School News

Upper School Diversity Orientation

Students new to the upper school participated in a diversity orientation session in September. They worked on exercises to find their similarities and differences, and were introduced to the concept of microaggressions. Students were briefed on the upstander concept (which was introduced to all upper school students last year), which encourages students to disrupt bullying/microaggressions. Faculty and staff then role-played situations, and students gathered in groups to discuss the scenarios and identify which "D" (distract, delegate, document, delay, or direct) they would use to respond to the situations, which included religious intolerance, racism, homophobia, ableism, and sexism. Our WFS students mentored and led the small groups of new students.

Remembering 20 Years Ago

September 11 is a solemn day to think back on and reflect. Though our students do not remember the day, we feel it’s an important part of our collective history and take time as a community to remember those we lost on that day.

In honor of the 20th anniversary, upper school students, faculty, and staff attended a Lunch and Learn with WFS parent and parent of alum Dr. Amy Grubb, a first responder as a psychologist with the FBI on 9/11 in New York City. She spoke about her experience at the site where only 1,000 people were initially allowed access to collect evidence. Though there were many terrible things in that environment, she was also struck by the immense generosity of so many people who wanted to help; the human connections that were necessary to keep one another both focused on the work and focused on taking necessary breaks; and the power of sitting with someone in silence to allow them to grieve. She tied these moments to the broader theme of seeking peace. We are grateful to Dr. Grubb for sharing her experiences with us.

GO BLUE!

Middle School Bonding Day

After a year hiatus, the middle school’s annual Bonding Day was back in September! To kick off our year-long work at fostering our sense of community and belonging, middle school teams, led by their respective grade deans (Carlos Charriez, 6th; John Hanson, 7th; Logan Goodwin, 8th), dedicated the day (both on and off campus) to games and activities designed to challenge, sometimes frustrate, and always enrich our middle schooler’s understanding of their unique and invaluable role in the life of their class and their school.

First Grade Self Portraits

In September, Mrs. Willie's first graders painted self portraits and shared their hopes and dreams for the school year!

College Visits

College visits have returned to campus! Upper school students met with a representative from the University of Pittsburgh this fall to discuss the college admissions process and learn more about life at Pitt.

9th Grade Author Visit

This fall, ninth graders met with Abdi Nor Iftin, author of their summer reading book, Call Me American, which depicts Abdi's life in Somalia and his curiosity about Western culture, which ultimately became dangerous and led to him fleeing the country.

Grow Tower

If you have visited the middle/upper school campus lately, you might have noticed the grow tower in the gallery. The tower is part of our 6th grade science curriculum where students use the scientific method to design an experiment that will increase the yield of sugar snap peas. The tower is a scaled up version of Levi Sawdon '28 and Charlie Powalski's '28 hydroponics design and contains cilantro, thyme, spearmint, Italian parsley, chives, bok choy, blue kale, and Swiss chard! A grant from the Whole Kids Foundation helped make this project possible.

Climate Action Rally

WFS students Oliver ’35, Pier-Paolo Ergueta ’22, Bella Adjei-Owusu ’22, and Austin Sarker-Young ’22, along with WFS teachers Caitlin Norton and Javier Ergueta, participated in a local Climate Action Rally that called for bold and transformational governmental action to decarbonize our economy and prevent the worst impacts of climate crisis in Delaware.

5th Grade Reporters

Each week, fifth grade students write, direct, and produce the "Lower School Good News" (LSGN) for the lower school community. Content ranges from musical performances to informative news segments. This fall, students interviewed Nate Nazdrowicz, a herpetologist for the state of Delaware (which means he studies reptiles and amphibians), about the local snake population.

When You Wonder, You’re Learning Book Event

Thank you to Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski, authors of the book When you Wonder, You're Learning: Mister Rogers' Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids, for their wonderful presentation last fall to our school community! Thank you as well to WFS alumnus and current parent Matt Terrell '91 for helping make this possible.

Welcome Matilde!

Please join us in welcoming Matilde Murteira '22 to the WFS community! Matilde is our AFS Intercultural Programs student for the 2021-2022 school year, joining the Class of 2022 from Evora, Portugal! She enjoys staying active, the fashion world, and is working toward a career in the healthcare industry. We are so glad to have her with us this year!

