Farewells... 116 Total Years of Service

T OTAL Y EARS OF S E RVIC E 116

FAREWELLS...

BRIAN BEAVER

Park science department head Brian Beaver has announced his decision to leave Park at the end of the 2022–23 school year after 28 years of service. While he doesn’t fully consider this “retirement,” he looks forward to discovering new adventures beyond the classroom.

Brian began his career teaching 5–8 science at The Hill School in Virginia, followed by five years teaching Middle School science as well as senior electives at Newark Academy in New Jersey while also completing graduate studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. He joined the Park faculty in 1994, teaching grades 6 and 8 under science department head Prabha Papali-Nambiar. When Prabha stepped down as department head, Brian shared the department head role over time with colleague Karen Manning, who led the department during Brian’s sabbatical and stayed in the role until her own sabbatical, when Brian stepped back in. Reflecting on his time at Park, Brian is grateful for the strong partnerships he has enjoyed with fellow members of the science department who have been essential thought partners—team teaching, bouncing ideas off each other, checking understanding, and investigating new ideas.

Across just under three decades at The Park School, Brian and his colleagues have led a

thoughtful evolution of the science curriculum, working with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to enrich the understanding of what good science teaching is really about. The department deepened its emphasis on hands-on learning and discovery in the traditional core subjects of Earth Science, Physical Science, and Life Science, and introduced elements of engineering and design thinking.

Brian takes pride in having helped build a program that truly encourages students as science learners. He is impressed by the ability of Park’s students to work independently in a lab setting, gaining the resilience to try, fail, and try again, to work in collaboration with others, and build the confidence to rely less on authority and more on observation. As a teacher, Brian loves doing experiments, collecting data, and making observations, and most enjoys helping his students gain the skills to do this work.

With some much needed free time ahead, Brian looks forward to doing a good deal of hiking, and for opportunities to appreciate the outdoors and nature. We are grateful to Brian for his leadership, his dedication to students, and his partnership, and wish him all the best.

JILL RUBINSTEIN

Park Grade 3 teacher Jill Rubinstein leaves Park this spring after 23 years of service. A graduate of Smith College, Jill began her career in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where she taught fifth grade for three years. Through the Smith College alumnae network, however, she learned of an opening at The Park School for a Grade 3 teacher through fellow alumna and Park teacher Lynne Dichter. Jill applied and was chosen, and launched her Park tenure.

Her journey as a Park teacher was soon joined by her journey as a Park parent with the arrival of her two children, who graduated from Park amidst the pandemic in 2020. Her Park relationships and friendships extend across two decades of colleagues and fellow parents. The mother of two of Jill’s students, long time colleague and friend Kate LaPine, credits Jill for keeping humor and perspective both in the classroom and out. “Jill’s ability to delight in her students’ curiosity and silliness provides a healthy guidepost for parents.”

A skilled teacher who has helped shape a generation of Park alumni, her former students include several current faculty members, including Manny Duarte Perlovsky, Class of 2009 and current

Grade 4 Assistant Teacher; Sophie Moss ’09, Upper Division After School Program Director; and Isa Moss ’09, Grade 4 Lead Teacher. During her tenure, Jill has served on a variety of committees, ranging from hiring teams to the Data curricular review committee, and we are grateful for her contributions. Reflecting on her time at Park, Jill notes that what most sustained and connected her to Park has been the wonderful colleagues with whom she has had the pleasure of working—she has loved all the people she has worked with and is grateful for their partnership. Teaching third graders, aged 8 and 9, has been a particular joy for Jill. She says, “They are the best people,” at a developmental stage in which they are, simply, delightful humans who are enthusiastically engaged in a year of discovery, so ready to build on and apply the basics they solidified in the earlier grades.

During this academic year, Jill has had the opportunity to enjoy a long-awaited and well-earned sabbatical, and has used her time to work on a novel for children. As she moves beyond Park, she looks forward to continuing her writing as she considers what new directions she wants to pursue. We wish her all the best in the adventures ahead!

STEVE SAVAGE

Reflecting back on his 23 years as a member of the Physical Education team at Park, Steve Savage says, “I found my home when I came to Park.” Steve began his career as an educator in 1976, and served as a P.E. teacher and camp director at Beaver Country Day and then Thayer Academy. Through his entrepreneurial spirit, he doubled the Beaver camp in size, and quadrupled the size of the Thayer camp program. Arriving at Park, he immediately appreciated the warmth and diversity of the community. “I felt so welcomed here—it was like being at a wedding or a bar mitzvah!” While he knows there is still work to be done, he says, “I always feel safe here.”

