We & Thee, Winter 2012

Carolina Friends School

The Elements of Educating for The Future S T E M Science

Cesium

Barium

Francium

Radium

Winter 2012

Technology

Engineering

Hafnium

Lawrencium

Mathematics

Tungsten

Rhenium

Osmium

Rutherfordium

Dubnium

Seaborgium

Bohrium

Hassium

Lanthanium

Cesium

Praseodymium

Neodymium

Promethium

Actinium

Thorium

Protactinium

Uranium

Neptunium

From The Principal

Welcome to the STEM issue Issue I, 2012

CFS is often considered an “artsy” school—for good reason, as you saw in the arts-themed Winter 2010 We & Thee.

Even our own community members don’t always realize what’s happening here in science, math, and related fields.

Yet, as I’ve moved through our classrooms in recent months, I’ve seen young engineers in Early School using wooden shapes to build elaborate structures, Lower Schoolers using iPad applications as part of their math learning, Middle School students keyboarding with the Apple mobile lab, Upper Schoolers testing the weight-bearing capacity of their bridge designs, and Summer Programs students using microscopes to solve a Forensics class whodunit.

We hope you enjoy seeing in this issue how the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) are alive and well at CFS—and growing!

Anthony L. Clay, Editor

2 We&Thee/Winter 2012

Increasing ownership of initiatives

by Mike Hanas, Principal In the twenty years since I first encountered the acronym STEM (for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education), I have been aware of mixed and evolving perspectives. The charges to integrate material across disciplines and to create more applied experiences made it possible to imagine potentially exciting possibilities. But at first the imperative felt imposed from above, and results were difficult to guarantee. Would the exciting possibilities be worth challenging the traditional curriculum?

I think it only fair to admit that the verdict is still out on what distinguishes the STEM initiatives that work from those that don’t. But perspectives have changed. Teachers—like those at CFS—who are afforded the resources, especially time and training, have assumed increasing ownership of the STEM initiatives in their classrooms and schools. They’ve recognized and developed assignments that put a premium on critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. They’re making use of computers, tablets, interactive whiteboards, and anatomy and physiology probeware. Their students are building bridges, greenhouses, photovoltaic panels, and robots; they’re conducting experiments in water and soil chemistry and designing solar cars and cities. They’re paying closer attention to the settings, both natural and constructed, that surround them.

The best results: students engaged in the process, attentive to how science happens, how experimental logic works, and how understanding comes from putting the pieces together. Yes, there is information to be shared, there are formulas to be learned, and straightforward answers to plenty of questions. Nonetheless, as the late Robert Maynard Hutchins, educational philosopher, Dean of the Yale Law School, President and Chancellor of the University of Chicago, said: “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.” Critical seeds are being planted; and, while I, too, cannot guarantee long-term results, I want my children and students engaged in these ways.

Questions still remain (and will always!) about how to best prepare students in general and potential STEM majors in particular to be successful in higher education, as well as the workforce and global economy; but skepticism has become curiosity and curiosity enthusiastic engagement. And enthusiastic engagement brings science, technology, engineering, and math (as well as any discipline) to life in ways that inspire our students to ask the questions that matter, reframe a problem or challenge, and generate solutions, the kinds of solutions that might change the world.

I hope you enjoy reading about some of the ways in which STEM comes to life at Carolina Friends School.

An Overview of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math at CFS

Foundations, Connections, Real-World Challenges, and Really Big Lizards

by Kathleen Davidson, Director of Admission and Associate Editor of We & Thee From the Cuisinaire rod structures, graphing projects, and experiments of Early and Lower School students, to Middle School forensics projects and Upper School science and engineering experiments, along with math courses that explore Zero to Infinity and trips that include research in the Galapagos, it’s clear that CFS students are offered myriad challenges to inspire them to venture far in the realms of science, technology, engineering, and math [STEM], among other paths they might choose to explore.

As is noted throughout this issue, STEM success relies both on solid foundations—in math and science as systems through which we investigate our world—and on the ability to make connections, to examine from diverse perspectives, and to take bold imaginative leaps. Students come to us curious and often passionate learners. It’s our job to nurture and challenge them, modeling the same curiosity and passion, while providing the necessary foundations and fostering independent thinking and skillful collaboration, toward worthwhile goals. A lofty mission indeed!

The Early Schools It all starts in the Early Schools. Our youngest students love to experiment. Visitors to our open houses viewed bean plant experiments and learned about the delight of children who had selected spots in the windows with just the right light and who had watered just the right amount, so that their beans sprouted beyond the confines of their plastic bags sooner than their teacher’s. These students also love to build things. Any CFS Early School always offers elaborate engineering projects, whether constructed from varied sets of blocks or from recycled materials. Tent cities take shape frequently. And our youngest students love to manipulate and explore shapes and patterns. (See Early School Glimpse.)

Measuring is fun, especially if the ingredients

measured lead to something good to eat, or if the object measured is the creation of a student who has taken on the challenge of “building a paper chain as long as God’s leg.” There may be nothing so awe-inspiring as helping a young child make a dream become reality, and we are all about that at CFS. Case in point: Durham Early School students have embarked on an intriguing mapping project. As is often true in our inquirybased, emergent curriculum, the project started with a student who wanted to create a map from her house to a friend’s house, and then to school. Soon other students were mapping, and they were studying maps; and, since they are regular explorers of Durham via the Bull City Connector bus, someone wondered whether they could make a map of all the places in Durham that children think are cool.

As luck would have it, one of the DES parents is a cartographer, so he was invited to help.

The students and teachers at DES expect to present their Children’s Map of Durham to the city during April, the month of the y o u n g child.

This photo of a marine iguana was taken

by Upper School Biology teacher Frances Brindle on the end­of­year trip to the Galapagos Islands, which will repeat this May.

Talk about connections, and applying knowledge to the real world!

Lower School Lower School is an ideal time to develop children’s skills, concepts, and attitudes about math. Through an inquiry-rich, understandingbased curriculum, our students come to recognize and apply their mathematical power. They develop a strong foundation in the “basics” and, even more importantly, use those skills to develop real mathematical understanding.

Small group instruction in math provides time for intensive work with each child in developing a strong mathematical foundation. In these groups, students use tools and materials, from place value blocks to meter sticks to iPads, to support their mathematical work so that traditional skills have a basis in understanding and application. Together, students and teachers create an environment in which they take risks, communicate their processes, persevere, and use sound mathematical reasoning. Every student is a mathematician!

Our math curriculum is grounded in national standards as articulated by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Common Core Standards Initiative, and teachers participate in extensive professional development experiences as continuous learners themselves. Teachers also offer professional development workshops and presentations to share their knowledge of teaching math with colleagues around the country. Joan Walker shares information about working with her math students at skyclassjoanmath.blogspot.com.

Our younger Lower School students apply math skills to real-world challenges in S’Math groups (integrated sciencemath experiences). Favorite activities include the project where students build boats of foil and clay to see how many unifix cubes they will hold without sinking (record: Carolina Friends School 3

212 cubes). And the Design & Engineering classes are among the most popular activities in the younger Lower School classes (see Lower School Glimpse by Charlie Layman).

When it’s time to design experiments, projects are rich and varied. Teachers offer guidance in the scientific method, and students determine their variables and controls. “In this way, science is not only ‘hands-on’ but also

their research with others. Some constructed models; others created web pages or iMovies; some wrote CrayBooks; others developed a dance that would demonstrate their knowledge of how crayfish move. They learned a lot, and you can follow their process via the Forest Class blog: forestcfs.com.

Lower School students love Math Day, and there is probably no day when Lisa Wilson Carboni, who earned her Ph.D. in math curriculum and instruction and who is famous for the math-themed T-shirts she wears on those days, is happier. Students are happy too, as are their teachers and the many parents who coordinate activities that range from math basketball to probability games to iPad math apps.

From these foundations, many creative projects and paths can emerge, allowing students not just to learn about science and math, but to see themselves as working scientists and mathematicians.

Jack had baked, perfectly. He had even figured out how to deal with a fraction of an egg!

Jason’s recipe for Thai Coconut Soup sounded delicious, too. (I’m sure the others were also yummy, but those were the two I saw.)

The two younger classes in Middle School have a term-long science class, with the possibility of science electives in the afternoon.

The first-year course integrates the study of the natural world with Spanish, while Henry Walker’s second-year course focuses on the Methods of Science. Projects in this class demonstrate that it’s definitely the students who are designing the experiments, and students who are carrying them to their conclusions. Recent projects include a study of whether birth month affects eye color, which

Middle School ‘minds-on,’” says Lisa Wilson Carboni, Head Teacher of Lower School. When the older Lower School students study the human body, groups may research different systems and use recycled materials to create a life-sized model, while also creating posters about their research, so students teach each other. The same approach is used when Lower School explores a theme like Flight, and students might divide into teams to construct different sections of a half-sized model of the Wright Flyer.

We’ve seen only the beginning of the projects resulting from this year’s Lower School theme: Homes, Spaces, and Imaginary Places. The Design & Engineering classes have already studied electric circuitry, and, thanks to a parent involved in electrical engineering, they explored different types of lighting and applications of LED technology in energy conservation.

Mountain Class has researched North Carolina as home to a variety of trees, and Forest Class has built a tipi that can house the class for settling in or out on a lovely day. Who knows what’s next?