Upper School Service Day

September marked the return of our annual Upper School Service Day! Advisories volunteered at the Delaware Humane Association; E.D. Robinson Urban Farm; Nemours Mansion and Gardens; the New Castle County Hope Center; and other locations throughout Wilmington. Ninth graders worked on cleaning up Alapocas and Brandywine Parks. "Your students were kind, engaged, and helpful. Our state parks and the community are surely grateful, as am I," said Nicholas Minnix, Delaware State Parks manager of volunteers.

National Stress Awareness Day

To recognize National Stress Awareness Day today, the QuakerCares Committee asked students to fill out a helpful stress tip or positive thought, which will then be displayed for the community.

Rangoli Art

Preschool and prekindergarten friends found a great way to reuse the mums that beautified the Homecoming and Admissions Open House tent this fall and celebrate Diwali. They decorated the preschool, prekindergarten, and kindergarten playgrounds with rangoli art made with chalk and flower drawings!

Faculty Art

Paulo Machado, chair of the visual arts department, recently had a painting on display in the WFS gallery, which was part of a larger body of paintings that use wide uninterrupted brushstrokes on top of darker areas of color as metaphors for conscious attempts to heal.

"The uneven edges of the forms reflect an acceptance and celebration of imperfection. This painting is an invitation to center," Paulo said.

Delaware Governor’s Outstanding Volunteer Award!

Congratulations to WFS faculty member Carlos Charriez and the WFS garden, which was recently named a recipient of the Delaware Governor's Outstanding Volunteer Award! Carlos, the WFS garden manager, has grown the program over the last decade, and last summer the school donated nearly 500 pounds of produce.

We were excited to welcome back to campus WFS alum and Delaware First Lady Tracey Quillen Carney ’80 who presented the award. The Governor’s Outstanding Volunteer Service Awards, administered by the State Office of Volunteerism, honors the contributions of individuals and groups in Delaware that have made a positive impact in their communities or across the state through service and volunteering.

“I salute these worthy recipients and all those who volunteered their time and energy this year to help improve the health and wellbeing of their neighbors in need,” said Governor John Carney. “The coronavirus pandemic has brought special challenges for many of our residents in 2021, which is why I am doubly grateful for the generosity and selfless commitment of these volunteers.”

Lower School Art

Earlier this year, lower school students explored their emotions through art. Pre-K artists recently used shapes and colors to represent a word of their choice while fourth grade artists explored their emotions as they learned about Fauvism (a style of painting typified by the work of Matisse and characterized by vivid colors and free movement of form popular in the early 1900s).

Cooking Demonstration

As an exciting culmination to the sixth grade experimental garden project in science, students were treated to a surprise "C is for Cooking with Mr. C." demonstration. Students watched as science teacher Carlos Charriez sautéed sugar snap peas, assisted with grating the lemon zest, and then dined on the delicious and healthy snack.

A Family Affair!

We realized this fall that our youngest student on campus — Adele '37 — has something in common with our oldest faculty member…Adele is the granddaughter of none other than Cynthia Stan Mellow, upper school art teacher for more than 44 years!

New York, New York!

International Baccalaureate visual arts and music students recently traveled to New York City for the annual Group 6 Research Trip.

Students toured the Met Museum, walked through Central Park, and attended a performance of the musical Chicago, making valuable connections to help with their IB coursework. The Governor of New York spoke briefly at Chicago's intermission, and after the show, one of the cast members came out to greet the students, signed autographs, and posed for a group photo! It was a perfect ending for a glorious day in the Big Apple!

A Visit with County Executive Matt Meyer ’90

Eighth grade students met with County Executive and WFS alum Matt Meyer '90 this fall to wrap up their recent unit on U.S. regions and the City of Wilmington.

Matt spoke to students about the role he plays and the function of county government in our state. He also presented the students with a case study about a local environmental issue, the expansion of the Minquadale Landfill, that demonstrated the tension between business and public health and safety issues.

Robotics Presentation

The Upper School Robotics Club presented at a parent coffee and brought along the robot they are working with to prepare for their upcoming and State competition. The club meets every Sunday and on some school days to prepare for these competitions, where programming, creativity, and problemsolving skills are tested in a performance environment.

Meeting With the Mayor

Eighth graders visited with Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki as a follow-up to their social studies unit on the City of Wilmington.

