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FACULTY/STAFF UPDATES
FACULTY NEWS
September 2020 to June 2021
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For the past seven years, Laura Sabo has served as a team advisor for the IBSC Action Research Program, mentoring and advising teacher-researchers from around the world. Last fall she was named the program coordinator and now leads it, overseeing about 40 researchers. In this role, she helps designate yearly research topics, coordinates training and reports to the IBSC executive team. The Lower School Learning Commons librarian and research coordinator is excited about the opportunity to merge these professional experiences with ongoing work with The Center for the Study of Boys’ Saints research program (see page 26).
This spring Sabo received her Master of Information from Rutgers University with a concentration in library science. This program immersed her in current research and best practices for navigating the rapidly evolving information landscape.
Three Upper School history teachers recently completed their master’s degrees: Josh Thomas in liberal arts from Johns Hopkins University; Scott Van Arsdale in American history from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History at Pace University; and Bucka Watson in educational leadership with a concentration in leadership studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. Thomas took courses on the intersection of politics, religion and literature throughout history, with a specific focus on World War I and modern society. Van Arsdale gleaned a deeper understanding of the historical writing process and American history’s intricacies, debates and complexities. While focusing on administration and supervision, Watson also enjoyed electives in sports leadership and educational ethics, with all classes framed through a multicultural and inclusivity lens, he said.
David Shin earned his doctorate in education from The College of William & Mary in March, using virtual reality to build empathy. The Middle School science teacher used head-mounted, 360-degree cameras to capture everyday classroom lessons from the students’ perspective. He then loaded the video into virtual reality headsets, allowing educators to experience a student’s day. The ultimate goal is to help educators better connect with students. “When you have a good relationship with a student, they’re just more willing to work with you,” Shin said.
Fifth Grade Teacher Kadie Parsley completed her doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Virginia Tech. Her research focused on teaching strategies that educators identified as effective for boys. “These instructional practices may not benefit every boy; even within a given population of boys, some will respond differently to instruction than others,” she said. “However, this research helps to further inform schools, parents and families when making decisions regarding the most appropriate learning environment for boys and how that environment can further elevate each boy’s potential.”
Director of Information Services and Academic Technology Hiram Cuevas received a Pillar Award from the Independent Schools Association of Technology Leaders. He and two others were recognized this spring for furthering the mission to empower schools to thrive through technology and were commended for their leadership, particularly given the seismic changes that took place in education during COVID-19. “Hiram is one of our unsung heroes at St. Christopher’s, quietly but effectively keeping our large JK-through-12 campus connected and coherent in its use and storage of data and a number of information systems,” said Headmaster Mason Lecky. “He masterfully leads our divisional technology specialists, ensuring that our faculty and students have what they need for an optimal teaching and learning experience in the rapidly changing classroom environment.”
Upper School English Teacher Emily Nason’s poem, “I Watch a Documentary on Owl Theory and Become Convinced That Everyone I Love Will Be Killed By a Bird,” was published in The Southern Review winter issue.
Writer-in-Residence Ron Smith performed poems online in three venues and read two new sports poems via Zoom at the Sport Literature Association international conference. He was a judge for the Library of Virginia’s Poetry Prize and for the Poetry Society of Virginia’s Ada Sanderson Nature Poetry Contest and served on a panel that tapped the first Poet Laureate of Richmond. He spoke remotely to graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He also selected and edited poetry and wrote two prose pieces for Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature and participated in an online poetry reading for Art Against Hate. In addition, Artemis magazine interviewed him about his poetry, which was podcast, and he, along with other Edgar Allan Poe scholars, participated in a panel about Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” a discussion which aired at the Poe Film Festival in November. Mr. Smith published four poems in the online journal POETiCA REViEW, two poems in Artemis and a poem in Plume (online). His poem, “EP in the Garden,” was broadcast by Artemis and also appeared as an online reading from the Clemson University Press. He also published a short essay on craft tips for poets in Poetry Newsletter.
Middle School PE and Extended Day Teacher Dustin Anthony married Ashley Baldwin Oct. 28.