Forest Class students also engaged in an in-depth investigation of crayfish this fall. For several weeks their lab table was home to 31 of these creatures, while students observed them, drew sketches and painted them with watercolors, recorded observations in their journals, and then decided how they’d share

4 We&Thee/Winter 2012

When they arrive at Middle School, students delight in saying that now they get to take “a math class” or “a science class,” and perhaps a “technology” or “engineering” elective, when of course their Lower School skills groups and integrated curriculum have been engaging them in STEM activities for years.

Foundations are in place and need constant attention. We find that a third to twothirds of our students are at least a year ahead of grade level in math when they get to Middle School, so we compose math classes accordingly, meeting students where they are and guiding them forward. (A piece much like the Upper School Glimpse

by Dave Cesa could have been written by a Middle School teacher, and we encourage you to read the article written by Leon Ikenberry and Kate Pendergrass on gender stereotypes in math for Health & Healing at http://healthandhealingonline.com/genderstereotypes-in-math/.)

A recent visit to Middle School led to a class that clearly proclaimed “Write about me!”

Kate’s Math 6 students had been challenged to find a recipe that would serve six and recreate it so that it would serve four. They had to show the original recipe as well as the revised recipe and all their work. Some had brought the results of their endeavors, and this writer was fortunate to enjoy a Heath Bar cookie that

object will sink faster in canola oil, and how drivers respond to seeing a snake in the road.

A memorable project from a while ago is the one where a student wanted to determine which of the local popular pizza places delivered a slice with the most fat, by weighing slices and creating pizza smoothies in a blender. A perfect Middle School project (both ooey gooey and employing decent scientific method). Can you guess the result? (If you want to know, email this author.)

By the time they reach their third year in Middle School, we up the ante, and Jim Rose’s year-long science course emphasizes the changing natural world and our place in it. The class studies weather, climate, natural disasters, biological evolution, natural selection and adaptation, the interdependence of life, and earth and space science. Students have opportunities for hands-on discovery and experimentation, both in the laboratory and in the environment of the school grounds. (See Jim Rose’s Glimpse.) A recent visit to this class presented students with test tubes that contained ribbons of their own DNA. Engaging!

Tommy Johnson’s fourth-year science class focuses on environmental issues: ecology in the fall, chemistry in the winter, and the physics of energy in the spring. A favorite winter term project involves students tracking the

origins, resources, and final destination of an item in which they are interested, whether that be a football, a pair of jeans, a Barbie doll, or a pair of high-end athletic shoes. Eyes are opened, opinions are formed, and students sift through the results as they chart their own paths forward.

The ultimate science project for most Middle School students is the one where fourth-year students build solar-charged electric model cars and take them to NC State for a competition. Many cars enter the competition, and when one of ours receives recognition, our students are mighty proud.

Every year Middle School devotes an entire day to Science, organized by Henry Walker. In recent years, students have enjoyed participation by Glenn Murphy, author of numerous science books popularizing science for Middle School kids, e.g. Why Is Snot

Green? Laughs erupt as students answer such questions as “What’s at the center of the universe?” and “Are humans still evolving?”

The rest of Science Day is devoted to workshops that might include: String Theory & Relativity; Brain Cell Speed; Symmetry, Chemical Structures, and a Surprise from Outer Space; Got Brains?; Tracking Your Taste Buds; DNA: from Test Tube to Crime Scene and Back; Piedmont Wildlife Center; DNA: All about You; Music, Math, & Mind; Nanotechnology & the Environment; Birds on the Move; Amino Acids; Rocket Science; and the ever-popular Potato Cannon workshop.

Students also submit posters of experiments, which are judged by local scientists.

Middle School students also enjoy electives that include Future Cities (see Tommy Johnson’s Glimpse), Robotics, MathCounts, Flight, Woodworking, Quiltmaking (anybody interested in applying Geometry to real-world projects?), and more. The student-initiated Eco-Chicos create opportunities throughout the year to improve our stewardship of resources. We delight in students’ choosing

many of their courses and taking initiative, so they can own their education, take risks, and explore the wide range of paths open to them.

Upper School Upper School students know how many credits they need in each curricular area, and they select the classes to meet those requirements, in addition to a few courses required of all. They then fulfill graduation requirements with courses of their choice. Some students specialize in STEM-related courses, perhaps taking the equivalent of five years of science and/or math. There are plenty of offerings from which to choose.

Math foundations are described in Dave Cesa’s Glimpse. He, Dave Worden, and Gustavo Sa teach courses that range from Algebra 1 to Calculus BC, and that include Discrete Math, Statistics, and Zero to Infinity and the History of Math.

Although we do not offer strictly designated Advanced Placement Courses (in that we do not restrict ourselves to standard AP curricula), our students in advanced classes do take and receive credit for AP exams for Calculus AB and BC, Advanced Biology, Advanced Computer Programming, and sometimes other subjects. Last spring more students taking AP exams scored a 5, the highest score, than any other score. Although CFS will never define itself in terms of test scores, we also don’t want to hide this light under a bushel.

All Upper School students take Introduction to Biology, the theme of which is Water, Land, and Growth (see Jon Lepofsky and Rob Lavelle’s Glimpse about how the integrated first-year curriculum relates to STEM); and many take intermediate, upper, and advanced courses also taught by Frances Brindle, who earned her Ph.D. in mycology (yes, fungi).

Frances has pursued extensive professional learning opportunities, from a six-week permaculture seminar in Oregon to last summer’s Advanced Placement Environmental Science teacher workshop at NC State.

Frances’s classes include Mycology, Plant Biology, Biotechnology, and Environmental Research (a hands-on course where students design research projects set in the local woodlands), and Advanced Biology. In December, she and Rob Lavelle took a group of science students to a day-long biotechnology program in Research Triangle Park.

With Bob Druhan students can explore Physical Science, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, Physics, Advanced Chemistry, and Advanced Physics—both in the classroom and, if they’re lucky, on the end-of-year trip to the desert Southwest. In John McGovern’s

Environmental Science class, student interest determines which campus projects the class will tackle. Recent ones have included building solar collectors, installing solar lighting, insulating pipes, and constructing a greenhouse, while future projects may include work

on electric cars and the campus gray water recycling system. Students were very excited when Technology Director Sharon Guillory teamed up with Dave Worden (who augments his math expertise with many years of construction experience) to teach Introduction to Engineering Design (see Sharon’s Glimpse).

Jon Lepofsky teaches Neuroethics and recently took his class to the Duke-UNC Brain Imaging Analysis Center for a morning of very productive study.

Upper School creates symposium sessions between trimesters, and some of these allow students to explore STEM-related topics. At last spring’s symposium on the brain, students heard a keynote presentation by Cynthia Kuhn, a CFS alumni parent and Professor at Duke University Medical Center.

They then chose two workshops from a lengthy list that included: s ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer’s World s Food & Brain Chemistry s The Language of Brain Cells s The Origins of Mental Illness s Psychosomatic Medicine s Singularity s A Whole New Kind of Mind s Yoga and Benefits to the Brain s The Electric Brain s The Meeting of Buddhist Contemplative Tradition and Modern Neuroscience s What Makes Some Mathematics Proofs Better than Others? s Why Teens Take Risks.

We are grateful for the contributions of the accomplished researchers who contributed to symposium and other CFS experiences.

Of course STEM-related projects aren’t restricted to the school year. While CFS Summer Programs offer plenty of exciting challenges to younger continued on page 18

Carolina Friends School 5

Glimpses into STEM at CFS Chapel Hill Early School: Mathemagic

Lower School Design & Engineering

by Debbie Kornegay and Sue Caldwell Donaldson

by Charlie Layman

At Chapel Hill Early School a wide array of games, manipulatives, literature, and entire centers support the important work of math exploration and mastery. There is a joy and richness in the study of mathematics that those of us who experienced math as memorized facts did not enjoy. This approach to math provokes questions; stimulates a search for meaning; engages children’s thinking; encourages them to look for patterns, relationships, and connections; and helps children make sense of and understand the mathematics of everyday life.

Learning math through literature captivates students and motivates them to reason mathematically. Students follow the story in Ready, Set, Hop and duplicate subtraction problems as their frogs leap off the lily pad. Stories help even a reluctant learner understand math foundations, and the practice of discriminating patterns in text and illustrations is a primary step in reading.

Open-ended activities using manipulatives are always available.

Children love to create imaginative yarn shapes, like dinosaurs and volcanoes, and then predict how many one-inch blocks they can place inside–a perfect way to measure area. Other manipulatives help with ordering, comparing, and sorting skills. A block-building center invites children into the world of engineering and math, as they explore the basic geometry of three-dimensional shapes and address questions of area, perimeter, volume, weight, and balance.

Five-year-olds are fascinated with how long an elephant’s eyelashes are (5”) and comparing that to the size of a goldfish. You can find children measuring off the length of a cougar’s jump (40’), comparing that to their own long jumps, and recording their findings proudly.

The children look forward to estimating on Fridays. They enter class asking, “What’s in the jar?” They learn about the range of numbers, concepts such as more than, less than, and equal to, and how to compare size in space. The highlight: when the jar is opened, the count is taken, and we all enjoy a sample of the candy in the jar.

Besides having daily opportunities to use these items, formal math instruction in small groups takes place. It isn’t enough to have mathematics arise incidentally. We must be purposeful in planning experiences that will help develop the attitude and aptitude to gain mathematical understandings.

It can be magical!

The designers and inventors of the future are developing their skills in the CFS Lower School!

Design and Engineering classes provide opportunities for students to learn about properties of physics, apply mathematical concepts, and engage in experimentation and testing of structural models and materials. Their findings inform decisions they make in subsequent building projects.

