, with each student representing a number. That way I can get them to understand if you’re 2 and you toss the ball down to the person who’s
negative 4 you’re throwing it to the right. Because we have the ball and they’ve made this number line and they’re physically acting out how the ball moves, they get it. When we’re starting algebra and doing linear equations, I’ll take them to the foursquare court and say, “Make me a line that’s y=1x.” They’re acting as the line. They totally get it. In science everything is about play. I can explain the principle of buoyancy in terms of how an object displaces mass. But I can also have them make little boats and give them a big pool of water and weights. Then they can
play with it and figure out the relationship between the mass you put on the boat and the amount it sinks down into the water. As they play they realize they’re always equal. If you put 100 grams on the boat it displaces 100 ml of water. I could give them that definition but when they arrive at it by themselves they’ve constructed the understanding on their own. My favorite is when I want to get them to understand how to design experiments. In 8th grade we start to figure out that every good experiment has two components: there’s something you’re changing and something that is being measured. And then I let them play. I’ll set out a marble raceway, matchbox cars, plastic animals, ramps, meters, dominos and I’ll say, “Design me an experiment.” Every year it allows kids to have that Aha! moment. They realize that if they’re running the same car down a ramp but they change the ramp height and measure the distance, that’s an experiment. Roseanne Liberti Middle School Math and Science Teacher
Charting Unknown Waters Erin Timmer and I were thinking about how to engage kids in an Age of Exploration unit that is heavily reading based with a lot of map work and a lot of names to remember. We found an existing game about the Age of Exploration with a 15-page rulebook and decided to adapt it. Erin came over and we played it with my husband and brainstormed and then came up with a two-sided handout and modified rules. One dilemma when you play games in history class is how to draw the line between the fictional and what actually happened. We have kids research the real biography of the person and then we let them play the game, where a lot of scenarios happen that could potentially have happened. They might encounter a hurricane, for example. It doesn’t detract from
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WHY PLAY MATTERS
the historical understanding but gives them an exciting sense of dangers and challenges when charting these unknown waters. The kids really got into their characters and wanted to learn and research them and find out what they actually did. The kids wrote journals and drew pictures. One student wrote the most unbelievable journal about the life of Magellan. It was amazing to see how he was able to combine the game play he was passionate about with really wanting to learn about this person and his historical relevance. There was plenty of reading and writing, but the game made them passionate about learning. There’s so much going on socially in middle school they’re distracted, so you have to engage them. They’re very social, so game play is a phenomenal strategy. They enjoy being a little bit competitive, too. In one week of that game play and the excitement that came with wanting to discover this time
period, their understanding was so much deeper than if they’d just read about it. They’ll have a quiz anyway, but they’ll be able to write about it in a much deeper way. One cool thing about middle school kids is they still have that suspension of disbelief. The logic centers are working in a stronger way but can still be tipped into a magical scenario. Diana Gru Middle School Social Studies Teacher
“Oh no, I don’t have an arrow! What do I do?” When I was working toward my master’s degree in Teaching, Learning and Leadership at Penn I took a class called Video Games and Learning. As part of that class we had to pick a game and play it. I picked Minecraft and started exploring it. Minecraft is a virtual world where players have the ability to explore and create. You have a blank world map and you can build structures, form alliances and create societies. In the class at Penn we talked about the value of design and the fact that a lot of video games allow for students to design how the game will function by collaborating. In a game like Minecraft you need to master a certain skill before it allows you to move on to the next level. It fits well with how we scaffold skills in the classroom. Kids were playing this anyway, and having fun with it, and since it’s based on building a civilization I figured, “Why am I not trying it?” I was expecting the girls to groan when I told them, but almost an equal number of girls knew about it and were eager to play it. I log in as the teacher and I have control over different aspects of the game. I can give materials to a kid who’s really struggling. If a kid is doing something unfair I can teleport him. I can manipulate the world maps to be how I want them to be. I can change it from day to night. I can turn on and off weather effects, enable monsters, allow the players to fight. I’m framing the experience for them.
MAKING TIME FOR PLAY What I discovered last year working with 5th graders for the first time in Middle School is they really do love to play. We did a lot with K’nex. I have a list of things they’re supposed to build, but the kids got together and built other things. We were studying Newton’s laws of motion and simple machines. They were so proud of themselves. They asked, “Can we take it to Upper School. Doesn’t this show concepts they’re learning about?” I’m trying to apply things to what they’re already playing with. Where else do these laws of motion apply? They throw balls and push each other on a skateboard. I feel science is a good place for play. Fifth grade needed to play so much and the more I let them the more they were able to listen to the connections to science. It’s nice to have freedom in the curriculum to do that. You have to make time for it or they are not listening. You have to be okay with noise and what seems like chaos. You have to be able to tell the difference between them being productive and not. We had a class where they made Flubber. I slipped in some science there but really it was pure play. It’s helpful for all of us to remember that they’re still little kids. They’re able to focus better again after playing time. Lower School teachers know this but I didn’t. Kristan Moyer Middle School Science Teacher
When the students log in they’re given information blocks. They have a blank journal and a task book with specific tasks in it (for example, walk around, observe your surroundings, list your resources in your journal). I’m using the game to get kids thinking about the advantages to starting a civilization in a particular area. The follow up questions will be about how civilizations evolve once the basics of finding shelter and a sustainable source of food have been handled. I’m interested to see what the kids will do. In some ways it will be most instructive to see what the students do that doesn’t work. Its not about me telling them what the problems are, but about them coming across stumbling blocks, and realizing, “Oh no, I don’t have an arrow, what do I do?” They get to live it and find out why it was so hard. Mark Smith Middle School Social Studies Teacher A grant from the Lynne Mass Fund supported the purchase of materials for this project.
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Setting off the Light Bulbs
Getting them HOOKED
I was at a gardening store that sold toys. My daughter Lily was with me and she saw this train puzzle. I read the back where it said that there were countless ways to put it together. I said to myself I’m pretty sure we can count the number of ways.
Part of it for me is that middle school history was very boring when I was at school. I had the quintessential history teacher who lectured and you sat there and took notes. So I never wanted that to be the kids’ experience in my class.
It was the perfect thing to do with my 7th grade class. I wanted to talk with them about basic combinatorix, the math of counting. This was the perfect in to getting them talking about it. How many ways are there to order these items?
All the research shows that if you can get middle school kids hooked you can get them thinking at a deeper level. Even if it’s just starting with something that’s fun it’s getting them interested and getting them to want to know more about it. Games are a good way to do that.
The first thing I did was not introduce the concept to them but just bring in the game. I said, “This puzzle says it has countless combinations. I have a feeling they’re not countless. Go at it.” The first day it was just playing, just exploratory. I wanted to know what they could figure out on their own with the knowledge they had at that time. The kids were coming up with all kinds of ideas, a lot of them not right but that’s fine. Then we had a day to talk about the math behind it. What made it work was that they’d seen the game first and light bulbs were going off that wouldn’t have done if I’d just presented the material. All of a sudden the information was becoming applicable. Day two was a completely different experience. We were still playing but they had this knowledge now and they could get close to figuring it out. A little more prodding and by day three they’d figured it out and come up with the number. Students who are coming from outside of AFS often seem a little intimidated by the sheer volume of material we’re going to cover and how hard they’re going to have to think about stuff. Bringing in games loosens them up and gives them a freedom to be wrong. That is actually huge. If you’re afraid to participate because you might be wrong, you’re not participating. Justin Solonynka Middle School Math Teacher
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WHY PLAY MATTERS
When we’re studying the scientific revolution I ask them to read about Ptolemaic theory and they make models out of Play-Doh. Then I ask them to do an experiment where I give them a little ball and a big ball and a flashlight and a phases of the moon chart and they have to prove that the sun is stationary and the earth is moving based on the phases of the moon. I give them a class period to defend that theory to “officials” [other faculty members] from the Catholic Church who insist the Bible says the earth is the center of the universe and the sun and moon move around it. The students get really into the idea, and the adults are really good at it, as well. It turns out they like to play too. The students have to prove what they know is true to someone who doesn’t want to hear it. In the next class we talk about why it was so hard to convince these people. The whole exercise allows them to get into the thinking of the time. All the evidence is there but nobody is listening. Middle school kids are still silly and they like to have fun, so when you tell them to put on a ridiculous hat and speak in a French accent they don’t roll their eyes. They also want to get to a place where they’re thinking about deep things but they can’t quite access it. So if you get them to think like someone else it takes it from the abstract to the personal. My class is not quiet very often, but I don’t think middle school classes should be. Erin Timmer Middle School Social Studies Teacher
PLAY in Upper School “Time just falls away” A Conversation with Upper School Director Martha Holland
schools need to have four elements. You need to designate time for work, time for rest, time for refection and time for play.
