125 Years of Educating Boys
Student Life at Woodberry Forest School • november 2013
Finding the Way Through History boys learn by doing
This fall saw the launch of a new third-form history course, Stories and Histories, that takes well-known stories — e.g., the assassination of Julius Caesar, the trial of Galileo, and the tragedy of 9/11 — and explores the history behind them. Students gather around a table daily to discuss topics that range from Achilles’ motivation in the Iliad to Truman’s reasons for using the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945.
Bonfire: A Bright Tradition Gearing up for the game
e blaze from the thirty-foot-high wooden pyre lights up the night. It’s one of Th Woodberry Forest’s great traditions: the bonfire. As early as 1915, Woodberry students welcomed victorious teams home by lining the school’s entranceway, holding lighted torches and cheering. The torchlight parade eventually became the bonfire, and boys began to scavenge the campus for firewood and build torches to ignite the massive woodpile. This year’s bonfire — the biggest pep rally of the year — will set the stage for the 113th matchup between Woodberry and Episcopal High School, the oldest high school football rivalry in the South. The Game kicks off the next day at 2:00 p.m. When Woodberry hosts, the pipe band leads the team down the hill and into Johnson Stadium, where students form an energetic cheering section. When The Game is away, as it is this year, the entire student body travels to Alexandria — guaranteeing that the stands are filled with Tiger fans.
As these students learn to think like historians, speak persuasively, and write analytically, they’re also finding their way — not only as citizens of the earth, but also as Woodberry scholars.
Listen to the live audio broadcast of The Game! Go to www.woodberry.org/TheGame on November 9 to tune in. While you're there, check out some spirited videos — such as the bonfire being built. Go Tigers!
125 Years of Leadership
In the fall trimester, the class is investigating stories related to science and technology, including navigational problems that plagued seafarers until the eighteenth century: how to determine longitude and latitude at sea. On Columbus Day, class members reported to Grainger Field at noon so that history teacher Matthew Boe sen, in collaboration with physics teacher Greg Jacobs, could demonstrate how to calculate their location with pre-GPS technology. They got a hands-on lesson in using a sextant to find their latitude, a technique that, to this day, is taught to midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
fast fact
Did you know that, since its founding in 1898, Woodberry has only had eight headmasters? J. Carter Walker, the oldest son of founder Robert Stringfellow Walker and a graduate of the Class of 1894, was the longest serving — he retired in 1948 after fifty-one years.