Headmaster's Blog

Alums galore this past Friday.  Ryan '14, Thomas '13, George '13, Connor '13, John '12 and Miguel '12 all stopped by the office to catch up and say hello.  Ryan's at Fieldston, Thomas and George, Riverdale; Connor, Bronxville; Johnny, Loyola, and Miguel is at Grace Church. The boys are all enjoying high school.  Apparently, Johnny is the finest goal keeper Loyola's ever seen, or so I'm told, and Miguel is the star starting pitcher for Grace. It was fun to see them all.

The following article by Modern Languages Chair Tori Gilbert and Head Coach Jorge Roman appears in the summer 2014 issue of Saint David's Magazine . If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.                      —Nelson Mandela A few years ago Saint David’s began, through the Curriculum Initiative, the rollout of our school-wide Spanish language program. The rollout was completed last year, enabling our boys to study Spanish throughout their tenure at the school, from Pre-K through Grade Eight. In the spring of 2008 Headmaster O’Halloran began discussing with us a possible immersion experience for the boys in a Spanish-speaking country to augment and deepen what they learned at Saint David’s. We began our search broadly. Our investigations ranged from South to Central America and finall...

Through our new collaboration with the Frick Collection, a group of our sixth  grade boys and their art teachers made their first visit to the Frick today.  Led by museum guide Olivia Birkelund, the boys viewed master portraits in the Collection that related to specific topics they are studying in various disciplines, and which helped inform their understanding of the genre throughout time. Works viewed included Joshua Reynolds' portrait of General Burgoyne (boys are studying 18th century American history); El Greco's portrait of Vincenzo Anastagi, Bellini's Saint Francis (a Saint the boys are very familiar with, and they will visit the Basilica in Assisi during their Eighth Grade Italy Study Tour), Holbein's Saint Thomas More (a reproduction of which hangs in our library), and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' portrait of the Comtesse d'Haussonville. Later in the term, when the boys create self-portraits in 'line and watercol...

Our third grade boys are in the midst of a new electronics STE(A)M unit, using Little Bits kits. Yesterday, they experimented with using a pulse bit to change the speed of the electronic signals that cause an LED to blink. Using a power bit,  power source (battery), pulse bit, and vibration loader, the boys had great fun experimenting with their devices and collaborating with each other. They were delighted when, through successful connection, they heard the pulse beats and saw the light blink, indicating the flow of electrons and their speed of travel. In units such as this, we are guiding our younger boys to be creative idea-generators and collaborators. This year Saint David's has increased the number of science periods each week in Grades One through Three, and we are folding technology into the science curriculum through a new STE(A)M strand that allows us more opportunity to teach active, collaborative problem-solving skills. A short video clip follows too. ...

  On Lake Tana, Ethiopia, with three former student council presidents. Inquiry-based learning abounds at Saint David’s. An active approach to education, it emphasizes investigation, collaborative and individual work, hypothesis generation and testing, and experiential-based problem solving, research, and analysis. This aspect of true learning has always been at the heart of a program rooted in rigorous academic pursuit and it is one very much encapsulated in this past year’s school-wide theme, Critical Analysis. Examples of inquiry-based learning can be found in all disciplines at Saint David’s: in our new Fifth Grade DNA unit, taught in partnership with the DNALC of Cold Spring Harbor, and in the Sixth Grade’s research and exploration of primary source documents through our partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; in the Seventh Grade Spanish immersion with the University of Salamanca in Spain; in the new “Critters” STEAM project that seven...

The following article by Upper School History Teacher Joe Shapiro, appears in the summer 2014 issue of Saint David's Magazine. "Wait, this is real too?” asked another astonished Sixth Grade student as we examined Ulysses S. Grant’s presidential razor blade (complete with a permanent blemish from the President’s thumb). “If this isn’t all real . . . I’m in big trouble,” responded one of the chief archivists of the Gilder Lehrman Collection. In early March, the Sixth Grade had the rare opportunity to visit the vault of the impressive Gilder Lehrman Collection housed in the basement of the New-York Historical Society.  According to their website, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLI) is a “non-profit organization devoted to the improvement of history education.” It was founded in 1994 by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman who have spent the last two decades adding to the collection of American historical documents, which is now home to more than 60,00...

Saint David's teachers are always on the lookout for ways to integrate technology with everything they do, when and where appropriate--and they are great about sharing best practices and other findings with each other! At the end of the 2013-2014 academic school-year, several teachers participated in a technology showcase at Saint David's, where they shared the innovative ways in which they had integrated technology. All faculty were invited to visit the showcase , where they observed and discussed the rationale, strategy, and results of integration with the showcase presenters. Among the many inventive ways technology was integrated, a few highlights included: the inclusion of Bee Bot robotic programming in the First Grade social studies mapping curriculum, an i-Pad “virtual reality” scavenger hunt used in Spanish classes, and 3D printing in Upper School math classes to investigate surface area and tackle urban planning challenges. As this new school-year of “ Ideas and I...

The following article appears in the summer 2014 issue of Saint David's Magazine. It was not anything like I expected. In the early morning hours of June 14, 2014, a Saint David’s contingent stepped out of the terminal building at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. Expedition Ethiopia had landed. It was cool. There was a light fog about, moisture hung gently in the air, and there was the crisp smell of eucalyptus—a pungent aroma intensified whenever the air is stretched to its extremes by either heat or moisture. I found myself immediately transported by this distinct scent to another place and another time. I felt young again. The feeling of placing an anxious foot in a foreign land was replaced with a nostalgic step back to a place I knew. Growing up in Australia, the aroma of fresh, wet eucalyptus at the dawn of a new day woke the heart from its nighttime slumber. It made the blood run. What Australians colloquially refer to as the gum tree, the eucalyptus was bro...

  At the Saint David's Kalina School in Tigray. The Kukufto Village chief elder, an old, wise, weather-worn faced Ethiopian said only one thing to me at the end of our formal ceremonies at the opening of Saint David’s Kalina School in June: “I only wish I was young again, so I could attend this school.” An illiterate man, he sees the promise and challenge of the future as clearly as the Abyssinian sun shines brightly in his sky. Trekking the Horn of Africa at the opening of my summer with three student council presidents, their dads, and teachers was nothing short of inspirational. Eucalyptus, frankincense, and myrrh invaded my senses while the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness consumed my thoughts. Along unpaved, rut-filled roads to villages and towns with no running water, indoor plumbing or septic systems, the Ethiopians are laying high speed Internet cable to earthen floored huts that leak in the rain. Forget the whole Industrial Revolution; Ethiopi...