Where do our faculty build play into the Upper School curriculum? They do a really nice job of building all four of these areas into the curriculum. In the sciences, for example, students have opportunities to be very hands-on and are often encouraged to play as a way of understanding an idea. Walking down the hall one day I came across two juniors busy working on an Introduction to Engineering project trying to figure out the mousetrap challenge and I got sucked in. I ended up spending a half hour with them measuring and asking questions about how it worked.
Why does play matter in high school? Play is a neglected area in many schools, especially upper schools. I studied with Ted and Nancy Sizer during a yearlong seminar at Harvard. Ted was a major figure in school reform and was Dean of the School of Education at Harvard and headmaster at Andover. He talked about how excellent
Play at its best brings an intense focus and time just falls away. Students are grappling with a very thorny intellectual challenge but not thinking about that. They’re engaged in trying to figure something out. Robotics is another great example of play. I remember walking into the robotics lab
during the build and a number of students were working on the actual construction of the robot while others were gathered around a laptop rewriting code to figure out how to make this one element better. They were so excited about it. It was 6:30 at night. I wanted to say, “Have you no homes to go to?” Science is a fairly obvious place for play, but it happens in other classrooms, too. [History teacher] Janet Frazer comes to mind. She finds a way to have students think like historians through empathy and occupying the roles of various constituent groups to get to the heart of a dilemma, rather than viewing it from an objective vantage point.
In the English department there’s a playfulness with language and a lot of fun with word play. When students realize their own power as writers, thinkers and communicators there’s something very heady about that. The trick is in being intentional and subtle about it. Intellectual engagement can take the form of play. It reminds me a little of Tom Sawyer where Twain said that work is
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anything a body is obliged to do and play is anything a body is not obliged to do. Tom gets them to paint the fence because they think it’s play. The job gets done and they don’t even realize it’s work.
play. What makes Jordan’s classes so much fun is that he teaches really hard things but he’s like a kid in the toy store when he’s talking about this stuff. The material itself is a chance to play. The mind is a playground.
“Just because something is fun doesn’t mean it’s not deep, not a transformative experience.”
Is AFS a playful environment? Because we’re so relational our kids are naturally playful. You see that in morning assembly the way students give announcements and the way our Upper School clerk likes to tell a joke or a fun fact. We don’t want school to be flat. We want to make a space for creativity and for play to happen naturally.
Are our teachers make room for that? Just because something is fun doesn’t mean it’s not deep, not a transformative experience. Those things at best happen organically. You can’t script it. Our teachers are good at making room for that and what makes Janet’s classes so successful is that she gets such a kick out of costume, out of
Recently we did a role-play of French legislators on the eve of the Haitian revolution. When you have to pretend to be somebody else you really have to think about their perspective. But you can also be silly. If you wear a hat, you can be that much more silly. The whole point of the class is to get them thinking about it.
Mary Lynn gets a huge kick out of poetry and language. Because our students see our faculty being authentically playful with the material it gives them permission to do the same. You can be playful and thoroughly engaged with material. Just think of Einstein. There’s someone with a lively intellect who was also a prankster and who loved being alive. Stephen Hawking also has a fabulous sense of humor. You can be a deep intellectual and have a sense of humor. If you give students space and time they’ll create play around it. Even older kids enjoy setting up rules and games. You don’t grow out of that impulse.
“WHAT IS MY PART TO PLAY?” It’s well documented how play is an important component of flexibility, collaboration, and working with other people. In my acting classes I talk about what happens when we think of work, school and life as a game with rules and stakes. If we bring a mindset of, “What is this game and what is my part to play?” it takes some of the oppressive sense of dread and failure off the table. Kids interested in acting tend to experience the world in their bodies a bit more. For me and for a lot of people who work in theater, staying out of our head and in the moment is the way we approach life. Hal Gardner, who does work on multiple intelligence theory, says some people experience life kinesthetically. I think that goes for musicians as well, and athletes. They’re processing information very quickly and responding to it from a heart/gut place rather than an intellectual, analytical space.
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The Role of Role-Playing
I’m really asking them to look at the evidence, which is what historians do. Last year with the 9th grade we did something about whether the 15th amendment should apply to women. I got great straw hats from Janet [Frazer]. So we argued about whether we should hold up votes for African American men so all women can vote. The issue itself really worked for them. The students throw themselves into it if they have the costume. The whole prepping thing is different, though. You have to think about what the concept is and how this activity is going to advance the learning.
We play every day. What happens outside the Black Box we leave at the door. This is a safe space, a space where we play.
You have to debrief it carefully, too. Sometimes things go wandering off in directions that are not accurate. We play, debrief and then write about it. The writing tends to be better as a result.
Megan Hollinger Middle and Upper School Theatre Teacher
Margaret Guerra Upper School History Teacher
WHY PLAY MATTERS
SPACE TO EXPERIMENT When people think about science they tend to think about logic and precision and experimenting and follow through. But almost all science experiences start with play and almost all solutions start with play because it’s creative thinking. If you say to kids, “I’d like you to come up with a question about pill bugs,” they’re not going to be able to generate a good question unless they’ve played with them and noticed how they roll up and run away.
Swimming up through the words There are lots of ways to get to know the complexities of a text. One way is to take a magnifying glass to it from above and look closely at how its parts work; that's analysis. We do plenty of that. But another way is to swim up through the words of the text, really feeling them in some uniquely creative way.
It seems natural in little kids, but older kids are the same way. If you get out a magnifying glass they’ll walk around the room looking at everything—their hands, the chalkboard.
You have to understand a work pretty well to translate it into another genre. When Mini [see below] focused on the spare images in Emerson's essays, famous mainly for their ideas, not their poetry, and let us see those images in all their subtle colors and shapes, his essays came to life in a whole new way. It would never have occurred to me to suggest that as an assignment, but we all learned something more about a text because of it. Mary Lynn Ellis Upper School English Teacher
I thought it would be fun to do something visual because I write so many papers and do so many math problems. I’m also a poet so I make images in words but not literally. I tried to take some of the elements in transcendentalist work and do something playful. Mary Lynn is very open to trying anything as long as you’re getting something out of the text. I was doing an analysis of textual references by creating exact physical representations so I could see what impression it was meant to give. You can see the connotations of any word he uses. He mentions a “fine Geneva watch,” and to me that was gold and that was luxury as opposed to telling the hours by the sun. Play is the most fun when you’re really trying to make it the best you can and you’re pursuing excellence and having fun. Mini Raker ’14
In physics class we always used to get out the motion detector equipment on the day of the first lab. Then we realized we need to get it out the day before and let them play with it, let them run and dance in front of it. Even though that seems like a waste of time, when I do that I never have to review later how to put it together or what it does and doesn’t do. I think kids who experience failure are more likely to try something risky again. Once you’ve done an experiment without perfect data and it’s failed and you realize that’s okay, you’re okay with trying again. I want them to give me wrong answers because they’re usually wrong for good reasons. If they’re willing to put out there a misconception that other people have I can address it. In science because we spend so much time doing labs and relying on equipment and technology we’re used to having something we planned not work. I model failure every day. The teachers as well as the students need the space to experiment and play if they’re going to be innovative. Christine Hunter Upper School Science Teacher and All-School Science Department Chair
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KEEPING PHYSICS FUN You don’t stop playing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop playing. That’s the adage I live my life by. I like taking something they’re learning in physics class and playing with it as a means of understanding the physics better. Play develops kids’ creativity and ability to work together to come up with something. There’s one project we do with a projectile launcher. The students have to predict where it’s going to land. One particular year they were having so much fun they stuck around after class trying to figure out how we could launch it into a Dixie cup in the back of the room through rings. At one point it was hitting the ceiling so we removed the ceiling tiles and shot into the ceiling and back.
What we do is we get a basketball, a volleyball, a baseball and we go to the theater and the kids drop them from the catwalk to the stage. We time them to see how air resistance affects the process. We bring back data and analyze it. If you just used a textbook and lectured on that topic you wouldn’t have the students with you. We get to play with it.
The things kids remember the most are when they’ve been able to get their hands on the stuff. When we’re studying gravity and wind resistance, the formulas are really complicated and the cold hard facts are sort of dry.