Creative and original design work is explored by giving our students real-life problems to solve. Children begin by focusing on projects that emphasize design decisions and construction techniques. Children may, for example, design and build a car that is required to roll a given distance to explore the structural engineering of moving vehicles.

In their first years of Lower School, students build their understanding of the essentials of electricity. Terms like circuits, switches, conductors, and insulators become everyday vocabulary. Through design and experimentation, a deeper understanding of electricity emerges.

Later they apply this knowledge as they build and power simple machines.

The tools we use are specifically designed for children and enable our young engineers to do real work. Students work with hand drills, saws, and more to learn basic techniques and produce finished projects. Safety is a priority as children develop these real-world skills.

Throughout the process, students learn effective construction techniques, produce scale drawings with specific measurements, and often write narratives about their plans and projects. They also share their work with one another As students progress through the Design and Engineering program, design challenges become increasingly complex and openended. Students frequently work in teams to grapple with engineering challenges. For example, students might create a mechanical device that can pick up an object or design and build a marble maze that runs its course in a given amount of time. Children combine the concepts, skills, and problem-solving needed for design and engineering to produce creative and satisfying results.

6 We&Thee/Winter 2012

Middle School: Our Changing World

Middle School: Future Cities Elective

by Jim Rose

by Tommy Johnson

Is it magic or science? On the first day of class I pour water into one of three empty cups and shuffle the cups around, challenging students to keep their eyes on the one with water. I’m a clumsy magician, but I do my best. When they gleefully point out the cup with water, I hold it aloft and tip it–and nothing comes out!

Is it science or magic? The next day we ask: What did they see?

Are they sure the cup was empty? How do they know? What did they really see? Did they all see the same thing? Their first entries in their science journals document their quest for answers. This is the essence of being a scientist, I say: carefully looking at the world, wondering, asking questions, and figuring out how to answer them.

Too often people see science as a vast, intimidating accumulation of arcane knowledge, accessible only to a brilliant few scientists.

Look at each other, I tell them. Have you ever asked a question or wondered about how something works? You are scientists!

How do we know what the world looked like millions of years ago? I give students cups of what looks like gray gravel (and what is shallow sediment from Aurora, NC). They discover a bit of coral, a shell, a shark’s tooth; the more they look the more they find. What first seemed a cup of gravel is full of fossils. Some students have found 50 tiny sharks’ teeth in a single cup. We combine individual data and analyze it using a spreadsheet. What does this additional information tell us? By the end of the unit, students are able to accurately envision and describe the undersea environment of coastal NC 30 million years ago, having also discovered how the statistics they learn in math class and the drawing techniques of art are crucial to this understanding, and how real science works.

Similarly, students learn about genetics and inheritance by investigating personal traits in their families and by extracting their own DNA. They measure their shadows to track the sun’s path and learn why we have seasons. They create a half-mile-wide scale model of the Solar System to understand what space really means.

With the opening day water trick, students’ questions eventually narrow the possibilities, and someone wonders about disposable diapers, which I happen to have on hand. They dissect the diapers, and several investigators use the powdery substance they find to recreate my demonstration, debunking my magic. To me, the magic lies in seeing students discover they are all scientists.

What makes your city different from others? How does it generate and use sustainable energy? What sorts of future technologies benefit residents? What makes it a place where people would want to live?

These are some of the guiding questions we routinely ask in the Future Cities elective during fall and winter terms. Students have the task of imagining and designing a future city that integrates sustainable approaches to producing energy, growing food, managing waste, and providing opportunities for work and recreation.

The class is modeled after the National Engineers Week Future City competition (futurecity.org), designed for Middle School students across the country. Students must build, manage, and grow a virtual city using SimCity software and striving to realize Future City goals.

They must think about taxes, spending, development, attracting business, and managing resources. The goal is to get their city to house at least 50,000 inhabitants and to last at least 150 years, all while balancing the budget. Students must write two essays about a city that they imagine is possible, focusing on a designated research topic.

This year’s topic is energy production and use. Students must also build a scale model of part of their imagined city that highlights some of its unique features, including moving parts as part of the design.

One of the main goals of the competition is to introduce students to the roles of engineers in developing and running cities. Students define problems, brainstorm solutions, assess methods and materials, build prototypes, test them, and assess how well they have dealt with the challenge. And all of this has to happen within the constraints of time and budget. Most students are very invested in finding solutions and collaborating on how to try out their different ideas. They are never at a loss for different ways to solve a problem, and it becomes more a matter of which idea to try first.

Students come from all over the state to a regional competition in Raleigh to share models and make oral presentations to a panel of engineer judges. Last year one of our teams won an award for best transportation system, and one of this year’s teams just won an award for an innovative energy system that combined a giant photovoltaic dome with a lightening capturing system. Each team won $200!

As a teacher I have really enjoyed this class because I feel more like a collaborator than an instructor. I provide materials and some basic problem-solving suggestions, and students do the rest.

Carolina Friends School 7

Upper School Math Pedagogy

Upper School Engineering Design

by Dave Cesa

by Sharon Guillory

In the Upper School, we love math. Moreover, we love teaching math. We dare our students to love math too. If students already love math when they arrive, we have a solid basis on which to work, learn, and grow. If others don’t yet love math, we owe it to them to spark their interest or at least their appreciation in order to build that basis.

Regardless of our students’ initial attitudes, what do we do to nurture and maintain their mathematical interest?

Math is the rigorous system that arises from thinking critically in order to best describe our world. As Gauss, arguably the greatest mathematician, said, “Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences.” In other words, math is the rigid, underlying framework on which science, technology, and engineering are built. Accordingly, we maintain rigor when we teach. This manifests itself when we urge students to ask not only how, but also why. Why does this method work? Can I show that it works? Are there other valid options? We not only justify everything, we embrace every logically sound method and every logically sound justification, particularly when either originates with a student.

We hardly neglect the offspring of math, though. Rather, we actively incorporate naturally-arising scientific, technological, and engineering applications. In Geometry or Algebra 2, we might do a project on surveying using The Geometer’s Sketchpad while studying triangles.

In Discrete Mathematics, we might examine cultural applications, perhaps discussing how voting theory applies to controversial elections both at home and abroad. Statistics, a course clearly grounded in applications, has risen rapidly in popularity among students, correlating closely with its increased relevance in the global society we prepare our students to engage. Even Calculus, historically and currently the ultimate secondary-level math course, arose from a need to apply math.

Furthermore, we teach each individual student. We meet our students where they are when they enter our classrooms and, in turn, help them along as far as possible. We challenge each student to grow by maintaining high standards while simultaneously offering opportunities to achieve beyond those standards, be they targeted individual questions in whole-class settings, challenging quiz problems in addition to those covering the fundamental topics, or through the consistent availability of extra help Why is this true? How does this apply? Do I understand this as well as I can? If a student can answer these three questions, the third eventually affirmatively, then we have served our students, ourselves, and the subject of math well.

Last December, an 8” x 14” chocolate bar arrived in the mail. It came with a challenge: find a creative way to break it into edible pieces, film the effort, and submit the video. Technology Director Sharon Guillory enlisted math teacher Dave Worden and a handful of Upper School students to take up the gauntlet. The team spent two weeks of lunches, breaks, and afternoons designing and building a Rube Goldberg machine to accomplish the task. Although the movie (youtu.be/fyDqK5acVaw) won no Academy Awards, it was a lively learning experience for the participants. Before the contraption was even disassembled, the students were clamoring for a class to continue learning about design and engineering . . . and a new Upper School course was born.

Offered this fall with essentially the same cast of characters, the course provides an introduction to the engineering design process that integrates math and science to solve real-world problems. Handson experience with structural systems is the focus, and we use bridge building as the primary tool to investigate ways to ensure stability, as well as ways in which structures fail. In the process, the students build a multitude of structures and eventually destroy most of them.

Does each break in a predictable way? If not, why not? Students use both vector analysis and computer simulations to explore stresses such as compression, tension, and shear on structural components and then compare those results to their experiential findings. The class also examines various building materials to learn ways in which they can be evaluated for use in structural design. For example, students build plywood forms, mix their own concrete using various aggregates, and destroy the samples with sledge hammers, noting how each different mixture affects the final strength of the concrete.

This hands-on approach allows the students to consolidate the empirical and the theoretical, giving them a deeper understanding of how engineers combine math and science to design the infrastructure of modern life.

8 We&Thee/Winter 2012

End­of­Year Experiences

Summer Programs

by Kathleen Davidson

by Chris Firpo

For Middle and Upper School students, the school year ends with a variety of experiential learning opportunities, several of which feature STEM-related opportunities for our students.

In the last three weeks Middle School students select three Exploratorium mini-sessions that can have them making maps, exploring careers, cooking, working in the CFS garden, geocaching, researching primates, exploring state parks, learning about local farms, hiking in the Smokies, exploring the mysteries of math, studying the physics of roller coasters, pondering environmental ethics, and learning about architecture, among other possibilities.

Exploratorium enables students to have a different, more intense school experience than they can during a term when they are taking several classes. These experiences involve dabbling in new fields of study, delving deeply into topics, taking risks, building groups, and exploring relationships. Exploratorium sessions meet early adolescents’ needs for intensity, exploration, risk-taking, gaining expertise, personal growth, decision-making, problem-solving, and information gathering. Sometimes interests are sparked that lead to more extensive study when students are older.

