New Partnership with Manhattan Children's Center

In an effort to help boys develop empathy and compassion for children with special needs, Saint David's has partnered with Manhattan Children's Center, a school on the Upper West Side that provides treatment and education to children with autism. This fall and winter each second grade class will visit MCC six times, where our boys will have the opportunity to engage in activities with MCC students.

This week, educators from MCC are visiting Saint David's to help us prepare for our visits. Yesterday, the outreach director led a one-hour professional development workshop for teachers. She will return on Thursday to meet with each of the second grade homerooms, leading the boys in a discussion about ways we are all the same and ways we are different. Our boys will then engage in a partner activity in which they need to "turn their voices off" to communicate an idea to one of their classmates; this experience will help them to better understand helpful strategies for communicating with their buddies at MCC - such as repeating directions, being patient, or giving a high-five.

This new partnership with MCC provides our boys with an authentic opportunity to engage with children in our community who experience the world differently than they do. Instead of being wary of difference, our boys will learn to embrace it.

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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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