We learn all these concepts in physics and then we culminate with a visit to Six Flags Great Adventure. People might think it’s just a field trip, but they’re there with instruments they’ve built to measure g-force, inclination, angles and acceleration. What’s the acceleration of the
Plunging into the Why
To get his students to dig deeper into the short stories they were reading in his 11th grade English class, Upper School English Teacher Don Kaplan charged them with the task of developing a creative project rather than a traditional thesis-driven paper. 28
WHY PLAY MATTERS
Students were given broad latitude with the assignment. Don’s direction was simply to focus on two or three short stories and create a project that would deepen and further their understanding of the text. “They had to do more than simply relate what happens. They needed to plunge into the ‘why’ by making comparisons or realizing larger truths.” The texts in question, all from the turn of the last century, included Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour,” Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” Anzia Yezierska’s “My Own People,” Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” and Booker T. Washington’s non-fiction piece, the 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech. Some students chose to write alternate endings to the stories. Others wrote poems and haikus inspired by the texts. Still others
rollercoaster? It’s an example of how play can keep something as hard as physics fun to learn. It comes from my own enjoyment of play. It seems like a natural way to do my teaching. I don’t really separate it out from who I am. My kids know when we have to get serious, when we’re moving through a lesson quickly for AP or something. I expect a lot from them. But if I couldn’t have fun and know kids are having fun I couldn’t do it. I have to be able to see they’re enjoying themselves. Jordan Burkey Upper School Science Teacher
wrote one-act plays or came up with new stories that wove together threads and themes from the stories studied in class. One student developed a complex dichotomous key. Lily Roth ’14 came up with a fantastically inventive board game entitled Path Paver, complete with game pieces, questions and detailed scenario cards. Fellow classmate Echo Gu ’14 devised an intriguing and innovative digital game called Aeroplane Chess, where each player is a different character from one of the short stories. “They went beyond my expectations,” says Don. “They’re on a par with any written work and the project really engaged the students in thinking and writing and articulating on multiple levels.”
“History is more fun with hats!” When it comes to role-play and simulations, few approach it with more verve than Upper School History Teacher Janet Frazer, whose students can frequently be found reenacting history, arguing world policy and debating decisions, almost always wearing a hat.
Piquing their interest If you want to see students thinking (way) outside the box and laughing a lot in the process, you need to head to John Silvers’ engineering classroom. Recently, we noticed there was a toilet in the middle of the floor. Why the toilet? It started out with talking about control systems. I brought in the flush toilet so they could look at it as a control system. It’s related to what we’re doing in the classroom and it piques their interest. It’s not actually functional. This material can be very complex. We could go through the challenging math models in lectures but the students could easily get lost. They learn better when it’s interactive. There is still some traditional learning that needs to take place but we use other activities to engage the students more deeply.
Tell us about the hats, Janet I picked up a Russian World War II hat with flaps at a flea market in Berlin and a mandarin hat at a little market in China. I’ve acquired a few really nice ones from an engineer friend who travels all over the world.
Give me an example of how you engage their playful, creative sides? One project I had the students do was to build a device whose primary function was to turn itself off. They had access to a science department box of miscellaneous stuff and a dollar limit of $25. One group used a clapper. Another tried (and failed) with a hairdryer. From this activity they learned about feedback loops.
How did you get interested in role-playing? I went to the University of Chicago for grad school and John Dewey [educational reformer who taught there from 1894-1903 and initiated the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools] was all about getting kids to do stuff. What does it do for kids and the way they learn? The idea is that by setting up a task for kids to do you give them a reason to read primary resources and do research. They have to play a role so there’s a purpose to reading a source or doing in-depth research. How do your students respond? I’ve had kids who have been amazing. Last year I asked a couple of groups to do a melodrama. It was set in the time of the American Revolution and we had a hero, a villain, a sidekick and a love interest. They created costumes, pulled stuff out of my costume closet. This is certainly one vehicle for a kid who likes a little drama.
Robotics is another great example of directed play Yes, and we have quite a few new students this year as well as an experienced group that can train the younger students. We’re starting earlier this year, too, so we can play with the two robots we built the last couple of years and develop their programming, mechanical engineering and electronics skills,.
They are generally very comfortable with it and I think that level of comfort begins with theater in Middle School. There’s only been one kid over all the years that said, ‘No, I can’t do it,’ though some of them won’t wear a hat because they don’t want to mess up their hair.
For the competition we enter each year they release the rules in January and then we have six weeks to build the robot. We’re hoping to do more design prior to building this year, so when we do build it should do what we want it to do.
One of the kids said to me recently, ‘History is more fun with hats!’
They like the challenge of having an unusual task they have to figure out with some strange rules and in a short amount of time.
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alumni spotlight
LYLE FRIEDMAN ’06 Finding her funny bone “I felt like I should be a serious student,” says Lyle Friedman, explaining why on graduating from AFS in 2006 she pursued a degree in Economics from Tufts University. Though Lyle (pictured above left) had always loved theater at AFS, she wasn’t convinced it was a legitimate career avenue. With her newly minted degree in hand, Lyle applied for jobs in her field but none of the logical positions—as an economist, for a think tank or a bank—seemed like a good fit. Following her instinct, Lyle moved to New York City to dip her toe in the acting world. Things went much better than she could have expected, with a serendipitous linkup
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OAK LEAVES FALL
2013
the LAByrinth Theater Company, co-founded by comedian Amy Poehler. “They’re a group of really grounded hard working actors, where everybody writes and produces as well as acts,” says Lyle. “I got involved with improvisational theater, and it was like the LAB was telling me I should do my own work. I found my comedic home.” With friend Ashley Skidmore, Lyle began writing humorous (definitely not for children) skits about her life. “We were thinking about what type of content would do well,” says Lyle, “and we were watching these 3-to-5 minute web series and they felt lame after a couple of minutes. Our generation gets a joke after a minute.” The pair decided to do a social media friendly web series—#HotMessMoves—with
each episode being just a minute long. Having secured professional representation, they are now developing a pilot with a TV production company.
“Theater was such a huge part of making me feel good and expressing myself. AFS also taught me a work ethic, so why not apply that to what I love?” With such promising feedback (including a mention in Glamor magazine), Lyle took the plunge and moved to Los Angeles, since, “At
a certain point if you’ve gotten to a certain level the meetings and auditions all take place out here. I couldn’t really afford to keep flying back and forth.” The duo still shoots in New York, though, as the city plays an irreplaceable role in their comedic lives. “It takes two hours to prep an episode, so we’ll take a weekend and try and knock out six episodes.” Lyle credits AFS with helping her develop the tenacity to succeed in such a highly competitive arena, as well as the confidence to follow her passion. “Theater was such a huge part of making me feel good and expressing myself,” she says. “AFS also taught me a work ethic, so why not apply that to what I love?”
TIM ELLIS ’03 Great Balls of Fire When Tim Ellis ’03 was a kid he loved juggling and “had a good time tumbling around and doing things little kids do.” Now that he’s in his late 20s and living in Boston, working in web development, he’s still accessing that playful side of himself, but this time with flaming balls of fire.
Tim learned the art of fire spinning during his last year at AFS, practicing in his driveway with tennis balls at the end of shoelaces and graduating to actual fire as his skills improved. By the time he got to Vassar College and joined the campus club the Barefoot Monkeys, he was juggling and fire spinning every Friday night in the Quad and participating in spectacular 40-person shows for Parents Weekend.
Upper School Theatre Teacher Megan Hollinger remains an important role model for Lyle. “She’s funny and she doesn’t pull her punches with anyone. She demanded a lot, and I feel like being in her plays kind of changed my life. In Playboys of the Western World I felt like I was onstage the entire play. I have terrible stage fright but she was there for me, and it was really empowering. AFS gives you the message that you should follow your dreams.”
After graduating, he joined three fellow ’07 Vassar graduates in founding their own acrobatic group, A Different Spin. The group does its own bookkeeping, management and marketing and performs regularly on college campuses.
Even when the dream is hard work, Lyle still feels she landed in the right place. “It’s a slog to force yourself to write every day but I feel incredibly lucky that I have this calling and the validation that I belong in the industry.”
“We travel with a bunch of stuff in the back of a van,” says Tim. “It’s pretty low tech. We don’t need a stage. We perform out on a quad or open space. We’ve performed in Canada a few times, in Toronto and New Brunswick, and we’ve gone down to Atlanta,
to the Tulsa State Fair in Oklahoma, and every year we do a show in North Carolina. We also do a lot of juggling and acrobats and generally goofy stuff. We write shows that involve a lot of passing clubs and getting kids up on stage and being silly.” At AFS, Tim was “always a theater kid and always in shows,” taking all of Megan Hollinger’s acting classes and never passing up an opportunity to be on stage. “I was on the tennis and soccer teams, so I did the sports thing but would often escape from soccer practice to go to play rehearsals.” His most playful class at AFS, he says, was physics with Jordan Burkey. “I have very distinct memories of that,” says Tim. “To learn about projectile motion we had to shoot a ball out of a launcher and track its parabola. We got really excited and stayed through a chunk of lunchtime. We even took panels out of the ceiling trying to shoot over the air conditioning.”