Upper School students end their year with internships or trips. The first-year class goes to Newton Grove, the capstone of their first-year curriculum. Older students are able to take up to two trips during the other three years. Recent CFS ads have noted that our science program starts at the campus creek and can extend to the Galapagos, and that trip, led by Biology teacher Frances Brindle, is quite popular.

This year Frances hopes that students will have the chance to connect with the UNC Center for Galapagos Studies, thanks to CFS parent John Bruno, who is a marine biologist and conservation ecologist.

Students in Bob Druhan’s Geology and Astronomy classes have priority for the trip that ventures to the desert Southwest, where students experience first-hand some of what they have studied during the year while hiking, rafting, and camping under the stars. Students on the Trinidad trip have had the opportunity to help with a construction project and explore nearby marine life. Trips to Nicaragua, the Adirondacks, and other destinations also include a mix of research, adventure, and service learning.

Students not on trips engage in two-week internships, which have included working with an anesthesiologist or specialist in forensic medicine, shadowing an architect, enrolling in flight school, studying acupuncture, working in a university lab, interning at the EPA, and countless other possibilities. End-of-year internships often lead to summer placements in university labs.

What better setting than Friends School, and what better time than summer, to dabble, experiment, question, create, and blend the sciences and the arts? What better opportunity for students to explore something completely new, develop a passion, and push the proverbial envelope of creativity? This is what over a thousand participants in the Summer Programs experienced last year. In prior years—17 of them—over 11,000 campers from surrounding communities have participated in CFS summer programs. A significant outreach!

What started as a small program with under a hundred campers enrolled in simple craft classes has evolved into a variety of challenging workshops focusing on activities as diverse as launching rockets, creating 3D structures, painting murals, deconstructing engines, programming robots, peering through microscopes, performing Shakespeare, filming, weaving, dancing, singing, and hiking—to name a few.

Summer camps have morphed from simple to complex as we challenge a new generation. Our workshop in Sleuth Science gives campers the chance to learn the latest techniques of forensic science, including DNA tracing. Last summer, two groups worked with Upper School science instructor Frances Brindle to investigate mysterious crime scenes, collect data, and apply sophisticated scientific techniques to unmask the guilty.

Visit the campus and you’ll need to watch out for robots careening down a hallway as they perform their programmers’ complex commands. You may encounter videographers filming scenes next to rock and roll bands. More than 120 workshops include (and are not limited to) Science Challenge, Comic Design, Cooking 101, Fort Building, Sports Camp, and major theater productions complete with costumes and sets. Try karate, experiment with web design or gaming, launch a rocket, create a new three-dimensional design, and learn about architecture. Paint with watercolors or make batiks. Take a ball of clay and shape it into a bowl, a dragon, a decorative tile. Make jewelry, create birdhouses, learn to build a fire, take a hike to explore river life.

Refurbish a battered chair with zebra stripes, transform a thrift shop find into an art piece, hula hoop to music, try improv, create a mosaic piece inspired by Gaudi.

Campers are using computers, microscopes, magnifying glasses, paint brushes, measuring tapes, video cameras, hammers, and plain old pencils! They’re shaping, cutting, drawing, observing, remodeling, creating, and expanding their knowledge, all during “downtime”—the summer.

Carolina Friends School 9

Asking Not Just How But Why An Integrated Approach to Curriculum for First-Year Upper School Students

by Jon Lepofsky and Rob Lavelle

According to a recent editorial summarizing STEM education for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a “true STEM education should increase students’ understanding of how things work and improve their use of technologies.” The author posits that STEM curricula, when based in collaborative projects and laboratory learning, offer meaningful ways to learn “such skills as adaptability, complex communication, social skills, nonroutine problem-solving, self-management, and systems thinking.” (Science, November 27, 2011) While the discourse on STEM education that has been sweeping the nation as of late is indeed compelling, especially with its stress on understanding how things work through building “21st Century skills,” the CFS 9th grade curriculum that marries the humanities and the natural sciences through a comprehensive environmental studies curriculum not only asks students to learn the technical knowledge of how things work, but also fosters the ethical capacity to ask why it matters.

The integration of this curriculum occurs between a year-long biology course (Introduction to Biology), a year-long literature course (Foundations of Literature), and a year-long course in human-environmental geography. Through these three classes, students are asked to live out the closing words of the CFS mission—that it is possible to change the world—by understanding how the world works and asking why it works that way.

In doing so, students end the year on a two10 We&Thee/Winter 2012

week-long, service-based, experiential learning trip to Newton Grove, NC, where they work with migrant farmworkers and their families, and ask: Can the world work differently?

In the Geography class, students begin the year learning the fundamentals of Earth Systems Science through project-based inquiry, from jerry-rigging solar ovens in order to measure the effects of albedo, to using Google Docs to collaboratively debate the human and environmental causes of the devastating 2010 floods in Pakistan, to teaching a class session on how a major watershed’s hydrological cycle is shaped by global, regional, and local factors that are both human-driven and natural. But more than just understand how nature works and how humans alter it through technology, students are pressed to consider the implications of our technical knowledge of nature, from deliberating the ethics of consuming fish, to designing their own commodity chains for chocolate production, created according to their own sense of what would be an ethical way to move cacao from bean to bar.

As students move into the spring and study migration, urbanization, and globalization (alongside the biology and literature of growth), the students develop the tools to understand how contemporary space is produced through human and environmental forces; more importantly, they are better equipped to understand the politics of space in the contemporary world. As such, students can engage more fully with current events and

be more prepared to grow as global citizens.

This is because the curriculum stresses relationships, connections, and movements across the world in an imaginative way, not just one that displays how things work.

While the 9th graders receive a strong foundation in how things work and the role of technology in shaping the world, they also cultivate the critical thinking skills to ask: what does technology mean and how should it shape the world? As this issue of We & Thee shows, these questions get amplified throughout the Upper School curriculum. Without these deeper questions, we worry that the rising tide of STEM education ignores Mary Shelley’s vision of her own fantastic creation: “I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. . . . Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”

We want our students to know that it is possible to change the world by making it of their own creation. To get there, we push the boundaries of STEM and create the conditions for them to be thoughtful and purposeful in how they try to do it. Or, as a current 9th grader puts it: the integrated curriculum “teaches me that there is more to science than just knowing the answer. It teaches me the everyday applications of science as well as the philosophical ones.”

Parent Reflection

Scientist Dan Kenan on Math and Science at CFS

by Dan Kenan, M.D., Ph.D. I have two children who have attended CFS. My daughter is currently a 2nd-year Upper Schooler and my son graduated last year. I believe that they both have had an outstanding science and math education, even extraordinary in many ways. . . .

Let me first describe my background in science. I majored in biology and chemistry at the College of William and Mary. I then spent two years in graduate school at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland studying molecular biology before coming to Duke University to earn my M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology. I have been a principal investigator at Duke for more than 10 years and I have taught science to Duke undergraduates, grad students, med students, and postdoctoral fellows.

My experience teaching at Duke has alerted me to the fact that many of our top university students have never been taught how to THINK. Instead, they tend to approach science as a body of facts that can be taught and read in a text book and answered on a multiple choice test. The reality of course is that science is a system by which we investigate the world around us. That system requires that the investigators be able to look at data from various points of view, make connections, and leap to insights that may not be obvious at first

glance.

I have found that this is where CFS students have a huge advantage. At CFS, students are challenged to think and to express themselves. They tend to be prepared to stand up for minority positions, and to be thoughtful and considerate of many points of view. By considerate, I don’t necessarily mean polite. I mean that they take into account more than one way of looking at an issue or a question, and consider multiple inputs before reaching a conclusion or plan of action.

Of course, action itself is key to success in science. One must be willing to act, to investigate, to challenge dogma, to perform the key experiment, to turn over stones still left in place. CFS students are well accustomed to action. It is built into the mission statement: “we teach our children that it is possible to change the world.” Two kids into the CFS curriculum, I can assure you that both of my children take this statement as self-evident.

I have seen a number of CFS students, my own included, interacting with university scientists, for example in the Summer Ventures Program in Science and Mathematics, or the Howard Hughes Precollege Summer Program, or performing independent summer research projects in university laboratories. I love to sit back and watch the reactions of

these senior scientists when they engage our students, as they begin to realize that they are talking to a future scientist of substance, who is capable of taking an idea or a project and running with it. Many times I have seen these conversations end with the statement, “I would love to have you work in my lab.”

The full text of Dan Kenan’s reflection can be found on the CFS website: cfsnc.org/page.cfm?p=1000

Signs of Life on Other Planets? No, samples of bacterial life forms on this planet, growing in the same types of petri dishes CFS students in the Middle School science lab use every year.

Carolina Friends School 11

Perfectly Ping An interview with CFS parent Ping Fu by her daughter Xixi Edelsbrunner (‘12) Ping is co­founder, president, and CEO of GeoMagic. Inc. Magazine named her its 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year and in 2010 President Obama appointed her to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Last year, she received the Women in Business Lifetime Achievement Award from the Triangle Business Journal and the Citizen of the World Award from the International Affairs Council of North Carolina. We are grateful that she presented a workshop on Singularity for last year’s Upper School symposium on the brain.

How did you get into computer science, since you were a Chinese literature major before you moved to the U.S.?

I got into computer science by accident. I studied Chinese literature, and I wanted to study comparative literature, but when I first came to the U.S., I didn’t speak much English. Three words were what I had, not enough to study literature. Somebody said that computer science is manmade language, and you can use it to make things. So I thought, “That’s great because I’m good with language, and I also love the sound of ‘manmade language’ because it sounds like everybody else has to learn it from scratch also.