As part of this unit, students studied the history and growth of the city; the major businesses in the past and today that provide jobs and support the economy; and the other benefits the city can boast, like proximity to major cities, beaches, beautiful parks, and a low cost of living. Students also studied the challenges that the city faces, including poverty; crime; the wealth gap; and the effects of climate change. As a culmination of the unit, students wrote letters to the Mayor, addressing the benefits and challenges of living in Wilmington. Mayor Purzycki addressed these letters with the students and answered questions about his role in the city.

Sixth Grade Pie Making

It’s a WFS tradition that the day before Thanksgiving break, sixth grade students make pies for Wilmington’s Sunday Breakfast Mission. The Class of 2028 worked hard to make more than 30 pies – peeling, mixing, assembling, and decorating pie boxes with kind messages.

THE WORK OF RICK GRIER-REYNOLDS

by WFS Archivist Terry Maguire

At Homecoming, Rick Grier-Reynolds––former WFS teacher, current Board member, and creator of the Peace, Justice, and Social Change course––had a conversation with Head of School Ken Aldridge. He reflected on the long journey he has undertaken from arriving at Friends in 1969 to his current engagement with distance learning with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and his 20 plus years of teaching AVP (Alternatives to Violence Project) classes in local prisons. The hour spent that Homecoming Saturday was fascinating, but simply whetted the appetite of many in the Friends School community for more information about Rick’s odyssey over many lands in the last 50 years; the evolution of his course Peace, Justice, and Social Change; and more of his stories. In mid-November Rick sat with two former colleagues, Marilyn and Terry Maguire, for oral history recordings, amounting to two hours. They were rambling sessions, backtracking among different decades and foreign lands, but filled with great stories. Those are available to read in their entirety, edited and reorganized to flow more clearly and chronologically. Below are Rick’s recollections and stories about the challenging and uplifting work that he has done since his “retirement” in 2011.

What led you in the direction of doing AVP work in prisons?

When I was on sabbatical in Bosnia, when I went over with Rachel [Rick's wife] for that summer six-week program, I came back with a little dose of PTSD….So that was 1998. When we went to the NW corner [of Bosnia] to this work camp...Kozarets, there was another of the Bosniaks...he was the translator for us, and we're now in this town where he was from, and we met his father at his house, which was just a total wreck. The week before was the first time that Moslems had been back in their hometown in seven years. They found some 80 skeletons in and around properties. They were going to have a funeral the next week, and they wanted us to be there. We went over to see the UN people, and the guy who's running the UN in that area, says, "All right. We're going to move up to DEFCON One." The next level is "We're outta here."

I'm thinking this is probably not a good idea. Rachel said, "You gonna go?"

I said, "No. I had a machine gun stuck in my throat the first night I arrived in Nicosia [Cyprus]...I dodged that one. I had a death squad chasing me in El Salvador when I was down there. ...They came looking for me and others in the hotel. OK, I did that. I'm done putting myself in [danger]." But Rachel went with a couple of other members of our team, and nothing happened. Imagine these people haven't been in their town, and the Chetniks, hoodlums with guns, are driving around, saying [expletives.]

When I came back, I said, "You know, it's great to tell stories, to put stories on the abstracts, because people will understand the stories; but I need to do more. I can't just be this observer of terrible things that have happened to people."...So one of the first things we did with AVP was accompany Steve Angel, one of the creators of AVP. We ended up in Croatia, and we did an AVP training for these 15 people––some were Serbs, some were Croats, some were Hungarians. And it was reconciliation work. All these people had lived in that area.

So we did a workshop, and that workshop was another moment....A Serb general was in it, and after doing some exercises, this woman realizes he was living in her apartment, and she had been displaced; and also that his guys had killed her husband….Because these people were open and wanted change, they forgave each other…

You said at Homecoming that the most important, most gratifying work that you've done is in the prisons. Is that really true?

Yes, at a couple of levels. The workshops in the prisons were all experiential. And the group has wisdom. These are adults and they have lots of life wisdom. So the idea is to put them in situations where they talk on whatever the topic is, from their own frame of reference. And then the facilitator's job is to organize it, manage it, and let them talk to each other, which they do; and you debrief it with them. So I took those strategies back into my Friends classroom.

How long have you been doing the prisons?