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SIMON ’02, CALEB ’06, JACOB ’10 MCENTIRE AND JORDAN CAMPBELL ’02 When gaming is a way of life For the McEntire brothers— Simon ’02, Caleb ’06 and Jacob ’10— family time growing up often meant sitting around a table playing a game with parents Judy Schatz and Robin McEntire. Nothing unusual about that, but in this case the game in question was a fantastic concoction dreamed up by their father that introduced them to an entire imaginary world complete with an underground kingdom in which they could roam around as characters of their own creation. Friends, including Jordan Campbell ’02, were introduced to the game, too, and when the boys left home one by one for college they kept playing it on visits home and even set up their own games at Vassar and Brown. Recently, the McEntires and Jordan started their own company, Flying Nightbear Games, and with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign are in the process of launching the game, called Beyonder, into the wider world with a lavishly illustrated rulebook and a Bestiary (more on that below). We talked to Caleb, Simon and Jordan about growing up with Beyonder and the role of play in their lives.
From left, Jacob, Caleb, Rpbin, Simon and Jordan deep into a session of Beyonder.
What are some early memories of playing Beyonder? Caleb: Dad started playing with us in 1995. I was 7 at the time. It’s a great game for young kids. When we started, he had this giant beautiful set of maps for the underground palace of Samron. It’s a fantasy setting, a really elaborate area that dad had created. There were something like 10 stories involving this underground palace and each one was accompanied by a table-size sheet of graph paper. We had a rough rule system, but Dad basically ran everything. Simon: Jacob started playing pretty soon as well, like at the age of 4. He was tagging along and he kind of got away with stuff. As we got older and a bit more sophisticated, we began to explore more of the world. In middle school we started thinking about gears and pulleys and levers and designed schematics for medieval war machines we could take down into the underground area that were pulled by pigs. It was a very popular pastime.
The game has a lot of staying power. The rules are just a framework for you to tell the stories you want to tell. Each player has their character and gets to tell their own part. There’s no winning or losing, just open-ended play and having fun. When we started we’d go and find some monsters and kill them. It became more complex as we developed elaborate plans for building devices that would help us solve long-term problems. We’d spend many hours talking about a specific problem.
And you kept playing in college? Simon: We kept playing when we went home and kept working on the rules just because it was fun tinkering around with it. I remember a ridiculously boring linguistics class in my sophomore year at Brown where that’s pretty much what I did in class. In my junior or senior year I started running a game. Jordan: The one we played as kids was sort of Robin’s game. When we went to college we started our own games.
So the game started to evolve? Jordan: I came to AFS in 4th grade and that’s when I met Simon. We would go over to his house and play with his brothers and other friends pretty much from 4th grade until high school.
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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Caleb: When we started off, the amount of rules was perfect for us because we were little kids. And then as we grew up we wanted a more formal rule system as opposed to dad pulling something out of a hat.
There is the rulebook, the broad description of the world you play in, with descriptions of the different races and classes. And then there is the bestiary. That’s my baby. It’s written in the voice of an in-game character, a Darwinian narrator. It’s accompanied by annotations by scholars throughout the centuries. We first started working on the bestiary five or six years ago. We had a brainstorming session and everyone came up with 10 or so interesting creatures that would be fun to have in the world and I found myself loving that part so I started to take on more responsibility there.
Did AFS nurture your playfulness? How? Caleb: Absolutely. At AFS the way we were encouraged to be creative made it the perfect nurturing environment. In Andrew Bickford’s class on utopias and dystopias I remember the final assignment was to come up with our own utopia. I decided you can’t have a utopia with a lot of people so mine featured this guy Hank who lived in the Canadian wilderness with his dog. Andrew loved it and gave me a good grade and encouraged the fact that I’d thought outside of the box. That was just very representative. Science too was like that. Jordan: Jordan Burkey pops out for me. He was always bringing games into his classroom. When we were learning about transferred momentum he’d bring out tops that would knock each other out of the arena. There was always a game involved in the learning process.
Simon: How did AFS nurture my creativity and imagination? That’s like asking ‘Why is the ocean wet?’
Did growing up with Beyonder help you develop skills for the real world? Simon: Only after I got out of college did I really begin to appreciate what it was like growing up with it. It was a great creative outlet and a great training in creative thinking. It’s been very helpful in terms of thinking of alternative, lateral solutions. Designing it has been great because I’ve learned a lot about how structures work and I can generate lots of ideas really quickly.
What are your hopes and dreams for Beyonder? Caleb: I just really love creating these worlds and I remember how happy I was growing up playing this game with my family. As long as we get it out to people who appreciate it I’m happy.
Find out more about Beyonder at www.fnbgames.com
Beyond Beyonder When he’s not working on bringing Beyonder to a wider audience, Jordan Campbell ’02 is tutoring in New York City and spending every free moment juggling.
How did the decision to take it public come about? Simon: One of my players at college said, ‘so when are you guys publishing this?’ So I got in touch with everyone else and suggested the idea.
Caleb: I think we felt we’d put in enough time and we should consider selling it. We’ve been working on it so long, actually having it exist will be wonderful. The art in the game is very important. We’ve got some excellent artists and we want to do them justice. Jordan: We really just wanted to make it more formal and share it with the rest of the world.
A juggler since the age of 8, Jordan is mostly self (and Internet) taught. While at Vassar College he joined the campus troupe The Barefoot Monkeys, and when he graduated, he moved to California to be a fulltime performer. That’s exactly what he did for the next five years, traveling around the country, as well as to Germany and Canada. Now Jordan teaches juggling in New York City’s Bryant Park. “People say, ‘I could never do that,’ and they leave knowing how to juggle,” says Jordan. “They think they’re too uncoordinated, but it just takes a little time to work on.” Jordan gets paid by the park to teach juggling but, “It’s also to my benefit to teach as many people to juggle as I can,” he says, “so I can have people to juggle with.” One of his favorite parts about juggling is club passing, where the juggling clubs are passed between two or more people. “It’s very mathematical figuring out how to juggle without having collisions,” says Jordan. “Ninety percent of jugglers are either mathematicians, physicists or computer scientists. There are also a lot of connections between juggling and music because of the whole rhythmic aspect.”
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Class of 1948 – 65th Reunion
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Class of 1963 – 50th Reunion
The Class of 1948 kicked off Alumni Weekend with a co-ed dinner at organizer Anne Schreiber Collins' apartment on Friday, May 10. The following day the alumnae attended a luncheon in the John Barnes Room at the Meetinghouse, followed by Meeting for Worship. Eight of twelve classmates were in attendance - a terrific turnout! Following Meeting a small group of alumnae headed to the Barnes Foundation for an afternoon of art and architecture. The weekend was capped off by a dinner with spouses at the William Penn Inn. AFS sends a special thanks to the Class of 1948, which had the best Annual Fund participation rate of any class!
Back row (standing): Robert Mann, Bill Mebane, Marianne Wehner Mebane, Robert Hassold. Middle Row: Mary Gilmour Mann, Katharine Essick Harms, Anne Crane Hassold, Lois Ruth, and Norma Alesbury Kelley. Front:- Ann Schreiber Collins, Jane Greensmith Lowe.
Class of 1953 – 60th Reunion On June 18 the AFS Class of 1953 celebrated their 60th reunion with a dinner party at the Flourtown home of classmate Corinne Romig Roxby. In attendance were Carol Anderson McGuckin, Suzanne Simon Castle, Corinne Romig Roxby, Ginger Gable Vitty, Sissy High von Kleek and Helen Fitzgerald Roth (pictured at right, from left to right).
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OAK LEAVES FALL
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alumni reunions Over Mother’s Day weekend, 13 members of the Class of 1963 gathered at the home of Linda Friedrich Fogel to commemorate 50 years since our graduation from AFS. Many had not been in touch since June 1963. We travelled from as far away as Seattle, WA (Eleanor “Muffy” McFarland), Tulsa, OK, (Pam Greenwood) and Flagstaff, AZ (Alice Atkinson Christie) and had wide ranging stories of our experiences during the intervening years.
Over bottles of wine on Linda’s patio, we laughed, shared, racked our brains for names and dates and solemnly remembered classmates no longer with us (Susie Doerr, Barbara Tripp-Berman). We attended a luncheon and Meeting for Worship at the School, visited the Arbor Day tree we planted as seniors and delighted in a BBQ dinner. The highlight was a reunion yearbook prepared by Anne Ebert with information on each classmate and our thoughts on life, past and present.
Left to right, Josie McMasters Pugliano, Barb Hutchinson Hartman, Renee Brenner Wynn, Lindar Friedrich Fogel, El McFarland, Mary Lou Hay Gallucci, Anne Ebert, Cindy Ervin Beshel, Bonnie Strassheim Altman, Alice Atkinson Christie, Betsy Mayers, Judy Chestnut Fuss, Pam Greenwood
Class of 1978 – 35th reunion » Andrew Pritzker writes, “We came for the laughs and stayed for the love. The mighty Class of 78’s reunion at Citizens Bank Park was a hit. Casual and cozy, we returned to the nest from all corners of the map. For those unable to attend, our Facebook page posted pics, details, and lively remarks. Food, fun, and libations, it was a great party and everyone left with a grin. Classmates in attendance were Caren Fires, Sue Belinsky, Jon Eric Witzel, Brian and Kate Clark, Debra Pawluch, Jill Maimon Gural, Richard Brown, Trish Schoor, Andrew Pritzker, Gail Vander Voort, Marjorie Somers, Evelyn Roether, and our special guest, Judy Notley Burke.”