Though he now works with Park’s Upper Division students, his fondest memories include the time he led kindergarteners in a step aerobics class to the theme song of Rocky. “It was definitely stepping out of my comfort zone to dance,” he says, but the kids and their parents loved it. Steve has continued to push himself as an educator, gaining the expertise to support students in building the good training habits that help them grow as athletes while also avoiding injury, with a focus on mobility, stability, and strength. For years after they leave Park, Steve

reports, he hears from athletes who tell him that “my friend got injured and I didn’t,” due to the solid mechanics of training they had learned at Park.

As coach of Park’s cross country and track teams, Steve has helped build Park’s running program, and was instrumental in creating the Larz Anderson Invitational, the first independent school cross country event for middle school students, which now attracts 16 teams and 350 athletes. Steve has been a role model for students as a runner himself, having completed three Boston Marathons. He often trained in the morning before school and students would report seeing him, running, miles from campus.

Steve looks forward to enjoying his Portuguese Water Dog, Cooper, to “cooking better meals for [his] wife,” climbing mountains with his daughter, and more time for cycling and mountain biking. But, he will never cease being a physical educator: Steve looks forward to his work at a personal training studio in Newton, where his passion for guiding health, strength, and cardiovascular fitness will continue to benefit others. We wish Steve all the best in his next phase, and hope he will come back to visit often!

YEA R S OF

DEBBIE HENRY

Debbie Henry, Park’s Director of Academic Support, leaves Park this June after 22 years of service.

A member of the Park community since 1995, Debbie joined Park’s academic support team as a parttime learning specialist, and though she stepped away twice while raising her daughter, she has been at the foundation of building the academic support program ever since.

Debbie began her career at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, NY as a Grade 5 English and Social Studies teacher and advisor, and as Middle School learning specialist and advisor before serving as Learning Skills Department Head, Grades 5–12 and Grade 9 Curriculum Director. A graduate of Boston University, Debbie completed her M.A. in Reading and Learning Disabilities at NYU, and was awarded a prestigious Klingenstein Fellowship at Teachers College, Columbia University, as one of 12 educators nationwide to receive a grant to study integration of learning skills in selective independent schools.

Due in large part to Debbie’s dedication to members of the academic support team and the children they serve, she built on the foundation established by her predecessor, Peggy Blumenreich, to develop a strong and cohesive team and deepen

TRACY DULIBAN

Tracy Duliban, Director of Park’s After School Program (ASP), leaves Park this spring after 20 years. Tracy first came to Park as an intern in 2000 and then worked as a Kindergarten assistant and after school teacher at Pierce School in Brookline until 2003, when her Park mentoring teacher, Pam Shepley, reached out to see if Tracy would join her as a member of Park’s after school team. When Pam left Park a few years later, Tracy stepped in to lead the program.

Under Tracy’s leadership, ASP has become a warm and welcoming community at Park, a place where children find friends, connection across grade levels and with adults in the community, where they feel seen and valued, and enjoy a relaxing, play-based end to their day that feeds their social-emotional needs. ASP has also been the channel through which many current faculty have found their way to Park—the list of teachers who started out at ASP is a testament to Tracy’s legacy. The community-within-a-community that ASP creates is what Tracy most appreciates. For families who cannot be present on campus during

the partnership between academic support professionals, Park’s academic leadership and teachers, students and their families. Named Director of Academic Support in 2014, Debbie has developed effective partnerships and systems of communication, teacher and parent meetings, documentation, and review, ensuring that Park students are at the very center of all academic support considerations and discussion, while also recognizing and supporting the strengths of each of the professionals in the department as they seek to benefit each of the children with whom they work.

Among Debbie’s contributions to the Park community has been her consistent advocacy for funding to make educational testing accessible to families whose children would benefit from the information that can be learned from this testing, but for whom its cost was out of reach. Her expertise in understanding how best to support students with varied learning styles and academic support needs, and in building clear partnerships between home, learning support, and each child’s classroom development year to year has guided Park in building the academic support program that has so deeply benefitted Park’s students. Debbie looks forward to having the opportunity to travel and to enjoy time with friends and family. We are grateful for her tireless efforts.

the day, ASP is their main entry point to community engagement at Park, where they get to connect with other families and with teachers. The team sees the children and their families in the ASP community grow from PreK and Kindergarten onward, helps celebrate big moments in children’s lives, and ASP becomes an important point of connection given the wide geography from which Park families draw.

ASP continues to grow and evolve, and Tracy feels fortunate to have been a part of an amazing program. While enrollment was necessarily sharply limited during the pandemic, enrollment now continues to grow beyond pre-pandemic levels, perhaps because families who might previously have signed their kids up for activities outside of Park know they can count on Park to provide a stable, healthy, and stimulating environment where their children are known and appreciated.

As she moves on beyond Park, she looks forward to giving up her long commute from south of Providence, and to all she will be able to do with her reclaimed time: baking and trying new recipes, and traveling. We appreciate her long and loyal dedication, and wish her all the best.