Since '98. I'd been doing that kind of project work, multiple opportunities, multiple perspectives, multiple intelligences. But the people in the jails really appreciate the fact that you come in on Friday at 5:00 pm and you leave at 9:00; you're in all day Saturday, usually coming in at 8:00 am and leaving at 4:00 pm, and you do that on Sunday. AND you're a volunteer.

And they are so marginalized, that they appreciate that I––and anyone else––is coming in and spending time with them. And they show it; they really let you know it, and you can feel it.

Plus, you are giving them tools. These are people who have made some really bad decisions. In Chester, some of our facilitators are lifers; they've murdered people. They belonged to gangs and such. The guy I'm bringing in to Friends School tomorrow, Brian Winward, and he's going to tell his story…I've heard him talk before. He ran with gangs...He didn't kill anybody, but he did a lot of bad things...He's out now. He's what's called a "returned citizen." He's now the AVP Outreach Coordinator, so he actually works with the re-entry program at Widener. It's called Project New Start, so he does the same training for these guys that are coming out.

Tell us about the courses you've been teaching at Osher.

There's one thing I really want to stress: we all evolve. I'm still teaching; I've still got the bug. As you know I'm doing some work on domestic extremism and non-violence; and whatever I'm doing, I'm moving more and more to the virtual world, which really excites me. As early as the late 1990's to early 2000s, when the internet was starting to become available as a potential teaching tool, I really saw the value of connecting people all over the world. I worked with somebody out of Philadelphia,...Global Education Motivators; and we connected Friends School kids with kids from all over the planet. And I pushed hard to get that kind of opportunity in front of Friends School kids, and now with Zoom and everything, it's happening. In fact, I feel very comfortable teaching virtually with Osher, but even for Friends School I might do something.

...I walked into a class [in Lewes] on climate change, handing out all these pieces of paper; and one of my students, a friend of mine, said, "Rick, what are you doing here? Killing a bunch of trees? This is a course on climate change. You need to be virtual." I said, "yes, I do."

So I built this blog. One of the reasons I wanted to do this is that I wanted a repository for stuff I've done, so I started writing down some of the stories, and I'm going to put four-five more over Christmas; a lot of this is intended for my grandchildren. Here are all the classes that I'm teaching, and the one that I'm doing right now for Osher, Domestic Terrorism. You would open this up, and it's the same old Rick; there's always music, there's Essential Questions (thank you, John Hanson, who put understanding by design in front of me). This is sort of like an AVP format, exercises, all the readings and resources. You can click on any one of these...I think this is for me the wave of the future.

One of the things that I took away from my facilitation––and that's what the prison work trained me in––is to be able to take any small group and facilitate it in the sense that they do all the work. Most of the time in class they are participants in conversation.

Note from Rick: Recent years would cover AVP, monthly; Lewes Ethics and Board of Adjustment member; President, Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation; active substitute teacher in Cape Autism program; Osher teacher, every semester; Friends Trustee; consultant with IB with over 40 completed assignments since retirement...flunking retirement in good form.

PEACE AT SCHOOL

WFS reaffirmed its commitment to Quaker values this fall while focusing on the testament of Peace. Students were challenged to think about peace on both a community and a personal level. During one upper school Meeting for Worship, students contemplated several queries, including, “Do I look into the nature and meaning of peace? What keeps the world from realizing peace? What keeps me from realizing peace?”

Middle school students celebrated International Day of Peace in September, serving as an opportunity for them to look beyond themselves and recognize their ability to make a positive change in the world.

After meeting as a large group in the Theater, students then gathered as advisories and identified a current social issue of concern in the world, ranging from broader topics like homelessness and climate change to WFS-specific issues like the use of plastics in our cafeteria and supporting our LGBTQIA+ community members.

Students brainstormed what they could do now, and in the future, to address this issue and lead to more equitable and sustainable conditions. At the end of the day, they gathered as a community and presented the issues they discussed. Jon Huxtable, head of the middle school, announced that the faculty would work toward developing activities and service learning opportunities for the 2021-2022 school year centered around the items that the students had identified as causes of concern. "These are your ideas to make things equitable and sustainable. Now it's up to us to act on them," Huxtable said.