(Seated left to right) Lisa Getson-Brown, Caren and Paul Fires, Evelyn Roether, Jon Eric Witzel. (Second Row) Trish Schoor, Marjorie Somers, Sue Belinsky, Kate Clark, Gail Vander Voort. (Third Row) Debra Pawluch, Jill Maimon Gural, Frank Silvestry, Richard Brown, Brian Clark, Andrew Pritzker.
Class of 1998 – 15th Year Reunion The Class of ’98 celebrated their 15-year reunion last May at Kitchen Bar in Abington. The reunion was planned by Shalimar Reddy Ridenhour and Jill Paul Kaplan who scheduled the event around Alumni Day so classmates could partake in all the festivities. A total of 15 alumni from the class traveled “home” to attend the celebration, which included a visit from current Headmaster Rich Nourie. See you at the 20th!
Front row: Racquel LeDuc, Lucinda Faulkner, Viola Minicozzi, Lyndi Fox, Alicia Nathan Bernstein, Alexandra Sullivan, Jami Stempler Back row: Jill Paul Kaplan, Aaron Bradley, Shalimar Reddy, Mikki Hutchins, Damaris Cortes Zayas, Jamie Bromberg Tretola, Ramsey Haig. Not pictured Erica Berger.
Class of 2003 – 10th Year Reunion » The Class of 2003 celebrated their 10-year high school reunion on July 27. The alumni took the opportunity catch up with old friends and re-live an annual pool party tradition from their AFS days. Alums in attendance were: Laura Manno, Chris Hood, Brian Spiewak, Leslie Groverman, Asher Steinberg, Melissa Ward Schorsch, Adam Schorsch, Peter Barth, Jason Sankey, Michael Bubb, Rebecca Bubb ‘02, David Robinson, Jonathan Wessel, Frank Sanchez, and Emily Patrick (not pictured).
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Faculty Alumni
classnotes 1934 Natalie High Loomis writes, “I have 9 great-grandchildren! I just attended my 75th Reunion at Smith College. Nine of my classmates attended. I still live in my home on the ocean, where I’ve lived for over 50 years. My children stay with me.”
’49 65th Reunion Class of 1949, please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 65th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations.
administrative duties, a large amount of her time is dedicated to finding sponsors for the very talented and creative children who apply each year not only from 35 different towns in New Jersey and New York City but from abroad as well. She welcomes her AFS classmates to sponsor a scholar or make a donation in honor of the many teachers we all shared when we were students at AFS. Sue is happily married to Thomas Newman, who designs and builds beautiful furniture, and they are the parents of five children. Sue is also enjoying being a grandmother to eight grandchildren, two of whom began college this year—both are at Barnard—and hopes to hear from her AFS classmates. snewman@thehudsonschool.org. Sorry, she does not do Facebook!
’59 55th Reunion ’54 60th Reunion Class of 1954, please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 60th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations.
1958 Sue Newman is still teaching French at The Hudson School, in Hoboken, NJ , the school she founded and continues to direct. Onethird of the students qualify for financial aid, so in addition to her teaching and
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OAK LEAVES FALL
2013
Liz Mosley writes, “Hello all of you former students now living such busy lives. I told all of you, once long ago, that you are the school's and my future. Abington Meeting keeps me busy as ever, and it is a joy to hear and to observe how the school keeps growing in depth and in values thanks to a remarkable faculty and headmaster.”
I also ran into Carolyn Lindig Laumer in my neck of the woods in Chicago, IL, at the Symphony. I now have my oldest grandchild married, which is hard to believe. I continue to sell real estate with my two daughters, and I have sold my home of 41 years, remodeled a townhome and moved into it. My new address is 1073 Creekside Drive, Wheaton, IL. 60189. I have heard from Dee Dee Wilson Perry, Shirly Goetz and Gail McDowell Peake since I sent out a request for information in March. Shirley is fully retired and travels, going on a Danube cruise this summer; Gail is selling her home and hopes to move with her husband to Florida, she keeps in touch with our exchange student, Liz Smith, who lives in England. Dee Dee just went to her Colby College 50th reunion and helps with the care of her only granddaughter, Erica.”
Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 55th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations. Arlene Wattis Gates writes, “I had great fun reconnecting with Diane Morton Arbaugh and Beth Lorenz Wagner for lunch this March in Sarasota, FL. I am in Sanibel, FL, for the month of March so please contact me if you would like to get together. Diane, Beth and I will meet again next year in Florida if anyone can join us.
Arlene on the right, Carolyn on left
1966
Left to right, Beth Lorenz Wagner, Arlene Wattis Gates, and Diane Morton Arbaugh, class of 1959.
’64 50th Reunion Greetings from Janet Atkinson Gottshall. We are gearing up for our 50th reunion next spring. Let’s all try to save Alumni Day, Saturday, May 3, 2014, to visit AFS, renew our friendships, and enjoy our memories. Please let me know your ideas for a fun and meaningful gathering of our great class (contact the alumni office for my contact information). Save the dates now – we need everybody to attend!
1965 Stephanie Mitchell writes, “Five of us from the class of 1965 have had annual reunions for the past three years. The included picture is of the five of us at our reunion in September, 2013, which was held at Sally Atkinson Woolston’s home in Guilford, Connecticut. We are hoping to meet in Paris next year, where Stephanie Brooks Dains lives part of the year.”
Frances Conkey Trafton writes, “After a summer of mediocre gardening, it’s back to fall commitments in full swing: working for the National Affairs and Legislation Committee of the Garden Club of America, focusing on environmental issues, policies, and federal legislation, singing in a small group of mixed voices, harkening back to singing madrigals in the Octet at AFS, lots of indoor tennis, and I am currently in the midst of preparing for a debate in mid-October in a women’s debating organization. My topic this time: national security does not justify the U.S. government’s surveillance of its citizens. My partner and I have been assigned to support that statement and argue for change. I have enjoyed three trips to Olympia, Washington since my first grandchild was born there in April, Elena Grier Hudson, to my daughter Kate, a 7th grade science teacher, and her partner, Kellie. We look forward to their visit here for Christmas. My other two children will be married next year, Liza in Brooklyn, NY in June, and Ted here in Providence next October. My husband and I are delighted with our expanding family! A retired orthopaedic surgeon specializing in the care of orthopaedic trauma and residency training, Peter is currently in Kumasi, Ghana, helping with their residency program there, and promoting ties with American-trained surgeons and residents. Shortly after his return (and my debate), we will gather with his siblings in Boulder, Colorado for our annual family meeting. Happily, it has stopped raining there, and I will also be able to visit
with AFS classmate Alison Conn Richards who lives there along with Nancy Salkin Cooper, visiting Alison from Doylestown!”
1968 Becky Van Buren writes, “I continue to love teaching as lead art teacher at Mackintosh Academy, a pre-K through 8th grade, IB independent school in Littleton, CO. My youngest son will be a senior in high school this coming year – last of four! After being widowed for 10 years I’m engaged to be married on June 21, 2014, so the news is all good!
Becky Van Buren ’68 and fiancée, Steve, visiting sons in NYC.
’69 50th Reunion Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 45th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations. Jenny French has bought a little local house built in the 1740s and is scrambling to make it livable in the modern age: (re)building stone walls and adding gardens, a kitchen area, stained glass windows, a study, cat scratch posts, ad infinitum. She is super-proud of her son, Mike Theophano ’09, who is walking in her old shoes as a book editor in the Big Apple.
1970
left to right: Sally Atkinson Woolston, Nancy Larzalere Puff, Stephanie Brooks Dains with Tulip, Stephanie Mitchell and Nancy Abel Hoffenberg.
Stephanie Hindin Katz writes, “For almost five years my husband, Stan, and I have lived in Summit County, CO. Our home is at 9,000 feet and we are within 30 minutes of five major ski areas. I am a member of the summit County Rotary Club... any Rotarians visiting?”
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1972 Ellen Levitt writes, “I am a senior communications specialist at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore where I am responsible for media relations for a wide variety of areas including our Heart and Vascular Institute, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Urology, business issues, nursing and medical education. I also write and edit a quarterly publication than goes to referring physicians throughout the country. And I serve on the Executive Committee of the Public Relations Society of America’s Health Academy.”
’74 40th Reunion Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 40th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations.
