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AROUND CAMPUS
HAPPENINGS ON CAMPUS
Building Brotherhood
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The sixth grade class spent a day away from their regular class schedule to build their friendships and the StC bonds that define our community and the St. Christopher’s spirit and experience.
Football Fans
5th grade Saints get a boost from their Upper School friends as they watch St. Christopher’s gridiron squad defeat St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes on September 10, 2022.
Kicking Off a Great Year
Our third grade boys welcomed their buddies from St. Catherine’s for a friendly game of kickball at the Lower School field on October 6, 2022. This is just one of the fun and engaging events that help unite Saints from the two schools throughout the year.
New Conflict Resolution Courses
This fall, Middle School History Teachers Hill Brown, Rob Horne, Jon Piper and Derek Porter are co-teaching Conflict Resolution, a creative new classroom format that brings different grade levels together to study collaboration, conflict and resolution throughout history.
The class will take a broad, layered approach to the content so students can apply what they learn in the course to various topics, like international events or constitutional conflicts. “The content will work no matter where a teacher is,” said Porter. “It has applications politically, domestically and even internationally. They’ll learn about whole systems of government that are more competitive or more collaborative.”
The sessions themselves involve hands-on conflict resolution; students, working in mixed groups of sixth, seventh and eighth graders, must cooperate to solve in-class group assignments. “In this setting, we’re getting three grade levels together and seeing how each boy learns how to manage their own conflicts,” said Piper.
Braden, a sixth grade boy, enjoyed working with the seventh graders. “You could see that the seventh graders were more mature, so it was good having them there to work with us,” he said.
“The sixth graders loved it,” said Porter. “I described this first class as an on-campus field trip, and they had a lot of good things to say about working with the seventh graders.” With its emphasis on group dynamics and resolution, the course acts as another forum in which the boys can put theories about civility and respect into practice. The Middle School community recently signed the Honor Pledge and Civility Statement. “This gives our eighth grade boys a leadership opportunity,” said Horne. “It gives these boys of different ages the chance to integrate and work together in a really healthy environment.”
The course is in the pilot stage, but both faculty and students think it shows promise. It’s an opportunity for the different grade levels to bond and learn how to build constructive dialogue, skills the boys will take with them beyond StC.
