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!

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...

Surf's Up for Horizons at Saint David's

Little can top catching a wave to beat the heat on an exceptionally hot summer's day. Yesterday, as the temperatures soared into the nineties, the Horizons at Saint David's Eighth Grade class traveled to Rockaway Beach with their teachers for surf lessons with New York's premiere surf school, Locals Surf School. The boys have been taking swimming lessons through our program since their first summer with us in 2012. At that time, they were were rising first graders, and our inaugural cohort of Horizons students. Yesterday, they were ready to go, and, as these pictures show, they had a blast while learning a new skill. This is the eighth year of Horizons at Saint David's, a six-week multi-faceted academic and cultural summer experience whose mission is to prevent summer slide in elementary school boys from low-income families. We began the program in conjunction with Saint David's 60th anniversary in 2011, as one way that Saint David's as an ins...

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