1975 Dave Thomas writes, “I just finished 25 years as a Grade 5 science teacher and adviser. I’m still teaching at Friends’ Central School but I have moved from the Middle School on City Avenue to the Lower School campus on Old Gulph Road. I’m also still teaching Grade 5 but I’ve added Social Studies and Quakerism as additional teaching responsibilities for 5th Grade. I also get to commute with my wife, Deb, of almost 30 years. She now teaches down the hall from me. (Shout out to Jon Harris!)”
concerned about next week’s match where one of David Beckham’s sons will be on the opposing team! Valerie continues to practice property law and I’ve just launched a new business, 321Market (www.321Market.co.uk) which is a Go To Market accelerator for overseas businesses coming to the UK.”
’79 35th Reunion Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 35th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations.
’84 30th Reunion Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 30th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations.
1988
’89 25th Reunion Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 25th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations. Tammi Schwartz-Van Hollander writes, “I have been busy building my play and sand tray therapy practice in Ardmore, PA. I am an international speaker and play advocate and just published my first chapter in a book with the leading therapists in my field. This year’s highlight was presenting in Israel. My most recent venture is bringing play and creativity to the corporate world through team building workshops. I have two amazing kids and life is great. ’We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.’ - George Bernard”
1993 Congratulations to David Mallamud and his wife Michelle on the birth of their son, Evan. That is one cute Baby Roo!
Michael Morris writes, “Janine and I just bought a bigger house (staying in Cherry Hill) to accommodate our growing family… our trio recently became a quartet! Owen Langston Morris joined us 13 February, 2013 @ 12:12AM. 7 pounds, 10 oz, 21. Ethan loves being a big brother!”
1978 Steven Leof writes, “My son James is in his first year at Harrow School, which he loves. He’s boarding at Head Master’s House and is enjoying the full complement of sport (especially rugby) in addition to the rigorous academics. My son Max is in Year 3 at Arnold House School, his prep school near our home in North West London, which he too loves. He’s enjoying French, playing the trombone, chess club and he especially enjoys playing football (soccer) on the school team. Last week he scored his first Hat Trick which was exciting but he’s
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CLASSNOTES
’94 20th Reunion Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 20th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations. Shana Washington writes, “I am so happy that my girls are going to AFS. Isabella is currently in 3rd grade and Genevieve is in 1st. They are loving it! The tradition continues...."
1996
Jacob Lerman currently lives with his wife Stephanie and daughter Maria in Willow Grove Pa. He works in Asset & Investment Management for Merrill Lynch in Elkins Park Pa.
2005 Virginia Petrucci is proud to announce the birth of her first child, Dante Luca, born on December 19, 2012, as well as her engagement to his father, George Frangadakis. Virginia works as a model and actress in Los Angeles.
2006 Emily Deutsch writes, “Hello everyone! I am still living in New Hampshire, teaching first grade this year and loving it! I just got engaged last month and we are in the midst of planning our wedding! Very exciting! I hope everyone is doing great! If anyone is ever in the New Hampshire or Boston area, let me know!”
Do you like the Baby Roo t-shirt Kim Blumenthal ’96’s son Andrew is showing off here so stylishly? Send us your baby news and we’d be happy to send you t-shirt to welcome your newest Roo to the AFS family.
Jacob Lerman ’01 and his daughter Maria, 16 months old.
1998
2002
Pat Russo is currently an Editorial Associate with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and an adjunct lecturer in creative writing at Penn State Abington. She lives in East Kensington with her husband, Ron Waite, where every so often she (happily) runs into other AFS alumni.
Congratulations to Christian Regalbuto (Upper School history teacher), as well as proud grandpapa Rusty Regabulto on the arrival of Christian Vincent Regalbuto Jr. We love news about Baby Roos!
Ashley Ferguson writes, “This past year has been an exciting one for Brian Henske ’08 and me. It began by getting engaged on the beach in Florida and followed with Brian graduating from Northeastern having studied International affairs. He was honored with the prestigious Harold D. Hodgkinson award and is working in Washington D.C. I finished my Master in Public Health from Boston University and am working at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. We always remember AFS fondly but even more so this past year since it was after all what brought us both together.”
Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 15th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations.
2001 Welcome Elizabeth Katherine Canale! Elle, as she is called by her father Joseph Canale, mother Daria, and older brother, Joey, was born June 19, 2013. We are thrilled to see the Baby Roo family growing.
Image courtesy Lorenz Photography
’99 15th Reunion
2003 We are pleased to announce that Ben Conrad married Sonia Valladares in March. Roos everywhere wish you many happy years together, Ben!
’04 10th Reunion Please save the date of May 2, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 10th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations.
The Alumni Office sends congratulations to Evan Sloss and Nicole Husbands on their July engagement!
2007 Julia Hoyle writes, “After working in Dakar, Senegal and Avignon, France post-graduation I am apprenticing to become a winemaker. I currently work at Atwater Estates Vineyard on Seneca Lake, New York. This past December I married Kelby Russell who is the winemaker for Red Newt Cellars. All in all, life is good!”
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2008 Meredith “Merry” Dixon is a graduate student in the Animal Science program at Drexel University College of Medicine. Brian Henske. Look for Ashley Ferguson’s note under 2006 for exciting news about Brian. Jackie Kahn McQuiston writes, “Hi everyone! I am living in Boston with my husband and our little Basset Hound puppy. Currently I work as assistant to two directors for the Anti-Defamation League (of New England). Sending my greetings to all those teachers and admin at AFS!! We plan to be in town this Fall and will definitely stop by campus. All the best to everyone!”
wanted a more contemporary and serious approach to art, so I transferred after my sophomore year. The summer before I transferred I did an exchange program in Japan for two weeks through University of the Arts. I then moved out to Los Angeles and I am now attending Art Center College of Design where I am earning my Bachelors Degree in Illustration. I go out to galleries as much as I can for networking and I sing in an all female punk rock band called Gin Wedding. I will be graduating from Art Center this coming summer and then I plan to work as an in-house designer for a few years. All in all, being a punk rock art kid in LA isn’t half bad. AFS gave me the tools and work ethic I needed to pursue art.”
Rachel Elise Sigman is starring as Lady Billows in Rice University’s Production of Albert Herring, by Benjamin Britten. Spring 2014.
had to speak on behalf of myself and my culture, which has helped me learn more about myself. I have been put in uncomfortable situations, but ultimately I have gained an appreciation for where I came from, and the differences that make all of us unique. The values that I learned in my time at Abington Friends School have repeatedly proven themselves to be resoundingly true, as they have helped me form connections with people all across the world. Whether it was a soldier in the Israel Defense Force, a restaurant owner in Marrakech or a businessman in London, I have been able to effectively communicate with a variety of people using the open-minded values that AFS taught me. It has been truly a blessing to be able to travel the world, and capture the memories through photography (a hobby that I picked up at AFS with the help of Donna Russo). I cannot wait to return home and apply my knowledge in a new context, and tell my friends and family of my travels.
Emmeline Solomon recently graduated with a BFA from the Maine College of Art and will starts working on her MFA this fall at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
’09 5th Reunion Please plan on joining us for Homecoming 2014 for the celebration of your 5th reunion. The Alumni Office is now recruiting for Class Reunion volunteers. If you are interested in helping organize your class reunion, please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations. Danny Basch writes, “I spent a month in Argentina working on an organic farm. I also worked with a group to build a small house for a family in need. Headed to Rutgers grad school for psychology in the fall.” Andrew Miano is now in a Master’s program in fisheries biology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY. Rachel Powell-Cohen writes, “After I graduated from AFS I went to University of the Arts in Philadelphia. I had a fun time there but decided it wasn’t giving me what I needed from an art school. I decided I
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CLASSNOTES
Rachel Powell-Cohen (sitting) and her punk rock band Gin Wedding.
2010 Mariah Dillard is enjoying her senior year at the University of Maryland. She is a resident assistant in the on-campus residence halls and a research assistant in the School of Public Health at UMD. She is currently applying to graduate programs in Marriage and Family Therapy and hopes to continue her education right after graduation. Gregory Wilson writes, “I have had so many opportunities to travel in 2013. So far, I have only spent a total of roughly two days on US soil this year. Beginning in January I have been fortunate enough to travel throughout Israel for 10 days, and move to London. In February I traveled to Madrid, Marrakech (Morocco) and Barcelona. In March I traveled to Paris and Amsterdam. And in the coming weeks I will travel to Munich and throughout Italy. In my travels I have gotten to experience so many different cultures— their foods and languages included. I have
To see more of Greg Wilson’s gorgeous photos, visit his website: http://momentsofsilencephotos.tumblr.com/
Class Notes are compiled by the Alumni Office. You can submit a class note by contacting Jordan Bastien in the Alumni Office (215-576-3966 or alumni@abingtonfriends.net). Please submit photos as .jpgs at a resolution of 300 dpi or higher.