We look forward to continuing our focus on peace this year, including the Kindergarten MLK Peace March; the Nathan M. Clark Speaker on Peace, international peacekeeper Rebecca Davis in late January; and Rick Grier-Reynolds’s virtual course for the WFS community “Responding to Domestic Extremism/Terrorism” for over 40 participants this spring!

Curiosity, Patience, and 11 Songs

For the first time in twenty-five years of teaching, twenty at Wilmington Friends, the first day of school meant something quite different in the Fall of 2020. I was in Randolph, New Hampshire, staying in a cabin in the Presidential Mountains, writing and playing music. One of my major goals was to complete and record an album of ten original songs. I ended up with eleven on an album entitled “Call It Home.” I still have plenty of CD’s. At this point, I think it’s a million seller, meaning that I have a million of them and they are all in my cellar. People can listen on any digital platform, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, etc.

I am really proud of that work. While Covid made it difficult to record some of the music live with bandmates, I was able to work with some excellent studio musicians who really helped bring these songs alive from their original composition on acoustic guitar. Ritchie Rubini at Studio 825 proved to be a master of production, and I couldn’t have asked for a better collaborative partner in the process.

Jake Rashkind, WFS Upper School English Teacher and musician, reflects on his Fall 2020 sabbatical. Jake and his wife, Skye, have two children, Nate ’21 and Lily ’23.

While I pursued my passion for music, it was a revelation that I never veered too far from teaching. Even that first week in September, I attended a virtual online class with Alfie Kohn called “From Grading to De-Grading” about alternatives to traditional grading. It was a gift to have the time and perspective to really ask myself as a teacher: “What’s it all about? What’s important about what I do? What can be enhanced? What can be discarded as a relic?” I also attended an online conference at Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking. This particular conference focused on engaging students in the relevant issues of Shakespeare’s Othello. I’ve been to these IWT workshops before, and I always find them inspiring, with focus on how writing helps to crystalize thinking, reminding me that students need to do it as much as possible in the classroom–not for me, but for them.

Because Covid was running rampant, a lot of my travel plans were limited. I did my fair share of Zooming conferences and workshops, originally scheduled to be in person. Though Covid limited me from going far, it enabled me to go more deeply into my work. I began most mornings writing at a desk I set up in my basement. Being a huge fan of the poet Seamus Heaney, I was reminded of his metaphor for writing, which he refers to as “going down and down for the good turf. Digging.” So I began my days as far down in my house as possible, looking to bring up experiences, stories, ideas. It can be challenging to maintain that discipline, knowing that some days will yield very little, while others will be fruitful and inspiring. One thing this sabbatical confirmed for me: I could never be a full-time writer. It’s too lonely, and I need to be around people.

Through the generosity of this grant, I was all set to attend Bill Monroe’s Mandolin Camp in Monteagle, TN, but Covid turned the conference into a Zoom event. Oddly enough, I used my previous experience with Zoom to become the host for these sessions. Hard to believe I could find a group less technologically adept than myself, but these people are out there. I have been playing mandolin for over twenty years, but more as a guitar player looking to find a new texture and color. The sessions at the Bill Monroe camp taught me a ton about the mandolin’s place in a band, about the discipline required to play this very fast, aggressive bluegrass style. It’s not at all the only style I play, but dedicating myself to this practice was quite challenging, and I was surprised by how physically tough it could be. When you’re trying to play a song at 130 beats per minute, you have to stretch, have good posture, and perhaps most frustrating, you have to begin by learning it very, very slowly, when all you want to do is play it as fast as they

I was also able to build off my experience at the camp by connecting with one of my favorite mandolin players, Christopher Henry. He has played for years with bluegrass icon Peter Rowan. One result of Covid was that so many artists, musicians, and performers were sitting at home looking for work. I literally called Christopher on his cellphone number that I acquired on his website, and I was taking my first lesson with him thirty minutes later. He recorded each lesson we had, and that was really eye-opening for me as both a student and a teacher. I recall one moment where I wasn’t getting a concept he was teaching, just unable to repeat back to him what he had just played. When I later saw myself struggling (literally) on the video, I saw a pained expression on my face. My shoulders were scrunched up, and it was clear that my own frustration was part of the problem. What I later found out as I learned the part was that it was easier, not harder than I thought. I was adding notes that I thought were there because what he was doing looked and sounded so complex. It really reminded me as a teacher that we have students in our classrooms every day who struggle to get a concept because they don’t think they can get it. Often, we think a problem is more difficult than it is, when really to solve it means to slow down, to relax, to get over ourselves, only to find that it’s actually easier, not harder than we thought.