And I love making things.” It turned out to be really lucky Actually, computer science, even though it’s a scientific field, is just as much art as it is science because writing a program is a very creative process. It requires not only critical thinking, which you usually learn in math and physics, but also structured thinking, which you typically learn in language and history classes. So it’s actually a field that crosses categories You’re the CEO of the Geomagic. What does it do?

company,

I started Geomagic to use software to make things, just like how I got into computers. While many people in software were working on social network, database, and finance kinds of software, I really wanted to write software that could create things we could use.

There’s an interesting story. When you were maybe five, you were on the Mattel web-

12 We&Thee/Winter 2012

site designing Barbies, and after finishing there’s a big print button, and you clicked it. I heard you scream, “I want a real Barbie, not a picture of a Barbie!” That was when I said, “Okay, I’m going to start a company that, when you hit the print button, prints out a real Barbie.

So I started a company that focused on creating 3D models for 3D printing, but it was too early: 3D printing wasn’t mature, the machines were too expensive, there weren’t many materials. The company got into traditional manufacturing, like cars and automotive, and the NASA space shuttle Actually, that was interesting because I had wanted to be an astronaut, but I didn’t have any choice, so I studied Chinese literature, and I ended up starting this company to help safely return astronauts. So, life seems to come to a full circle, when you study math and science.

would not be globally competitive.

But I would say that art and literature are equally important, because structured thinking and creativity are also very important. Of course, art and science both are creative.

Creativity is not just about art. When we’re young, we’re all able to imagine things.

Imagination is to think up things that are not present. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It just means they’re not in front of us. We can’t see, we can’t hear, we can’t touch and feel, so we imagine, and creativity is applied imagination. Math and science require a lot of creativity, just like art requires a lot of creativity.

Together, they can make the world a functional and beautiful place. You can’t just make it beautiful and not functional. That’s not going to work. Math and science are what make everything function. Everything turns, the door opens, the car runs, but art is what feeds our minds and souls.

Do you think it’s important to teach math and science in school?

How do you combine the two?

Well, math and science are very fundamental subjects to study. When we go to school, we basically train our minds how to think. And math, science, engineering, and technology are the fields that teach us analytical thinking, which is how most things are made, which is not to say social sciences and art aren’t important. They are also very important, but math and science do give you basic skills, and without them, we couldn’t quite— for example, we couldn’t make cars or airplanes, we couldn’t help make the air clean, we couldn’t design medicines that treat illnesses. If we didn’t have math and science, the entire nation might be behind, so we

I love math and science, and I love art. I like both, and I like to mix them up. It’s kind of like cooking. You put all the ingredients in there, and, voila, it comes out something that’s, each time, unique. I think most people tend to choose one or the other because that’s how our schools channel them, but I really like both. Steve Jobs likes both too.

He’s an embodiment of technology meets art.

I think when the society develops above the basic need, science and technology kind of provide that basic layer foundation of making everything work and everything better, and art puts that packaging outside to make everything also beautiful. I just like both of them.

And that’s what Geomagic does too?

Yes, Geomagic is really in the intersection of STEM—I mean, science, math, technology, and engineering—we do all of them, but then, we also do art. But I would say we do the science, math, technology, engineering more than we do art.

What are some of your favorite projects?

Geomagic started with the mission, “Advance and apply 3D technology for the benefit of humanity.” So, “advance” is about innovation, creativity. “Apply” is about making it useful. Our technology’s based on the 3-dimensional capturing, modeling, and processing for design and manufacture, so the software is 3D technology. And our higher level of purpose is to benefit humanity.

So, everything we do, we want it to benefit humanity.

So from that perspective, some of my favorite projects are . . .

I talked about NASA, helping detect and repair the damage on the insulated tiles on the space shuttle to guarantee the safe return of the NASA astronauts. The Columbia disaster was caused when tile damage under the wing was not detected, so when they entered the earth, the heat went in and blew up the space shuttle. So that’s one of my favorite projects.

Another of my favorite projects is Scott Summit’s work. He’s an industrial designer, but he’s also an engineer, and he designs those prosthetic legs. He calls them fairings.

Fairings usually are the part in front of the motorcycle that’s smooth and curved and beautiful. He wanted to make sure that the prosthetic product that he designed—not just has the function, which is the engineer part—he wanted to make sure that it also contains the shape of your body and the emotion, the pride of—to be proud of what you have, rather than be ashamed of what you have. And also beauty. So he combines engineering, art, and psychology into his product. He brings back the dignity, the pride, and the function of the product. I’m really proud of that.

The Long Now Clock (a clock that will run for 10,000 years) is another one that I’m really interested in. Danny Hillis started the Thinking Machine. He’s a total science, technology, engineer, entrepreneur type of person. He built the world’s fastest computers, and he called the Long Now Clock the world’s slowest computer. I think because in today’s world, everybody thinks so short term—it’s always “here” and “now”—he wanted to use this as a symbol for long-term thinking, which I really like because the U.S. has such a short history, only a few hundred

years. For someone to think about building something that would last for 10,000 years, when maybe civilization wouldn’t be there, maybe the United States wouldn’t be there. . . . I can’t even imagine what happens 10,000 years later, but for Americans to build that, it’s almost like America’s building pyramids, and I just love what the clock stands for—for long-term thinking, and that’s another of my favorite projects.

What else? World Heritage Preservation.

I’m working with Ben Kacyra on scanning and preserving 500 World Heritage pieces in five years. . . . So, the next project I’m going to do, that I haven’t done yet, is to scan the Great Wall of China, one of the ten man-made projects that can be viewed from space. You know, if you think about the Great Wall of China, back then, they didn’t have all this modern technology. How did they build it so it lasts so long? It must have a lot of math and engineering concepts built in when they built this thing. World Heritage is being called the human’s collective memory, or human’s collective history. And to be able to preserve these things, so they don’t deteriorate, so we can pass them onto the future generations, seems to be very meaningful. And this work all requires a very good foundation of math, science, engineering, and entrepreneurship.

Congratulations to our Afghan Sister School Congratulations to the first ever graduating class from the Topchi Village School, our sister school in Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan. This represents a huge accomplishment for these twelve boys and four girls, and for this rural school with whom we have exchanged gifts and pen pal letters since 2004, when their school opened.

Last year, at the request of the Topchi staff, we provided lab equipment and teacher training for the science program at the high school; their most recent request includes two computers and a generator. We are delighted to support science and technical education at this school, which lacks electricity but shows great resolve to educate its students for the 21st century.

At a meeting for worship in November, all students and staff from Lower, Middle, and Upper School celebrated this milestone and the hope it represents for a more peaceful world.

Carolina Friends School 13

An Engineer Hooked on the Human Body Alumni Profile: Chris Chapman, ‘07

by Marsha Green, CFS Trustee

by Marsha Green, CFS Trustee

Chris Chapman is eager to get back into the CFS science classroom.

Since graduating in 2007 and going on to study engineering at North Carolina State University, he’s been back to CFS Upper School science classes several times to try to explain what engineers do.

“Most people don’t really know the difference between a mechanic who works on your car and a mechanical engineer,” he says. “When I tell people I am applying to grad school to study neural systems engineering, people’s eyes tend to glaze over.”

But when he gets into the classroom and begins to describe the equipment he’s working on to measure soldiers’ speed and agility after a concussion, or how he’s been dissecting pigs’ legs to test the tensile strength of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) to see if the standard treatment for athletes who tear their ACL is actually weakening the ligament, students begin to glimpse the possibilities and practicalities of engineering.

“I hope I convey how exciting engineering is,” he says. “And how many different areas of life it touches.”

Chris says his interest in engineering goes back many years. He remembers fondly the CFS classes where he got to make things, from a potato cannon (which worked) to a jet turbine made from old car parts (which didn’t work).

Throughout Upper School, he had his heart set on being a mechanical engineer. After starting college, however, he stumbled upon a second passion: biomedical engineering.

“My best friend switched to biomedical engineering, and I looked at his courses and was intrigued,” Chris says. He signed up for “Physiology for Engineers” and got hooked on the human body. “We spent one semester looking at electrical systems in the body – figuring out how eyes see and ears hear. Then we spent another semester looking at fluid mechanics – how the body handles blood and other fluids,” he said. He is now double majoring in mechanical and biomedical engineering. Having already worked for a year at Alcatel Lucent, he has decided to do more research in biomedical engineering, and is applying for graduate school.

Chris credits his AP Biology class with Frances as giving him the foundation he needed to be able to add a biomedical engineering degree to his plate. “When I took it, I thought she expected a ridiculous amount of work, but in retrospect, it was great preparation for college,” he says. “In fact, the credits I got for AP Bio at CFS made it possible for me to add biomedical engineering and still finish in four years,” he says. “I’ve thanked Frances for that several times!”

Chris says he hopes that coming back to campus to share his experience at NC State will encourage other students to explore the wide world of engineering.

“I love the innovation that goes on in engineering,” he says. “And the impact it has on people. Particularly with biomedical engineering, it is easy to see how successful products can make such a difference in people’s lives.”

14 We&Thee/Winter 2012

Birds of a Feather Chris Chapman graduated with a CFS class in which several peers had ambitions related to STEM. His friends Will Sall and Chris Walls also recently graduated from NC State in Engineering programs. Katie Reif completed her Engineering program at Tufts and is headed to Stanford for a Masters in Civil Engineering.