Exciting News We, 4 former AFS faculty, met recently with Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Relations to discuss the formation of AFSA, the Alumni Faculty & Staff Alliance (made up of retired & former AFS faculty and staff). Our purpose is to maintain our connection to AFS and to each other. Our first gathering will be a breakfast on Homecoming day, which is Wednesday, November 27, in the Short Stable of the Meetinghouse, from 9-10 am. Please come to share: 1) What have you been doing since leaving AFS? 2) What ways can former faculty and staff continue to be connected to each other and to the AFS community? 3) What suggestions do you have for the future direction of this group? 4) If you just want to come and have breakfast with us, that’s great, too!
Classnote Correction In a class note about Susan Salesky Rudin ’57 in the Spring 2013 issue of Oak Leaves, Liz Cole ’57 noted that, “Sue has, for a number of years, been a rope-holder for floats in school graduation.” The sentence should have read: “Sue has, for a number of years, been a rope-holder for floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.”
We hope you will join us! Bev Green, Barb Handler, Lynne Mass, and Cyndi Silverman
Above left to right: Barb Handler, Cyndi Silverman, Lynne Mass and Bev Green
2013 graduate notes Every spring, members of the graduation class come to the Alumni Office to enter their first class note and anticipate their life after AFS. Welcome, first-year alumni! Julie Amento: “I think it is safe to say that the Class of 2013 is a group of kids who are unlike anyone else that AFS has had. The Class of 2013 has been through so much together and it’s empowering to think that we were all able to go through the awkward Middle School years and stressful High School years in one piece. After coming to school for 8 years seeing some new and old faces each first day of school, it is crazy to think I won’t be seeing your faces again. Even though I was unfortunately not able to become close friends with all of you, I can honestly say that we’ve been on one heck of a ride. Class of 2013, good luck in wherever your life takes you.” Omar Ayala-Elfaroug: “I’m going to miss everyone!”
Matt Balick: “Thank you to everyone in the class of 2013 for making my experience at AFS such an amazing one! Best of luck to you all in your college and future endeavors!” Jerimyjah Batts: “To my people of AFS, just remember to follow your dreams. Set the bar higher than your goal so you will reach something in those limits. Don’t be disappointed if your goals don’t turn out, just find something else you’re good at and start again from there. To really succeed is to do something that you love. Whatever you do in life make sure you do it well. With that love, Jerimyjah Batts.” Bria Biddle: “Thanks guys for a fantastic four years we had some up and downs but we got through it together! Love all you guys with all my heart. You guys are like my family!” Alexa Bowman: “I wouldn’t want to have had this experience with any other group of people. You all have helped me get through high school and helped me become the person I am today!”
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2013 graduate notes continued… Eryka Bradley: “I’m really glad I had a chance to learn and grow with the class of 2013! We have made great strides as a grade! I’m so proud to be one of the graduates from the 316th class. Stay in touch and see you soon!” Brianna Butler: “Without the people that I met at AFS, I don’t know if I would be the same person that I am today. The friends and people that I have encountered made me feel comfortable with myself and others to learn how to express out true individual selves and to support each other no matter what. We are truly a family.” Allison Carl: “Hey guys. I hope you are all doing well. It’s hard to believe that we are all scattered throughout the country now. You guys made my high school experience really special. I miss you guys a lot. Keep in touch.” Ken (Rungi) Chen: “I’m glad to know you all and I will miss you guys a lot. I hope all of you will have a great time at college and that you are successful in the future. See you guys at Homecoming and keep in touch!” Brianna Cotroneo: “Follow your heart and it will take you where you need to go. Never give up and always push forward.” David DiBucci: “Thanks for the last 4 years of high school. It was fun.” Alex Fisher: “I wish everyone good luck with their future endeavors. Switching to AFS was one of the best decisions I ever made and I am glad I got to experience it with all of my classmates. Thanks for making high school an enjoyable time for me and once again good luck.” Rebecca Fisher: “Thank you so much class of 2013 for being there with me through some of the best and worst parts of my life. With your support, I was able to take on challenges that I never dreamed were possible. Thank you so much to my teachers in addition to my peers for making AFS my home. I will never forget this school and all of the meaningful experiences that I had. I am so grateful that I got to go to AFS and I wish everyone good luck. Go well.”
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CLASSNOTES
Gabby Garza: “Each one of my classmates throughout these unforgettable years at AFS has personally changed me in a unique and positive way. I wish you all the world and everything you wish to accomplish. I will always hold every member of this class close and true to my heart. I hope that I am as memorable to you as you all are to me. I love you guys!” Tori Gingrich: “Ah! I can’t believe we graduated guys! I’m so happy to have known you all since the middle of 4th grade and I hope you all do well at college and beyond!” Ivan Glinski: “Hey, how’s everyone doing? Hope you’re ready for your freshman year in college! I get a year off! I’m working down in DC, so if you ever want to come by and visit the city, send me a message. Thank you all for a memorable four years of High School at AFS and we should all keep in touch. See you all at Homecoming!” #IvanforJudge
Saiounia Hughley: “Hey classmates what’s up!! I hope college is everything you thought it would be. I wish you the best of luck in all of your endeavors. I would love to hear about everything you all have been up to. Currently I am preparing to go to London to work at a news station. If you ever want to catch up feel free to e-mail me at shughleyx3@yahoo.com. Wish you all the best of luck. Toodles & stay golden!!!” Will James: “To my fellow peers who will be going off to college and onto other endeavors, I wish you all the best. My time in high school has been great, partly because of all of you. I hope that all your hopes and dreams come together as you strive to be something great in this world. I look forward to hearing how much you guys are accomplishing while you’re in college. Just want you all to know that I love y’all. Sincerely, Will James WHY NOT?”
Lauren Gold: “Class of 2013 I hope that everybody enjoys the next four years in college and do well and exceed in everything they do. Don’t take things for granted and enjoy life. Have a fun time in college.”
Sierra Lanfranco: “I’ll miss this group so much! Thanks for helping me become who I am today and inspiring me as we all move on to the next stage of life. You’re all welcome to visit me in Boston anytime! (call first though...)”
Nicole Goroshovsky: “Yeah, we’re leaving AFS, but I know that I have made amazing lifelong friends here. Thank you for all the memories and all the laughs. And I’ll see ya all soon! Good luck in college!!!”
Chloe Lazrus: “316! We did it! I miss all of you guys and I hope you’re all having a great time at your schools! I’ll always remember you guys and the great times I’ve had at AFS. Nothing compares to this school.”
Sudan Green: “I’m going to miss you guys a lot! I had a really great time, all four years. I grew a lot and made a lot of life long friends. I wish the best for all my classmates!! 2013!!!!”
Tatiana Lee: “I hope you guys are doing wonderful things this year in school. Miss you guys, can’t wait to come back and visit for Homecoming. We have a lot to catch up on.”
Robyn Harding: “Hope everyone is doing great! Wish you the best of luck with your futures and studies!”
Hannah Levy: “Hope everyone is doing well.”
Caci Harris: “Hey everyone, good luck with everything next year. As we each go our separate ways I know we each will be embarking on great things and as a class our potential is unlimited. I love you all thanks for an amazing four years!”
Silva Libohova: “I wish everyone the best in their journey throughout college! It was an amazing 4 years.” Kieran Locke: “It’s been real. I love all you guys. Been a great 6 years and I hope to see all of you guys soon at homecoming. Adios.”
Daniel Lugano: “Well this stinks... I hate having to write these notes; I never know what to say and everything that comes out sounds stupid, but oh well, I think we’ve proved in the last year that we can bounce back from quite a lot, and that is most likely a skill that will serve us well in the future. I hope that in your post-AFS lives you are enjoying a fruitful and prosperous time, but of course I would also warn that you stay out of trouble...” Cali Mangel: “So happy to have been a part of this amazing class! We did it! Love you all so much xoxo” Vin Manta: “Congratulations everybody!! I’m gonna miss all of you guys. Good luck in the future.” Callum McEwen: “Love you all. Come visit me down in North Carolina!” Emma Moreno: “I have been here since before I could write my name, and now after years of growing and learning it is time to leave. Class of 2013, I hope you all follow your bliss and find joy and fulfillment at college. I will miss our class but I know that going forward, we will come to make quite a difference in the world.” Desirae Moten: “Good luck everyone as we go off. I hope you enjoy college and have fun as you go on with your journey through life.” Jason Myers: “I just want to say to everyone, remember the little moments because they are what is most important. The conversations between close friends and shared smiles, these are the memories that I wish to remember and I will take thoughts of all our class forward into the future.” Sarah Nourie: “Hi classmates, what’s good? I really like you all and it’s been super cool chillin’ with each of you. Being a part of this class has been really special and I know you’ll all do well in your endeavors. It’s been real.”
