S O U N D I N G S F R I E N D S A C A D E M Y

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Dear Friends,The issue of Soundings you are holding in your hand demonstrates yet again the depth, breadth, and effectiveness of a Friends Academy education. One of hot topics in the independent school world today revolves around the “value added proposition” and the data driven ways that seem necessary to make that case. How do we know that Friends Academy is successfully carrying out its mission?

While Friends Academy can share aggregate test scores, math Olympiad results, soccer tournament trophies, and stellar secondary school placement statistics, this hard data is only part of the equation. There is so much more to a Friends Academy education which encompasses those harder to measure strengths such as values, character, opportunity, and habits of mind.

As you read about Dr. Adam Cox’s presentation on how to coach communication skills in boys and girls, or about National Public Radio’s campus visit and on-air test of The Wild Weather Book, consider the emphasis that Friends Academy places on the whole child. Whether the Sally Borden Program is celebrating its five year anniversary, or Middle School students are traveling to Maine or New York City for orienteering exercises, the journey from early childhood in the farmhouse to Class Day in eighth grade is not as linear as it might seem. Within that progression from year to year one finds innumerable snapshots of challenging situations, transformative tangential forays into areas of individual and perhaps life-long interest, fads and phases, and significant intellectual “aha moments,” each different for each individual child.

Teachers spend their days creating both the lessons and the accepting classroom climate that shape, manage, and define this somewhat mysterious process. Through it all, students grow, change, and mature as they accumulate knowledge, garner many of life’s lessons, and develop their growing sense of wisdom. In short, a Friends Academy education goes way beyond rote learning and test preparation to embrace a genuine and lasting version of learning that is built upon open discourse and meaningful understanding. It is the kind of learning that values those really good questions and appreciates the intellectual give and take that surround important and complicated issues. A Friends Academy education points forward and never ceases its inquisitive nature. Such an education is about striving to open doors rather than settling for the simple answers that tend to close them.

Please enjoy the latest issue of Soundings, a collection of telling snapshots that I hope will capture the essence of Friends Academy for you.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen K. Barker, Head of School

fall 2013

32

Using groundbreaking research and experi-ence as a RI-based psychologist, Adam Cox, Ph.D., shared techniques for coaching children in the art of social communication as the inaugural speaker in our 2013 Speaker Series.

T H E B E N E F I T S O F B O R E D O M

Empathy is the string that joins young people (all people actually) to a life of conscience, leadership, and community. If our ultimate goal is to help children develop the emotional intelligence they need to lead meaningful, purposeful lives, then we must recognize that the effects of electronica or screen culture is interfering with this development. There is an extinction of boredom going on, Adam Cox maintains, and with it goes the ability to build a civil mindset in kids. He strongly believes that in an over-pro-grammed electronic society, video games, phone games, music, texting, and tweet-ing, all distract from the time humans need for reflection and contemplation. To be civil, the mind needs time at rest. If a young mind has no capacity for bore-dom, then it has no capacity for reflection. S T A R T E A R L Y

Cox advises that children have the ability to be coached—that eye contact, posture, a social vocabulary, and learning how to read the cues of others, can all be taught. Kids can learn to connect with other people, but parents will have more impact teaching them if they learn to recognize their child’s different personal learning style.

C U L T I V A T E S O C I A L G R A C E

“Micro skills” are important in the cultivation of effective social communi-cation. They include: how close to stand in conversation, the importance of turn taking so that no one dominates or opts out of a conversation, how appropriate eye contact indicates engagement, and how the use of standard conventions like greetings and endings can help signal the beginnings and ends of conversations.

Voice modulation and the ability to detect emotion in others, as well as transitioning from one topic to another without seeming abrupt or awkward, and code switching, which refers to the act of changing one’s style of communication based on who you are talking to (collo-quially with peers, more formally with adults) are all trainable skills.

Cox recommends tapping into the ideals of the times and what he called “the psychology of how kids see themselves” to build rapport and reach young people. Given the opportunity to demonstrate traits like competence, mastery and importance, he says, “kids will inevitably rise to the occasion and engage in mutually respectful communication.”