Morgan Lashaw is completing an Engineering degree at Purdue. Taylor Shields graduated from Guilford College with a degree in Computer and Information Technology (and was chosen as Outstanding Senior in Information Technology). At UNC, Claire Newlon received a B.S. in Nutrition and Miranda Parker graduated with a degree in Psychology.

Chris Venters graduated from Duke with a B.S. in Biology and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Cell Biology at University of Pennsylvania.

We look forward to learning more about the accomplishments of these and all of our CFS alums!

Pleased to Envision Many Possibilities Alumni Profile: Trannon Mosher, ‘01

by Marsha Green, CFS Trustee

Trannon Mosher has not quite decided what he wants to be when he grows up.

It could be something to do with the environment. Or dancing. Or computer modeling.

“One thing CFS taught me is that you don’t have to pigeon-hole yourself,” said Trannon, who graduated from CFS in 2001, did an undergraduate double degree in dance and aerospace engineering at University of Colorado at Boulder, completed his master of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010, and is now living in Reno, Nevada, doing computer modeling for Clear Capital, a real estate valuation agency.

Mosher said it wasn’t until after he left CFS that he recognized how lucky he was to attend a school that offered him the opportunity to excel in both science and the arts – “to be at a place where a nerd could take modern dance and nobody thought it was odd,” as he describes it.

Asking about his favorite classes at CFS gives a taste of Trannon’s wide-ranging interests. He recalls getting totally caught up in imaginary travels during Henry Walker’s “Around the World” history class in Middle School, despite being terrified about all the writing it entailed. He took his first dance class with Annie Dwyer when he was eight or nine and branched out into choreography in Upper School. And he holds a special place in his heart for Bill Messer, “who had an amazing energy and enthusiasm for science and the outdoors, and instilled the knowledge that you could be totally into science and math but not

be a shut-in.”

The outdoor environment has always called to Trannon. His favorite hangout at CFS was in the thick, rough branches of the [oak] tree between the Middle School and the creek. “It had great big branches which were perfect for sitting and doing nothing, as I often liked to do,” he said. After graduating from University of Colorado, he hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, a journey of roughly 2,000 miles completed in five months and four days. And his academic focus at MIT was on solar energy – an outdoor topic that he took into the computer lab as he created a computer model to estimate the value of solar energy under different incentives and market scenarios.

His most recent outdoor adventure was his marriage in October 2011, to Cari Cunningham, held in a golden yellow grove of aspen trees on the shores of Spooner Lake, just east of Lake Tahoe.

“We met while I was an undergrad at Boulder and she was doing graduate work there,” he says. “We did that long distance thing for two years while I got my masters at MIT, but it was with the clear understanding that I was going to come back out here and join her.”

Being with Cari, an assistant professor of dance at University of Nevada, has kept Trannon close to the dance scene he loves. “I often get to be the extra body in a production Cari is working on,” he says. They are currently rehearsing a dance duet which they have been invited to perform at the Jacob’s Pillow

Dance Festival in Massachusetts.

As for his science skills, Trannon now uses them as a data modeling analyst for Clear Capital, creating computer models that assess the quality of real estate appraisals and surveys for quality control.

“It may seem a long way from solar energy to real estate, but the modeling experience I learned at MIT is widely applicable in any field, so I can go in many different directions with the knowledge I have now,” he says. “That’s a pretty exciting thought.”

Carolina Friends School 15

There’s Plenty of CFS DNA in His Thinking Alumni Interview with Erich Huang, ‘86

by Marsha Green, CFS Trustee

Erich Huang, ’86, would like to see advances in science and medicine discovered, validat­ ed, and improved in the same open, collabo­ rative way that computer programmers have built LINUX. To that end, he recently joined Sage Bionetworks, a non­profit genomic research think tank that advocates for open science. We asked him to reflect on the path he has taken to this current job.

that make certain women more susceptible to breast cancer. I presented on that, and the notion of genomics triggered my curiosity. I ended up getting a Ph.D. in genomics in 2002, a year before I got my M.D. degree.

Then I stayed at Duke to do my general surgery residency, and joined the faculty at Duke in 2008. I stayed there until June of 2011, when I came out here to Seattle to join Sage Bionetworks.

You were a ‘lifer’ at CFS, graduating in 1986. When did you decide what you wanted to do after CFS?

How did your CFS education influence this journey?

Not until well after I had graduated. I always enjoyed the sciences, and in fact I was obsessed with Charles Darwin, the HMS Beagle, and all things related to Darwin in Middle School. But during Upper School, Jim Henderson and Bob Fulks turned me on to literature and history. Bob, in particular, was giving me college level work in civil war historiography in Upper School. When I went to Harvard I was only interested in history and literature. As late as my senior year at Harvard, I was still planning on doing a Ph.D. in English. And then I suddenly realized that I wanted to have some practical influence on the world as well. So after I graduated from Harvard I took some premed classes to see how it would go, and that led to an educational decade at Duke in medicine What turned you on to genomics?

While I was doing an OB/GYN rotation in med school at Duke, I had to choose a topic for a presentation. That was just about the time that Andrew Futreal and others were publicizing their findings about the BRCA1 & 2 genes

I think CFS enabled this journey by allowing me to become intellectually omnivorous. I never felt wedded to just one discipline and CFS gave me the intellectual ability to go any way I wanted to. I also think that my comfort with the idea of open science probably was influenced by the emphasis on collaboration at CFS. I’d say there is probably a lot of CFS DNA in my thinking.

What are you hoping to accomplish at Sage Bionetworks?

Our dream is to get to a point where thousands of genomic data analysts can work in an open source environment and build robust methods to model human diseases and better predict which treatments will work for which people.

Up to this point, medicine has had a very cookie cutter approach: we give the same medication to lots of people, but we don’t have a way of predicting who will respond well and who won’t. We just say it works for the average patient. Genomics has given us the technology to look at genes, the genes being expressed, and the thousands of permuta-

tions of these things to start dividing up that very monolithic group of patients into subgroups so we can pre-identify which patients will benefit from specific treatments, and why.

We believe we are entering a paradigm shift where people will realize that we can make faster progress and more effective translation of scientific discoveries to the bedside by being collaborative. Currently, funding for medical discoveries does not encourage collaboration: funds are generally given to one principal investigator. We think that opening up data sets and analysis so that others in the scientific community can look at the data, look at how we did the analysis, reproduce it entirely and then maybe say ‘hey, I’ve got a better way of doing this,’ will speed up scientific discovery. The human genome is publicly available. But the experimental data about disease biology and disease models also needs to be available.

Part of what we do at Sage Bionetworks is bully pulpit work, trying to convince the public that open science is a good idea. But we are also creating a web platform that will allow people to share their data and analysis. We have the functionality also to share the computer code we use to analyze the data as well.

This is important because with genomics, you are dealing with massive amounts of data. It is important to know the tools researchers are using to analyze the data.

What’s the most common barrier to understanding this concept of open science?

The sheer complexity of the data.

Yesterday I was showing my wife a small data set from 300 patients who have colon cancer. That means we are looking at about continued on page 18

16 We&Thee/Winter 2012

After 25 Years of High Tech, What Comes Next?

Alumni Interview with Rebecca Laszlo, ‘86

by Marsha Green, CFS Trustee

CFS gave Rebecca Laszlo an early introduc­ tion to computer science – an interest that propelled her into a 25­year career in the high tech industry. She now lives in Seattle with her partner of 26 years, Sara Intriligator, and recently shared with We & Thee some of her life’s journey.

You graduated from CFS over 30 years ago. When you picture CFS in your mind’s eye, what do you see?

The stream. I was playing in that creek from the time I was six until I was 17.

When were you last on campus?

I visited last year and I couldn’t believe my eyes. So much has changed. But I shouldn’t be surprised. When I was in Lower School, they were building the Middle School building.

When I was in Middle School they were building the Upper School. I was about four or five years behind each new building.

Which teachers at CFS were particularly influential for you?

In Lower School I loved B.J. McNeil. She was vivacious and had a huge afro, and at my early age I just really liking being with her. In Middle School, with Henry Walker, you could always take risks and never worry about falling on your face. And in Upper School, I’d have to say Mark Goodwillie was very influential. He taught sciences, but his avocation was race car driving. He would talk about driving and then turn it into a physics problem, so he was teaching us science but also about defensive driving. He also gave me advice on life skills and good behavior in a very nonthreatening way. It was clear that he saw me

as a whole person.

What special experiences at CFS do you remember?

In 1978 two of my Upper School teachers, John Ferguson and Tom Keyserling, led five 15- and 16-year-olds on a six-week bicycle trip from Durham to Vermont. I bought an old 10-speed for $75 and learned to ride it loaded with camping gear. I loved the camaraderie and the teamwork. That trip changed my life for the better. It literally ended my childhood shyness.

You’ve spent your career working in high technology. What got you interested in computer science?

When I was in Middle School, before most kids had ever seen a computer, Harriet Hopkins arranged for our class to go to Duke and write programs in BASIC on punch cards.

The programs were inconsequential – mostly using loops to print out patterns. But it was a fantastic way to put the linear thinking of math to use, and getting the computer to do your bidding was a great accomplishment. That class, combined with my summer job at Duke, turned me on to computer science, which is what I majored in at Brandeis University.

Where did computer science take you?

The first place it took me after college was Los Angeles. I didn’t like my first job – I was working on a spy satellite for Rockwell International – but I gained incredibly valuable skills in database systems that I leveraged the rest of my career.