Alexandra Nuzhdin: “Guys, here we are, one year later! We actually made it and I’m proud of everyone! You all inspire greatness! Hope everything is well and I hope college is as amazing as you hoped! Thanks for the memories and hit me up whenever you are in NYC!” Antonio Piscitello: “Good luck in life.” Zazie Ray-Trapido: “Hi everybody, I miss you all already and we haven’t even graduated yet! I want you all to know how amazing these past four years have been (six if you were here in middle school) and I really have enjoyed my time at AFS because of all of you. I hope you guys are doing great and I can’t wait to hear about all of your wonderful adventures in the world beyond AFS!” Allie Rubin: “Hi Everyone! I honestly can’t believe how quickly these years have gone by, but I’m glad I got to spend them with you all. Hope you all have fun at college and can’t wait to hear about all that you guys are doing!!”
Kalandar Schwager: “Good luck.” Nate Smith: “I think that you should learn self reliance, it will take you far in school as well as life. Everything won’t always be laid out in front of you, nor will it always be easy. However, you must learn to set goals for yourself and accomplish these goals without the help of anyone but yourself, using the resources that you are given.” Melissa Spiro: “Hey guys! Hope everyone had a great summer, AFS class of 2013 is going to dominate colleges across the country. We have had some great times! Miss you all. Stay in touch.” Sharen Thomas: “Thank You Class of 2013 for an amazing four years at Abington Friends. The experience that I had here was something special and I couldn’t or wouldn’t rather have shared it anywhere else. The class of 2013 is a triumphant class and we shall go on to be greater!” Rick Treston: “Rock on dudes.”
Terez Sanogo: “I am so glad to have a home in Abington Friends and the family of the Class of 2013. I’m really proud of everyone! The communities you belong to after AFS will be so fortunate to have you because of the talents, passions, and values that you have developed here. I’m eager to start a new journey at Pomona College, and I’m just as eager to get back to AFS and see you all again!” Rachel Scalzo: “Well, after a long journey at AFS, we finally did it! Through all the ups and downs, we emerged from AFS as graduates, ready to take the world by storm (or at least attempt to). I know you all are going to do fantastic things in college, and I can’t wait to hear all about your accomplishments. Way to go 316!” Hannah Schorsch: “Thank you to everyone that made my time at AFS as wonderful as it was. You made the community a second home to me. I am forever grateful for the knowledge I gained inside and outside of the classroom. Also thanks for always laughing at my corny jokes. I love you all!”
Emily Winokur: “Yay we made it! All the hard work paid off. I hope everyone is doing well in college and all your other unique experiences. I miss you and the rest of the AFS community.” Jared Wright: “I value meeting all of you guys over the past years, and have made many friends. I hope you all do well at your respective schools and stay in touch.” David (Yuhao) Xu: “High school was fun and interesting at AFS. We all have different dreams and goals and I hope that as a class, we will succeed in this world.” Xiaote Xu: “My two years at AFS have been one of the most life-changing experiences I have had. It wouldn’t be the same without all of you, without this community.” Jay (Jian) Zhou: “Class of 2013, it was really a fantastic experience to be with you guys. I had a wonderful time here and AFS is the best school!”
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in memoriam Lucille Prock Bisbee Dean ’33
Bertha M. ‘Bee’ Bucklin
Florence Sheetz Goldstein
It is with great regret that we share the news of the passing of Lucille Prock Bisbee Dean ’33, who died peacefully in her sleep on February 28, 2013.
Bertha M. ‘Bee’ Bucklin, AFS Faculty Alumna, passed away Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, at Chandler Hall Hospice, after a lengthy battle with cancer. She was born Jan. 27, 1918, in Pawtucket, R.I., to the late Albert J. and Bertha W. Bucklin. She entered into a lifelong career in the field of education after completing her Bachelor of Science degree at Bates College, and then earned advanced degrees at Lehigh University and Temple University. Her career took her to supervisory and management positions as school principal at Abington Friends. She retired as director of Special Education of the Abington School District. She also was an integral part of the Children’s International Summer Village at the School for the Blind in Germantown. She is survived by her brother James of Falls Church, Va., a niece, Barbara Emmons of St. Petersburg, Fla.; nephew James D. Bucklin, also of St. Petersburg, Fla. Additional survivors include great-nephews Joshua D. Bucklin and Timothy J. Bucklin, of Gresham, OR. She will be long remembered for her independent spirit and her attention to detail. She will be terribly missed by the multitude of friends she made during her residence at Ann’s Choice Community in Warminster. Bee is buried in the Bucklin family plot at Hunt Cemetery in Pawtucket, R.I., which dates back to the 1800s. Donations may be made in her honor to the American Cancer Society, 1626 Locust St., Philadelphia, PA 19103.
Florence Sheetz Goldstein, former bookkeeper for Abington Friends School, passed away on March 1, 2013. Florence was the wife of the late Benjamin Sheetz, the mother of Mark, Robert, and Michael, and the Mother-in-law of Ellen Sheetz. She was grandmother to Julie, Suzie, Jacob, and Daniel. Contributions in Florence’s memory may be made to the Anti-Defamation League, www.adl.org.
Lucille was born on October 10, 1914 in Philadelphia PA, the daughter of Harry A., and Lillian Wingert Prock. From her marriage to Arthur L. Bisbee, she is survived by two daughters: Terry Bisbee of New York, NY, and Tonia Bisbee McPheeters of Laytonsville MD. In addition, she is survived by three grandsons: Alexander Prock McPheeters, Robert Bisbee McPheeters and Matthew Ransom McPheeters. There are four great grandchildren: Colin, Gage, Lily and Haydon McPheeters, all of Frederick MD. From her marriage in 1989 to Stephen Dean, Lucille is survived by three stepdaughters, Jo Dean, Cherry Gallagher and Lynn Lively. Also, she is survived by five step-grandchildren: Christy Bennett, Scott Gallagher, Jessica Hocz, Tonia Morrish and Kelly Blair. There are five step- great grandchildren. Lucille was a talented, inquisitive lover of life, animals and the arts. She traveled extensively and led a full life. She was a generous philanthropist to several organizations and schools, including AFS. Contributions in her memory can be made in the form of a tribute gift to the Philadelphia Zoo at: www.philadelphiazoo.org
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OAK LEAVES FALL
2013
The Abington Friends School community holds these families in the light.
Please submit obituary announcements of the greater alumni community to the Alumni Office. Submissions are welcomed with or without a photo (at 300 dpi or greater). Electronic submissions are preferred and may be sent to alumni@abingtonfriends.net.
THE AFS
annual fund Help us meet the AFS Challenge!
upcoming alumni events Homecoming at AFS
James Turrell Skyspace
MLK Day of Service
November 27, 2013 Come back to campus for one of the most-loved alumni events of the year.
Saturday, October 26, 2013 5:30 - 7:30 pm Chestnut Hill Friends Meetinghouse Join the AFS Alumni Association at the new Chestnut Hill Friends Meetinghouse to watch the sun set from inside Philadelphia’s only James Turrell Skyspace. James Turrell is an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist whose medium is light and perception. The Skyspace, one of Turrell’s best-known forms, is part of the first new Quaker meetinghouse built in Philadelphia in the last 80 years.
Monday, January 20, 2014 Abington Friends School Bring Dr. King’s vision of the ‘beloved community’ to life by participating in the multitude of service projects organized by AFS on MLK Day. Opportunities for all ages and abilities available.
9:30 am
Alumni Faculty Breakfast with Head of School, Rich Nourie
10:00 am All Alumni Association Breakfast
Together we can reach our goals of $525,000 and 1,000 donors
EVERY GIFT MATTERS Help us surpass last year’s successful $502,209 campaign by giving online at http://www.abingtonfriends.net/giveonline
11:15 am
Meeting for Worship with Upper School
12:30 pm
2nd Annual Alumni, Faculty, and Student Theater & Music Jam; Alumni Faculty and Varsity Soccer Game and Cookout
PHS Flower Show Preview Saturday, February 22 2:00 - 4:00 pm Meadowbrook Farm Join the AFS Alumni Association at Meadowbrook Farm in Abington Township for a behind-the-scenes look at 12 greenhouses full of flowers just before they are shipped off to the Flower Show.
Questions? Please contact Jordan Bastien, Director of Alumni Affairs at jbastien@abingtonfriends.net or 215-576-3966. Please see the AFS website, www.abingtonfriends.net, or the AFS Facebook Group “Alumni of Abington Friends School” for additional event details.
NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID Bellmawr, NJ Permit #280 575 Washington Lane, Jenkintown, PA 19046
oakleaves Fall 2013
Why PLAY Matters And what it looks like at every age and stage at AFS
Calendar Highlights Middle and Upper School Concert: Martin Luther King Day of Service: Middle School Play: All-School Science Night: Upper School Play: Upper School Concert: Arbor Day: Alumni Day: Commencement:
January 15 January 20 March 6-7 April 10 April 24-26 April 30 May 2 May 3 June 11
INSIDE: Report of Gifts Alumni Reunions Class Notes