Year Six of Horizons Program

The 100 boys participating in Horizons at Saint David's are well into the six-week program, enjoying the hot days of summer immersing themselves in reading, music, art, writing, math, STEM projects, swimming lessons, field trips to local museums, and sports.

Our program, now in its sixth year, includes students from four elementary schools in Harlem, who will enter Grades One through Six come September, and aims to prevent the common problem of academic summer learning loss among children in lower-income families. Social-emotional learning is also infused throughout each day.

New this year is the addition of full time athletic director Keith Williams and our partnership with Ramapo for Children, an organization that provides training programs to educators working with children who may face obstacles to learning. Ramapo works with our teachers and volunteers, providing practical strategies on how to best address the students' needs.

Horizons at Saint David's began in 2012, when Saint David's became an affiliate of Horizons National through an initiative to contribute to the greater good beyond our immediate community.

On average, Horizons' students move ahead two - three months in reading and math skills after participating in the program. Horizons at Saint David's has an impressive retention rate of 91% and an attendance rate of 95%. It's a robust program, led by Director Meg Sheridan and Co-Program Directors Meghan Patterson and Courtney Sanchez, supported by Saint David's faculty members who teach the boys, and a dozen of our Saint David's alumni volunteers who are in high school.

This year, as in last, The Nightingale Bamford School has allowed us to hold the program on their campus because of the ongoing construction here at Saint David's. We very much appreciate the generosity and support from our friends at NBS.

For more information on Horizons at Saint David's, please visit http://www.saintdavids.org/horizons

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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!

Fascinating Art Talk by Michelle Marder Kamhi at Grandparents Event

Yesterday evening, independent scholar and critic Michelle Marder Kamhi ( www.mmkamhi.com ), co-editor with husband Louis Torres of Aristos , an online review of arts; author of Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts ; and grandmother of two Saint David's boys, gave a thought provoking talk on art for our grandparent community. An advocate of objective standards in arts scholarship and criticism, Ms. Kamhi focused her talk on the ways in which art critics such as Clement Greenberg promoted the shift from representational art to abstraction. Kamhi argues that the abstract and post-modern art prevalent today, which often requires explanation by docents in order to be understood, goes against art's purpose. Taking issue with Greenberg's contention that representation is an expendable convention of painting, she quoted the late art critic John Canaday: "Art is the tangible expression of the intangible values that men live by." ...

NE Patriot Tom Brady at Saint David’s

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