From Rockwell International I went to Digital Equipment Corporation and designed

large-scale database systems.

In 1994, I went to Microsoft. Back then, it was a third the size it is today. My job as Microsoft’s first data architect supporting Human Resources was to integrate all the different systems cobbled together to do basic HR functions. During my first five years there we reduced the systems from 65 to 12. I also spent time at Microsoft in product development, working on the SQL Server database product, which is Microsoft’s third most profitable product.

Now what?

I am moving myself into my second career. I want to use my program management skills to help solve problems that plague society. I’m taking a two-year sabbatical [from paid positions] to do major projects for non-profits to decide what issues and roles most interest me. I’ve been working with the Technology Access Foundation (techaccess.org), which provides Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education for kids of color in this region. I organized 76 volunteers as the volunteer chair for the American Cancer Society’s third annual ACS gala last year. And I’m doing systems work and fundraising for Building Changes (buildingchanges.org), which gives grants to fund innovative solutions to end homelessness.

Some particularly exciting work I’m doing is with the Committee to End Homelessness in King County (CEHKC.org). I’m serving as the program manager for a workgroup of 16 leaders of local nonprofit and governmental agencies dealing with low-income immigrants and refugees to consider how best to keep these groups from becoming homeless. There is a continued on page 18

Carolina Friends School 17

Winter Alumni Events

Overview continued from page 5 students (see Chris Firpo’s Glimpse), our Upper School students enjoy opportunities in the state’s Summer Ventures in Science and Math program, Howard Hughes summer fellowships, and other internships in university labs, as observed by parent Dan Kenan in his reflection on how well prepared his own children are for the challenges they’ll face in the chapters of their lives after CFS.

Erich Huang continued from page 16 55,000 genes across 300 patients, or more than 16 million datapoints. Being able to explain to people how to shrink those 16 million data points down to a yes or no decision about whether a drug will work or not is very difficult.

Besides work, what are you passionate about?

My wife and three young children: Madeleine is almost 5, Neila is almost 3, and Vincent was born in August, 2011. My family takes up whatever time and passion I can give them.

Readers can learn more Bionetworks at sagebase.org.

about

Sage

Rebecca Laszlo continued from page 17 lot of political will here in our region toward ending homelessness. An effective coalition has formed and everyone is trying to row in the same direction.

How did CFS influence your career?

We are always delighted to welcome alumni back in December and January. As has been true in recent years, a group of talented performers gathered for a New Year’s production, this time The Elephant Man. Pictured at right: director Kiernan McGowan with Andrew Meriwether, Eric Love, Siobhan McGowan, David BergerJones, Ben Hattem, Josh Hattem, Sam Robinson, Leah Wilks, Lucius Robinson, Emily Anderson, and Aubrey Griffith.

After school reopened, a panel came on Wednesday evening to talk with parents about Life After CFS (Becky Tate, Caroline Winterhoff, Sarah Rubin, Annie Segrest, Sam Schopler, Hannah Anderson-Baranger, Anna Jaffe, and John Richardson). On Friday, a panel from the class of ‘08 (Becky Tate, Jess Downing, Sarah Butters, Anna Jaffe, Virginia Thomas, Tyler Hall, and Anna Wilson) spoke with students, after a wonderful lunch for them and many from our most recent graduating class.

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I blossomed at CFS because I was self-motivated, curious, and excited to learn. It was easy for a teacher or a student to turn me on to something new. But I was also very affected by the civil rights origins of the school and its commitent to diversity.

I went to school with adopted Vietnamese orphans and with African-Americans and with kids without many financial resources. And when I learned how many of my teachers had been conscientious objectors or had served jail time during the struggle for civil rights, I developed an early appreciation for how people are willing to stand up for what they believe in. These were people I knew personally who had seen an injustice and were willing to give up their personal safety and freedom and speak out for what had to be done.

I’m not a Quaker, but the teaching of human dignity, the use of silence, and the practice of taking your introspective self seriously were important for me.

Dance, Inspiration, and

by Rebecca Swartz, Annual Fund Coordinator Dance has always been an essential part of the fabric of Carolina Friends School: it is a woven into the curriculum from the Lower to Upper School. In an article written in 2007 for Health & Healing magazine, dance teacher Annie Dwyer offered these thoughts on why we dance at CFS: To dance is to experience the wholeness of body and mind in a transcendent experience. There is a “magic” to this kind of experience that stands up there with moments when the breeze caresses my face in the forest or I feel my heart beating in time with my own children. The presence and understanding of this magic as a vital component of moving through life is woven seamlessly into the lives of the community at Carolina Friends School.

Through its transcendence, dance inspires us. That inspiration is one of the main reasons that we invited Annie’s second-period dance

class to help us shape the message for this year’s Friends of Friends School campaign (part of which is pictured above). Each year we are inspired by the more than 450 families who so generously give back to CFS to ensure that our students have the best possible educational experience. We couldn’t do it without YOU. If you are feeling inspired and have not yet made your gift to the Friends of Friends School campaign for 2011-2012, you still can! Gifts of all sizes are needed to help us reach our largest goal ever of $370,000.

It is easy to make a gift: Please dance your way to the nearest computer and visit cfsnc.org/donatenow to make a secure donation today.

Don’t miss your chance to see the “thank you” message that these creative young people helped to shape. Their smiling faces are proof of our gratitude for your support of CFS!

Please stay updated by following us on Twitter at CarolinaFriends and on Facebook at CarolinaFriends and Quaker Dome (alumni).

Carolina Friends School 19

Meet Our New Staff and Dawn Douglass (Technology) has devoted ten years to jobs that have allowed her to share her technological savvy with nonprofit groups. She grew up in Rhode Island, and she and her husband Jason are parents of Keegan, who is now 14.

Dawn loves libraries and schools, and she enjoys reading, writing, hiking, and watching documentary films. She belongs to a homesteading group.

Judith Hawkes (US) has worked at CFS since 2008 as a library assistant, substitute teacher, and member of the Summer Programs staff.

She is currently doing a stint as a guest teacher of humanities in the Upper School. When not teaching at CFS, Judith writes (she is the author of three novels, with a fourth underway) and teaches martial arts for Durham Parks and Recreation.

Jonathan Henderson (US) is a multi-instrumentalist and music educator with a musical vocabulary rooted in the traditions of American jazz, old time music, and the popular and traditional musics of Brazil, Cuba, and West Africa. He taught for several years at the Greensboro Montessori school before returning to the Triangle, and has been teaching music in various capacities at CFS for the past three years. He is a co-founder of West African dance band Diali Cissokho and Kairaba, art/ performance collective INVISIBLE, found sound performance collective Zafar, and community marching band Cakalak Thunder. His other collaborations include Paperhand Puppet Intervention, Midtown Dickens, Club Boheme, and the Onyx Club Boys. He holds a B.A. in Sociology/ Anthropology with a concentration in Music from Guilford College. Jonathan is also a proud graduate of CFS. Anna Lynch (MS Learning Specialist) comes to CFS with 26 years of experience in education. She holds a B.S. from the University of

20 We&Thee/Winter 2012

Virginia and an M.Ed. from North Carolina State University, both in Special Education.

Anna has had a variety of experiences in her career including teaching in public schools, running a home daycare business, working for UNC-CH in assessment, adjunct teaching at NCSU, and operating a tutoring and consulting business for children with special needs. Anna will support differentiating instruction in all Middle School classes in addition to teaching several classes herself. Anna enjoys reading, kayaking, bicycle riding, and spending time with friends and family.

Kiernan McGowan (US) graduated from George Washington University magna cum laude in 2009 with departmental honors in Archaeology and Theatre. He has worked as an actor with the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, the Bare Theatre Company, and the Delta Boys Theatre Company. Kiernan has also taught at North Carolina Governor’s School West, Our Time Theatre Company, and Act One Act Now Theatre Company. He began guest teaching Exploratorium classes in the CFS Middle School in 2008 and now leads the Upper School theatre program. Additionally, he enjoys music, movies, baseball, cooking, and historical novels.

Alejandro MoreirasVilaros (MS) joins our staff full-time after having taught a few electives last year. He holds a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College

with a Five College Certificate in Middle East Studies. In his position as Middle School Social Studies teacher he incorporates his love of history and international relations into everything he does. He works on diverse themes that range from an immigrant’s experience at Ellis Island to Spanish Culture to Middle Eastern marvels and quagmires. Alejandro has a lovely wife, a cat named Pita, and a puppy named Buster.

Abby Obando Snow (LS Spanish and AfterHours Coordinator) grew up in Durham and Efland and graduated from Western Carolina University. After living in Florida for a while, Abby returned to NC, and she has worked with CFS Summer Programs for a few years now.

Abby’s son Sebastien is a student in Sky Class, and her partner Jamie Charles teaches in MIddle School. She enjoys music of all kinds (and is learning to play the banjo), as well as reading, dancing, camping, and singing.

Williette Y. Zigbuo-Vaagbay (Campus Early School) graduated from Berea College with a bachelor’s degree in Child and Family Studies and an emphasis in Early Childhood Education.

Williette received her Master’s in Special Education from Bay Path College in B u r l i n g t o n , Massachusetts and has over 15 years of teaching experience in the U.S. and in Liberia, West Africa. In addition to her passion for teaching, she finds personal fulfillment by helping educational programs in Liberia; Williette has been instrumental in mobilizing others to help obtain donations and school supplies for orphanages and schools there. Whenever she returns from Africa, she finds that sharing pictures and discussing her trip is rewarding for herself and her students, to help them understand and see the world outside their community, neighborhoods, and the United States.

