125 Years of Educating Boys
Student Life at Woodberry Forest School • january 2014
The House That Tigers Built partnering with habitat for humanity
Most people think the time it takes to build a house is measured in months, but Woodberry boys know a house can go up in hours — if there are enough hands and hammers.
JFK 22 Nov 1963 student-created art commemorates kennedy assassination
Fourteen years ago — about the time many current Woodberry boys were toddlers — art teacher Kelly Lonergan started a project with his Varsity Art students that explored the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Since then, more than sixty students in the afterschool art program have helped create eleven works of art, which were displayed in the Baker Gallery for the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting. How do students create composite paintings? I photocopy a picture and cut it into one-inch squares. Each student paints what he sees in his square on a large piece of paper. He doesn’t know what the photo shows until everyone is finished and we put it together on the wall. Why did you choose this specific event? I was a child when Kennedy was assassinated. The images, which fascinated me then, continue to fascinate our students today. My goal over the years was to complete the series in time for this year’s anniversary. What are some things students learn from the project? They learn art concepts like shape, color, and value. And they find out something about working as a team — every student made a contribution to the whole. The accuracy of each square is very important, but, in the end, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The project also communicates the shock, drama, confusion, and mystery of an important event in American history.
Serving the Community
fast fact
Woodberry boys are required to complete sixty hours of community service before graduation. While some hours are earned during summer projects, such as building trails and refurbishing elementary schools, boys serve throughout the year, too. Students volunteer with the local Boys and Girls Club or Senior Center, participate in blood drives, or develop their own projects!
Eighty Tigers got up early on a November Sunday, reported to the temporary job site on campus, and began to assemble walls for the first-ever Woodberry Forest/Habitat for Humanity Blitz Build. Five hours later, what had been a pile of lumber looked a lot more like a house. In December, several students spent another Blitz Build day with a crew of local volunteers to raise those Tiger-built walls at their permanent Orange County homesite, thirty minutes away. They also helped add a roof and siding. Working alongside the volunteers was the family of six who is buying the house — and will soon call it home. They’ll be reminded every day of the generosity of the boys of Woodberry Forest School. And those boys won’t soon forget the feeling they got — some call it “Habititis” — when they gave a helping hand to a deserving family.