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...

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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