Lower School Music Teacher Mary Tryer secured a hole-in-one at Brandermill Country Club in October, hitting it 105 yards on the 15th hole with a 9-iron.
Lower School Kindergarten Teacher Meredith Smart and her husband Taylor are new parents to their first child, Robert Scott, born Nov. 10.
Upper School Chaplain Whitney Edwards and her husband Chris are new parents to a fourth daughter, Selma, born Dec. 26.
Upper School Teacher John Winn’s jazz quartet began streaming on YouTube and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website in April as part of the VMFA Thursday evening live performances.
Meredith and Taylor Smart with baby Robert
Whitney and Chris Edwards and family Emily Nason
Retirements
Janie Kingsley: Middle School’s Engine, Soul and Heart
By Gene Bruner ‘78
The last time I saw Janie Kingsley, I caught her performing reverse pecking-order triage for three students standing around her desk. One boy needed to call home. After a careful interrogation, Kingsley nodded approval, pointed to the phone and reminded him to press seven. Another waited silently, dazed as he pointed to the kumquatsized bump ballooning on his forehead. The Middle School assistant tottered from her desk and grabbed a bag of ice. Gently placing it on his head, she whispered for him to take a seat nearby until the school nurse arrived.
Lastly, a teary-eyed sixth grader could not find Zee (the nickname for Middle School Academic Technologist Brian Zollinhofer). Emotional atmospherics were about to reach a fever pitch until she waved him closer to inspect his computer and spied the scroll of keyboard symbols inching upward on the screen. When she lifted the laptop and rested it upside-down on her shoulder, a combination of orange cracker dust and cookie crumbs fell to her blotter. Amazingly, the problem corrected itself, and the boy bolted back to his class, shouting over his shoulder, “Thank you, Ms. Kingsley!” Adept at multitasking, Kingsley tended to the needs of everyone in Wilton Hall. She retired last December after 35 years, serving as ambassador, greeting guests, calming parents, comforting children, assisting teachers and, importantly, counseling administrators. Each day she solved multiple problems on the fly: a substitute who had a flat tire on the way to School; a teacher who got sick midday; a parent new to the School who only spoke Tagalog; a Papa John’s delivery man lugging a stack of pizzas needing payment; a jammed copier; a water gallon to be dead-lifted onto the cooler plinth; a puppy running loose on the playground. Kingsley handled each challenge with quiet calmness, while avoiding attention and routinely converting challenges into pleasant conversation. Kingsley’s affable charm and approachable methods stand out, particularly compared to the tractable style of her male counterparts. Loyal, discreet and essentially maternal, she knows and understands boys. Naturally, she utters more in a few short sentences than most of us can think in an entire day. She breaks down complicated situations with humor and instructions as clear and simple as the directions on a toaster. Kingsley distinguished herself as the engine, the soul, the heart and the glue for the Middle School.
There is the playful and vivacious Kingsley who exudes a wide-eyed enthusiasm for anything upbeat, adventurous and downright beachy; the charismatic Kingsley, who makes any room she walks into twice as fun and twice as bright; the intrepid and trustworthy Kingsley, who possesses boundless curiosity and whose character and integrity are beyond reproach; the courageous and determined Kingsley, who understands the reality of setbacks, confronts them and finds growth in every challenge. Lastly, there is the caring and empathetic Kingsley, who practices compassion and remains perpetually alert and attentive to those in need, standing by them until they build enough strength to stand for themselves.
Thank you, Laura Brown, for a Lifetime of Saintly Service
By Kathleen Thomas
Much of Laura Brown’s life has been woven into the rich tapestry of life on the campus of St. Christopher’s. Her mother taught in Lower School. She graduated from St. Catherine’s in 1969 and hung out with StC boys, sometimes picking up boarders who escaped through the old dorms’ first floor bathrooms for adventures off campus. She raised three children, all Saints, and for 31 years worked as assistant to the chaplain and to development and communications and kept the school calendar, a complex assimilation of events, special schedules and traditions, long-standing and new.