So even while I was learning for myself as a musician, my thoughts always wandered back to how my learning might help me as a teacher. It was in that vein that I made some contacts with several college professors. I wanted to find out from them what they were seeing as trends in their current students and ways that we, as high school teachers, could help to prepare them to be successful at the next level and beyond. Unfortunately, the process didn’t include in-person visits, but I was able to sit in on classes and interview several professors. A few consistent strands I heard repeatedly: skills matter most. In fact, I couldn’t get a single college professor to tell me of a text that students should have or must have read before entering their institution. More important is students ability to read and think critically about what they read, no matter what it is. A few professors did lament that students don’t have the attention spans they used to, that a lot of the longer texts have gone out the window. Another common thread I heard was the idea that professors are seeing students who are risk averse, who want to know the answer, and want to be able to give that to a professor in order to be successful. This insight reconfirmed my commitment to challenging students to think for themselves, to offer them creative approaches to engaging with a text so that they can develop confidence in their instincts and find their own voice. I am reminded how challenging that can be at a time when anxiety about college begins to creep in. Still, if we are truly meant to educate our students for life, then we want them to learn the value of taking risks, even when they don’t yield the desired result, at least not immediately. But it’s important for all of us to fail until we succeed because that’s how we develop resilience.

Speaking of failures, one of my other goals was to begin a mentoring program where I could pair interested students with an elder (kind of an extension of the Elder Buddies program in the Lower School). The goal was to help our young people make this connection, but perhaps more importantly, to create meaningful relationships with people who have lived through so much history and hopefully have great wisdom, insights, and experiences to share. The idea was to have students help to ghost write vignettes, stories, etc. While I still intend to pursue this passion project, Covid made the idea of getting students into a retirement facility rather daunting. So, I didn’t cross everything off of my sabbatical to-do list, but I look forward to making that vision a reality for our students and the larger community in the years to come.

The time out did give me a lot of opportunities to read more than I ever normally can during the school year. I read for curricular ideas, for personal interest, and those novels that I’ve been meaning to get to for years, like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Try reading that one with any concentration when you have a stack of sophomore essays staring you down! I made a ritual of long walks, which also opened my ears to the world of podcasts. I found the New York Times Daily gave me thirty minutes a day of being very connected to the current world, something I did my best to forget about for the rest of the day. One day, I was walking in Bellevue Park, only to come upon a bulldozer crushing the outbuilding of an old historic stone structure. The goal was obviously to reduce it back to the original. Suddenly, I was transported back to my four-year-old self, and I stood there watching for almost two hours, though I had no sense of time then. It was a gift I had been given by Friends School, for which I will forever be grateful.

Perhaps the highlight of my sabbatical was being able to stay for three days at Big Pink, in West Saugerties, NY. For those who don’t know, Big Pink is the house Bob Dylan put The Band up in while he was recovering from a motorcycle accident (though local folklore suggests the accident was more a desire to leave the craziness of touring). In this house, The Band worked each day in the basement on music, while Bob Dylan sat at a typewriter cranking out lyrics. The resulting Basement Tapes, then The Band’s Music From Big Pink had a tremendous impact on the musical landscape at the time, with a movement away from psychedelic rock into more Americana, roots-based music. So there I was, waking each morning to sit and work at the very desk where a Nobel Laureate honed his craft. It was awe inspiring. People often ask if I wrote great stuff there. I don’t think I did, but that’s not to say the experience was any less valuable. In fact, the inside picture of my CD is me sitting at that desk, typing. So if nothing else, I got a picture out of it.

I certainly missed my students and the connection I have with them and my colleagues. Returning to WFS mid-year to a fully-masked group was a challenge. It felt like starting over in a way. While I clearly have a need for my own time to be creative, I realized what a people person I am, that I need to be part of a larger community to truly know my purpose. This sabbatical helped me to find both balance and purpose. In twenty years at Friends, the school has afforded me the first two weeks of my childrens’ lives to be there with them; they have granted me the ability to travel to Ireland and Scotland; and they funded my semester-long mid-life crisis. I can’t thank them enough.