Safe and Healthy Choices

I mentioned in my opening letter of the school-year that Saint David's, as a result of our on-going comprehensive curriculum initiative, has further defined our DASH (Drug, Alcohol, Sex and Health) program in the 6th and 8th grades. In addition to a variety of curricular channels, including homeroom discussions, responsive classroom, daily chapel, religion and DASH classes, we are partnering with a new group that we feel will provide for our boys a very tangible experiential based curriculum that focuses on making safe and healthy choices and decisions. Prepare Inc. teaches teenagers how to assess and safely manage challenging interpersonal situations.

Our goal here is to connect the boys and their parents to real pressures that boys often face at this age with effective strategies for responding to and managing these pressures. The new focus of the program is on developing a boy’s ability to set boundaries, identify risk, and respond to real life situations that he could or is likely to encounter, such as: social peer pressure, peer pressure regarding academics, alcohol and other substances, sexual experimentation, street smarts and social messaging. A small portion of the program will teach basic self-defense skills to be used in an emergency. The boys will be actively engaged in discussion and dynamic role-play scenarios about topics that are important to them and that they are likely to encounter in their immediate futures.

Sixth and Eighth grade boys and their parents will be participating in a series of classes beginning this month.

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OLIVER!

This morning our fifth graders continued a great year-end tradition at Saint David's, The Fifth Grade Musical. The boys performed Oliver! and they were fantastic, providing impressive performances and demonstrating great vocal ability. They have been mastering the dialogue and musical numbers for weeks, and clearly gave it their all. Congratulations to the cast on a job well done, and to their Producers/Teachers James Hubbard and Jamie MacNeille, Director Phyllis Clark, Musical Conductor Jeff Moore, and the Parent Committee of Cynthia Chapman, Susan Kissane, Tara Neumann, Joyce Restituto, and Ann Roberts. Musical theater is alive and well at Saint David's!

Sixth Graders Meet with Dr. Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History

Dr. Carter Emmart with Saint David's Sixth Graders This past Friday, as part of our unique partnership with the American Museum of Natural History, sixth graders had the great honor to attend a private lecture given by Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at AMNH. Dr. Emmart told the boys about his passion for science along with an overview of the history of the Hayden Planetarium. He also gave the boys advice on how to take scientific information about the universe and compile it into an interesting and captivating show for an audience. The boys were able to see Dr. Emmart's original sketches, which helped create the Uniview program they are using to develop their presentations. The session provided our boys with an opportunity to learn how art and science come together in the planetarium, and to obtain expert advice on developing their own space shows from one of the creators of Uniview . You can learn more about Dr. Emmart's work and Univie...

Tales of a Good Man

"Sometime in the midst of all this, we became friends. And his story, and all its vast world passed into mine." --From the Introduction of Blood & Oil by Roxane Farmanfarmaian. "Stories are so important; they become traditions that tell about the good that often comes out of bad experiences..." So began Roxane Farmanfarmaian's fascinating talk Monday night at Saint David's Seventh Grade Father-Son Dinner. Dr. Farmanfarmaian, Affiliated Lecturer of Modern Middle East Studies at the Political and International Studies Department at Cambridge University, was introduced by her nephew, Saint David's seventh grader Cyrus '17. She spoke to the seventh grade boys and their fathers about what makes a "Good Man" through the prism of her book Blood & Oil : A Prince's Memoir of Iran from the Shah to the Ayatollah (Random House 2005), which she co-authored with her late father, Prince Manucher Farmanfarmaian. The memoir i...

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