Shared Successes

BY PETER HANNEY P’23, ‘27, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING

If you slowly unweave the threads of the fabric of a community, you’ll discover how many things are dependent on others. This is true for businesses, places of worship, non-profit organizations, and members within a group. Our school community is no different. Partnerships exist naturally or are formed between individuals and institutions on many levels. Some partnerships are formed in the classroom where students collaborate on assignments, across disciplines, and divisions. Athletic teams celebrate successes as a result of strong partnerships, as each athlete is dependent on his or her teammates. On the stage, actors and musicians depend on their fellow performers to create a beautiful ensemble. Other partnerships develop at higher levels, within the faculty and staff, parent groups, alumni, and friends of the School who give selflessly of their time, talents, and resources for the advancement of the institution and the experience of the students. Ultimately, individuals are at the core of each aforementioned partnership.

Some strategic partnerships have been created organically, while others were more deliberate and intentional. Nevertheless, each represents a symbiotic relationship, to the mutual benefit of both.

Save The Bay

Our partnership with Save The Bay has just surpassed the two decade mark. In 1996, an urgent message for volunteers to clean up beaches affected by the Moonstone Beach oil spill was answered by several Upper School students and faculty. They joined other volunteers on Jamestown beaches to identify wildlife impacted by the spill. Following the cleanup, Rocky Hill science teacher (and current Middle School Head) Michael Jedrey expanded the work that our students continue to do with Save The Bay. Aside from eelgrass planting and annual beach cleanups, Save The Bay educators join our Middle School students at the waterfront to study water quality and marine life in Narragansett Bay. Several seniors continue to intern with Save The Bay. As required by the Senior Internship program, students initiate a search for the right fit, develop a partnership with a sponsor, and conduct research into their chosen field, leading up to their fieldwork in May.

In early 2013, the School and Save The Bay partnered to dredge the marsh at Rocky Hill School to allow water to drain freely. The marsh had been degraded from the excessive amounts of standing water on the surface. Reducing a mosquito breeding ground was the short term goal while the long term goal was for the currently flooded areas to colonize with marsh vegetation. The physical work began about 18 months later when Save The Bay habitat restoration specialists returned to the marsh to dig creeks using hand shovels, while a state environmental official operated a low ground pressure excavator to widen and deepen the channels.

Thanks to the draining of

the marsh, the School’s Land of Fires

Nature Trail, cleared by student and parent volunteers in September 2014, is now fully accessible at low tide. Visitors to the trail are able to witness the health of the marsh improve over time as water is drained from it each time the tide recedes. We have witnessed a return of shorebirds and vegetation in the areas that have been freed of the standing water.

The benefits to students don’t end with the marsh dredging; they study the marsh as part of their environmental education and marine ecology curriculum. AP Environmental Science students use preliminary data, collected by Save The Bay, on where vegetation is found and what the density of the marsh was before dredging, then collect and collate data on their own. Year after year, students will be able to study real data recorded from the marsh that serves as their classroom and laboratory, and will determine if the dredging has succeeded in bringing that marsh back to its full potential.

Working alongside individuals committed to protecting the environment has profoundly impacted our students. There is a tangible connection to the message of Save The Bay, and, ultimately, a legacy for others to build upon.

Trinity Repertory Company

In December of 2012, Chair of the Performing Arts Department Meg Myette took a group of students to see A Christmas Carol at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence. Greatly impressed by Trinity Rep’s ability to manage hundreds of children, Meg inquired about having them direct main stage productions at Rocky Hill School.

A partnership proposal, brought to the School’s Board of Trustees and Head of School, was overwhelmingly approved.

Since 2013, the partnership has resulted in stellar productions while providing our students with access to Trinity Rep’s master classes and their prop warehouse. For their part, Trinity Rep’s education interns are afforded the opportunity to work on full length productions, rather than just individual pieces. Trinity’s work at Rocky Hill has sown the seeds for a love of theater, and all involved are able to invest in the process of creating a show.

Two of our Deckhands Theater Company members were chosen to be Trinity Rep High School Ambassadors for 2015-16. Olivia DePasquale ’18 and Griffin Rademacher ‘16, both aspiring thespians, attend numerous Trinity performances and talk-backs.

University of Rhode Island

A recent educational partnership involves institutions and parents. It started out as a National Science Foundation research grant to study invasive Phragmites, and has evolved into a cross-divisional educational experience. In the summer of 2014, then-senior Shane Woolley, interning at the URI’s Department of Natural Resources Science under Dr. Laura Meyerson P’16, ‘20, removed a section of Phragmites. Over the course of the next few months, Michael Jedrey’s eighth-grade science class measured the rate of Phragmites’ growth to see how fast it responded to disturbances. His class also toured Dr. Meyerson’s genome lab at URI.

This valuable partnership with URI provides Rocky Hill School with curriculum content and real time data sets for biology, ecology, and AP environmental science classes. Outdated or fabricated data used in science textbooks does not provide students with connection to data specifically relevant to their local environment. The URI/ RHS partnership provides students at both schools with a personal connection, real and relevant data, and the techniques of collecting that data using running transects and gridded quadrats. The faculty at RHS are provided with professional development through research experience and the use of student interns, while URI is provided with an active local research site.

National Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

One of the most promising initiatives draws on the School’s 20-year commitment to educating students from outside the United States. Following an agreement brokered in 2014, Rocky Hill has been providing educational consultation for the American program at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), a K-12, coed, 3,000-student school in Beijing, China.

Rocky Hill School’s record of academic success resulting from a rigorous college preparatory program founded on the principles of student-centered learning, integrated technologies, and core values prompted NIT to seek a partnership that allowed them to develop a curriculum consistent with our principles and standards. While this relationship is not presently designed to include the enrollment of NIT students at Rocky Hill, it has the potential to offer opportunities for semester exchange programs and class-to-class relationships, establishing the School as a leader in global education.

Dr. Meyerson also hypothesized that Phragmites may have prevented success in maintaining a population of Diamondback Terrapin turtles. Phragmites prevents turtles from moving further uphill and away from the water for nesting, while providing good cover for predators. In Barrington, Phragmites were removed and positive results of the Terrapin population were seen. Jenna O’del ’16 spent the last summer collecting data on the presence and location of Terrapin nests, and URI graduate students joined Upper School RHS students on Rocky Hill’s campus to map native vegetation and Terrapin nests.

Rocky Hill School proudly boasts a connected community, a network of thoughtful and authentic partners whose collaborations are leading the way in innovation and shared enterprise. v