Trustees In Memoriam Edith Smith, shown celebrating her 100th birthday, passed away in December at age 103.

The mother of CFS cofounder Martha Klopfer, she was one of the School's earliest benefactors, and we are deeply grateful for her almost 50 years of support.

A minute of appreciation in memory of Edith Smith

Carolina Friends School has added six new members to its Board of Trustees. Anne Micheaux Akwari is a physician and lawyer who is principal of a healthcare consulting firm and adjunct faculty at Duke University School of Medicine; she is also a member of Durham Friends Meeting and mother of alum Chidi Akwari. Matt Drake served on the CFS Board before becoming the School's Development Coordinator, retiring in 2010 after 18 years. CFS alumna Hopie Fulkerson Mooney (‘97) is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a practicing Child and Family Therapist at Duke University and in Chapel Hill. Her classmate John Richardson works in the Office of Sustainability for the Town of Chapel Hill, where he helps to develop programs, policies, and initiatives for enhancing organizational and community sustainability. Biochemist Chari Smith (mother of Kathryn Diamant ’11) does diabetes research at Glaxo Smith Kline and is currently Biology Leader, North America, for Discovery Partnerships with Academia. A former USAID officer, Buffie Webber is now a Chapel Hill Realtor and member of Chapel Hill Friends Meeting.

Edith Jayne Smith, a beloved supporter of Carolina Friends School and mother of trustee emerita Martha Klopfer, died on November 19, 2011, in Santa Barbara, California, at the age of 103.

The Board of Trustees of Carolina Friends School minutes our deep appreciation for the life of Edith Smith and her ongoing support of the School.

In addition to offering moral support to Martha and Peter Klopfer and other founders of CFS, Edith served on a foundation that awarded a $6,000 grant that helped fund the first year of the school’s existence in 1964. She has continued to support the school for nearly half a century, including establishing the Edith and Lloyd Smith Fund in 2001 (in memory of her late husband) to further diversity among staff.

CFS was one of many wonderful causes and institutions Edith showered with wisdom and support. We are deeply grateful for her support of Carolina Friends School, and inspired by her faithfulness to the vision of the school.

Approved January 10, 2012

We & Thee is published twice a year by

Carolina Friends School 4809 Friends School Road Durham, NC 27705 Mike Hanas, Principal Anthony L. Clay, Editor Kathleen Davidson, Associate Editor Doug Johnston, Designer Laura Shmania, Staff Photographer Interviews by Marsha Green, CFS Trustee

Carolina Friends School 21

Fall 2011 Athletics Update

It Really Was a Banner Year at CFS

This past fall the Upper School boys’ soccer team joined last year’s girls’ basketball team to become the second team in our athletic history to play in a state championship game. The team came into the game undefeated, but lost 3-0 to Fayetteville Academy.

Almost half the students in Middle and Upper Schools participated in a fall sport. Go Quakers!

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Upper School Athletics Highlights Cross-Country Both the girls’ and the boys’ teams participated in the state meet, the first time that has ever happened.

All-Conference Anna Kenan, Mac Schilder Boys’ Soccer Regular season Triad Athletic Conference champions TAC tournament champions #2 seed and eventual state tournament runners-up All-Conference Isaac Dalsheimer, Esten Fabec Nick MacLeod, Dani Meyer-Arrivillaga Conference coach of the year Jim Mathewson All-State Isaac Dalsheimer, Dani Meyer-Arrivillaga Girls’ Tennis TAC tournament runners-up 6th place in the state tournament All-Conference Clara Hazlett-Norman, Ellie McDonald Volleyball TAC regular season runners-up (tie), #8 state tournament seed All-Conference Natasha Anderson, Anna McClain, Zoe Vernon All-State Anna McClain

Middle School Athletics Highlights Cross-Country Girls – 2nd place in the Central Carolina Middle School Conference championship meet Boys – 2nd place in the CCMSC championship meet Boys’ Soccer Regular season CCMSC champions CCMSC tournament champions All-Conference Dillon Lanier, Seth Lee, Holden Stefan Girls’ Tennis CCMSC tournament runners-up All-Conference Rainie Heck Volleyball All-Conference

Zoe Scretchings

The Boys of Summer.

And the Fall.

by CFS parent and journalist Melinda Ruley.

Some teams hit the practice fields in the dog days of August, skies bleached, heat like a flatiron on the tired grass, and right away you know it: These boys are going to win some games.

Win they did. For the first time in CFS history, the Upper School boys varsity soccer team went undefeated, winning all 13 regular season games. The Quakers carried their winning streak into the post-season, stacking up victories and ultimately defeating Westchester Country Day School to win the Triad Athletic Conference Championship. After that it was on to the N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association (category 2A) State Cup, where again the team played strong, going all the way to the championship game before losing 3-0 to Fayetteville Academy.

The 19-member squad was led by captains Isaac Dalsheimer, Dani Meyer-Arrivillaga, and Nick MacLeod. Jake Wilhelm-Hilkey was in goal. CFS All-Conference players were Isaac Dalsheimer, Esten Fabec, Nick MacLeod, and Dani Meyer-Arrivallaga; Dani and Isaac were also named All-State.

CFS head coach Jim Mathewson won Conference Coach of the Year.

“We set goals and the boys met them,” Coach Jim Mathewson said at a post-season celebration. Mathewson told the players they had proved themselves during the fall season and that, with only one senior graduating, next year looks promising. “You’ll have a target on your backs,” Mathewson said, noting that the Quakers will be the team to beat in the 2012 season.

Highlights of the season included two close matches against The Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill as well as pitched battles against Greensboro’s Caldwell Academy and Westchester Country Day School from High Point. Playing Westchester for the conference championship in Greensboro, CFS found itself down by two at the half, but evened the score by the end of regulation play. A hard strike by wing Doug MacLeod in double overtime won the game.

Fingernails suffered again in the State Semifinals, when CFS and Caldwell Academy ended regulation play 1-1. In the second overtime CFS striker Dani Mayer-Arrivillaga hit the back of the net with a beautiful top-of-the-box shot, ending the game at 2-1. Keeper Jake Wilhelm-Hilkey dove, punched, leaped and tipped and otherwise defied gravity to save numerous goals.

Overall, the Quakers, led by Mathewson and assistant coach Edwin Wotorsi, found themselves up against a variety of challenges, packed defenses, off-side traps, and talented opposition among them. Through it all, they played a smart passing game, using their wings to great effect while relying on a strong, quick defense to keep their opponents out of the net. The midfield was a fabulous combination of skill, magic, and pure scrap.

No wonder the team drew an ever-larger following of students, parents, and staff as the season advanced. They were flat-out fun to watch. True to CFS philosophy, the boys played with integrity and sportsmanship, holding respect and excellence above the desire to win at any cost. Having maintained these principles in an overall 19-1 season, the boys varsity soccer team has shown that the inner light can illuminate a mighty powerful soccer team.

Carolina Friends School 23

On being a CFS sports fan

by Jane Satter

Jane is mother of three CFS athlete­scholars (Nate, ‘09, now at University of Rochester, and twins Zoe and Molly, ‘12, headed for Winthrop and Furman Universities.)

© Fre d Bla ckwe ll

I am a CFS sports fan. I am also a proud parent, coach’s wife, physician, and member of the athletic liaison committee.

Over the past decade, my kids have played on every CFS sports team except ultimate frisbee and swimming. I have watched the CFS sports culture evolve; our outstanding student-athletes have proven that excellence in sports is congruent with Quaker values. At home in our flagship gym and away at other schools, they serve as emissaries from our school into the larger community, demonstrating sportsmanship and respect for others.

As my CFS tenure nears its end, I want to express my gratitude to our children collectively, to their caring coaches, and to the School for all the athletic programs offered. Many of my most joyful parental moments were spent watching our kids play their hearts out on the basketball court or soccer field.

The virtues of kids playing sports are numerous. As team members, kids learn how to lose, to work together, and to focus on a common goal, while simultaneously becoming physically fit and challenging their bodies. As obesity rates and “screen time” in our culture rise, what better way for a child to spend his or her afternoon than running around with friends playing a sport. Rather than extolling the virtues of sports for kids, my focus here is on how great the CFS athletics program has been for me as an adult in the community.

The window into our teenagers’ lives begins to close as they become more independent. Sitting on the bleachers, we literally and figuratively watch them grow up. The emotional outburst we see in a Middle Schooler when the game doesn’t go her way is all but gone in Upper School. The underhand volleyball serve that can’t seem to find its way over the net transforms into an overhand rocket. We watch our kids fall down, pick themselves up, and pick each other up. As parent volunteers, driving to and from games, we hear what’s on our kids’ minds and what’s happening in their lives.

Through athletics, we as parents build community. We work together to support our athletes by providing food, transportation, and scorekeeping. In the stands, we cheer, laugh, and marvel. In more relaxed one-sided games, we talk about our work and family lives and solve the world’s problems. As our kids bond on the court, we bond as well.

My youngest children are Upper School seniors this year, and our long CFS family journey is winding down. Nostalgia sweeps over me each time I enter the gym. I will sorely miss watching my kids and their peers play with my parent peers, yet there is solace in knowing I can watch CFS athletes for years to come.

24 We&Thee/Winter 2012

Fall Sports Day at CFS

MLK Day @ CFS.2012

Carolina Friends School 25