Always a giver, Brown is lauded for her care for people. “She’s the big sister I never had,” said the Rev. Melissa Hollerith, former Upper School chaplain. “She takes care of everyone. She took care of me.” Brown has organized and hosted too many StC birthday/good-bye/ retirement parties to count. When someone is sick or hospitalized, she makes and delivers food. When Hollerith organized a mission trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Brown took part. Always a doer, when duties called for weekend hours, Brown showed up. When the telephone booth for boarders was torn down, she planted boxwoods and hostas to cover the remaining ugly cement slab.
— The Rev. Melissa Hollerith, former Upper School chaplain Brown juggles all tasks and demands with seemingly boundless energy and enthusiasm. She started out in the ’90s with a paper calendar and typewriter and, ever nimble, adapted as needed. “Brownie” will long be remembered for her sense of humor and dressing in costumes, be it pulling pranks on former Headmaster George McVey ‘57 or being the short-statured Queen Elizabeth’s doppleganger, dressed in flower hat, long white gloves and pearls for faculty/staff garden parties she once orchestrated on the Terraces.
In addition, Brown speaks her mind. “She doesn’t hesitate to share her opinion with whomever will listen,” said former Development Director Delores Smith. “She wants the school to always be the best it can be, and she will do her job and anyone else’s to help it be its best.” Undoubtedly, she’ll find plenty to stay engaged within her next chapter. She’ll still run Town & Country Cotillion and plans to volunteer. Travel is high on her list of priorities. Where? “Everywhere — Nova Scotia, British Columbia, the Panhandle, Sicily, Barcelona, Ireland,” she lists without hesitation. Brown aspires to take piano lessons to form a band with her grandchildren Carter Brown ’32, age 7, and his brother John, age 3, who both play violin. Meanwhile, her new bongo drums have already arrived. More frequent visits to three out-of-town grandchildren are definitely on the docket, and she’ll have more time for relaxation and connection on the water at her beloved Gloucester family home.
DEPARTMENT TITLE
Retirements
Middle School History Teacher Retires After 37 Years
By Stephen Wood ’11
Those of us who took a class from Cliff Dickinson still hear his voice in our head from time to time. We may have forgotten the finer points of the Compromise of 1850, but the lessons he taught us about how to write, how to learn and how to think will be with us forever.
Taking it upon himself to mold each new batch of eighth graders into writers who could construct a convincing argument, he turned essay writing into something like a mathematical formula. A given lecture may have featured a deep dive into historical maps, a tutorial on the best physical posture for sitting in class, or an impromptu lesson on the flora of the Piedmont, but Mr. Dickinson’s class was really about perfecting the transfer of knowledge — whether you were on the giving or receiving end. “My teachers in high school will still mention Mr. Dickinson when talking about writing an essay,” said Drew Brown ’21. “Every once in a while, when I’m feeling tired in class, I’ll think back to what Mr. Dickinson said about sitting up and looking the speaker in the eye — it actually helps a lot.” Hill Brown ‘85, his longtime history department colleague, remembered how Dickinson once gave up his Friday afternoon to give a tour of the campus’s trees. “I think he gets the same feeling from doing that as I might when I bring a box of doughnuts to my advisory,” Brown said. “He likes to share information with people, and see them light up.” Dickinson’s room was like a den, full of odds and ends that he might gesture toward to illustrate a point or might never explain. It was the kind of place where one might expect to find hidden treasure — which Dickinson did, when he unearthed a historic copy of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the potential distractions, you were expected to pay attention, actively, in the way he had taught you, or risk being labeled a “slab” — an ingenious insult that leaves the recipient to answer for himself the all-important question, “A slab of what?” “There’s a really gentle manner about him,” Brown said. “He likes to joke with the boys, but I think that he jokes in a way that is having fun with them, as opposed to having fun at their expense.” The emphasis was on helping us become better listeners, better learners and better men. He even taught us his formula for the ideal thank-you note. Let me see if I can still remember it:
Dear Mr. Dickinson, Congratulations on your retirement, and thank you, on behalf of generations of boys, for dedicating your career to our education. Teaching someone how to express themselves, to do their best work and to enjoy the acts of gathering and sharing knowledge is about the greatest give you can give. I hope you have a fantastic time in your retirement, although I know that really, you’ll always be teaching. Thank you, once again, from all of us. Sincerely, Your Students
Photo by Henry Proctor ‘24
Since graduating from Princeton University, Stephen Wood ’11 has worked as a freelance journalist, with writing appearing in The Guardian, The Athletic, Current Affairs and Jacobin Magazine, among other outlets. He is a podcast producer at Artifact Co. Inc. and has worked in communications for several political campaigns in New York City.
Mission, Music, History, Photography
The Many Passions of Chaplain Durk Steed
By Gene Bruner ’78
Durk Steed’s office door was always open. Decorated like a teenager’s version of the coolest grown-up office ever, there were Jimi Hendrix photos, two mounted CD covers of his own creation, books on the Torah, Beatitudes and the Gospel of Mark, family photos, notes from his research for a book he’s writing on the Battle of Tarawa, a Marshall amplifier poster as big as an upended twin bed, a guitar standing upright near his desk and, off to the side, a stack of freshly developed aviation pictures waiting to be framed. The varied accoutrements speak to Steed’s versatile interests
as a minister, musician, history buff, photographer and family man. His passions suggest life is meant to be experienced, sometimes with depth and sometimes with complexity, always allowing a path for softening the edges, making connections and pinpointing emotions, just like his ministry. When the Rev. Steed bestowed his blessings and benediction at Baccalaureate in May and the Middle School Final Program in June, he closed a career at St. Christopher’s that spanned 21 years. He and his wife Nancy will return to their home state, North Carolina, where Steed will take on leadership duties as Middle School principal at Myrtle Grove Christian School in Wilmington. Their older son Durk ’17, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is starting a job in Raleigh, while Nash ’21 enters a new chapter as an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia this fall.
Steed is grounded and meets people where they are. His mission promotes cooperation, tolerance and commitment to service while attuned to the spiritual journeys of those of other faiths, as well as those of no faith. With his distinct Tar Heel accent, Steed’s message is never overly clever or lofty. He encourages, while an abiding sense of humor holds us like a warm embrace. He stays grounded and respects people in their milieu. His sermons provide optimism, hope and trust in the redemptive power of love and God’s unceasing grace. Students gravitated to him, many staying in touch through the years. “Reverend Steed showed me a type of care and consideration that had never been offered to me before,” said Harrison Rice ’18. “He gave me a safe space to express my feelings and share my ideas. I knew that he cared deeply for me, and because of that, classes and school were a bit easier.”
Many of Mr. Steed’s colleagues said they will miss his upbeat attitude, which he used to encourage students. History Teacher Hill Brown said, “He always seems to have his finger on the pulse of the community, and he truly takes care of us all.”
— Harrison Rice ’18
Confidence. Resilience. Excellence.
St. Christopher’s Class of 2021 has proven no challenge is too great to overcome. We applaud their acceptances into top schools across the nation and cheer them on as they begin this exciting new chapter of their lives.
Brown University California Institute of Technology Clemson University (2) College of Charleston College of William & Mary (3) Colorado College Davidson College Denison University Francis Marion University Franklin University (Switzerland) Hampden-Sydney College High Point University (4) J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College James Madison University (10) Kenyon College Morehouse College New York University (2) Occidental College Purdue University Savannah College of Art and Design Sewanee: The University of the South Southern Methodist University University of Alabama (2) University of Louisville University of Maryland University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2) University of Pittsburgh (2) University of South Carolina (4) University of St. Andrews (Scotland) University of Tennessee (2) University of Virginia (16) Villanova University Virginia Military Institute Virginia Tech (8) Wake Forest University (4) Washington and Lee University Wofford College
Class of 2021 College Choices
The Magazine of St. Christopher’s
St. Christopher’s School welcomes qualified students to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sexual orientation or national or ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, financial aid policies and athletic and other school-administered programs.
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