Cox encouraged parents to teach their children that leadership is about connecting with others, and suggested helping children learn to differentiate between impressing and leading. “Impressing others is about conquering,” he said, “leading others is about pulling everyone along with you.”

M I N I M I Z E V U L N E R A B I L I T Y T O

I N C R E A S E C O N V E R S A T I O N A L C O U R A G E

When it’s time to have an important conversation at home, Cox says the kitchen table may not be the best place to talk. With lively demonstrations, Cox showed the audience how having a simple game of catch, or cultivating a matter-of-fact tone of voice, or minimizing eye contact by driving or taking a walk together, and making conversation a background to an activity, has the ability to greatly enhance a child’s communication confidence.

A D O P T T H E P E R S O N A O F C O A C H

Finally, it’s important when working with children to establish that you are in the leadership position, and that you and your child are working together on a specific outcome. Show empathy, respect them as individuals, and adopt the persona of a coach not a boss, says Cox. “A boss is confrontational, a coach stands behind you… a boss criticizes and judges, a coach shares responsibilities with you.” In the end, it’s the parent’s voice that is the most powerful tool to signal meaning and intention. Learn to move your voice to a place that is matter of fact and workman-like. Give your child respect the way you give love—wholly and unconditionally.

To view the entire program on videotape, visit the Friends Academy website at www.friendsacademy1810.org/news- publications/speaker-series.

C O A C H I N G C O M M U N I C A T I O N S K I L L S S P E A K E R S E R I E S — 2 0 1 3

When National Public Radio host Naomi Arenberg chose Friends Academy as the location to record her program, “Living on Earth” last spring, science teacher Peter Zine and a group of young students enrolled in the After-School program were given an unusual assignment: go outside and play! Arenberg was reporting on a newly published book by Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield, entitled: The Wild Weather Book, and she wanted to test out a couple of projects from the book with a handful of curious five- and six-year olds.

The premise of the book is that even when the weather outside is rainy, windy, snowy or icy, there are plenty of fun, creative activities that will encourage children to get out of doors and play. Though we all remember jumping in puddles, walking barefoot in the grass, or wading through a muddy marsh, our overly programmed lives may not always allow critical time and space for children to experience outside play. Bad weather is no excuse, and, as the book illustrates, there are plenty of activities that can be accomplished despite the elements.

At Friends Academy, we cherish outdoor time and schedule daily recess and lunch breaks with time built in for outside play. Science classes take advantage of our 65 acres of fields, woods, wetland, and river to conduct research and participate in citizen science projects. Our sixth grade health curriculum includes a six-week

program of working in the school’s organic vegetable garden, and our After-School program provides lots of activities centered on being outside.

The authors of The Wild Weather Book contend that an activity as simple as letting the wind push you along is an opportunity to learn something about science. So, on that windy day in April last spring, when Arenberg and her team of radio technicians arrived, five young students and Peter Zine set out to do just that. They began by making a wind chime out of kitchen utensils hung from a tree and stringing together a wire whisk, wooden spoons, skewers, pan lids, forks, and a potato masher. They climbed the tree, used a pizza cutter to “mow” the grass, turned a set of tongs into a telescope, and then waited for the wind. Soon their homemade chimes were clanging away.

After a visit to a vernal pool and some time listening to the ribbit of a wood frog, the kids examined fox tracks, fallen trees, and frog spawn. Next they were tasked with making boats out of twigs moss, and leaves. Their creations were a testament to the power of their imagi-nations, which, as Arenberg reported, might just have been the essential message of The Wild Weather Book— that the smallest of ideas can launch big imaginations in the minds of children playing outside.

NPR’s “Living on Earth” is a weekly independent radio program devoted to environmental issues with major funding provided by the National Science Foundation.

To listen to the radio broadcast recorded at Friends Academy, visit our school’s website at www.friendsacademy1810.org, click on the news module, and look for the story entitled: FA students featured on NPR’s “Living on Earth.” There you will find a direct link to the broadcast. If you are interested in gathering more ideas for exploring the outdoors with children, you can visit the publisher’s website: www.goingwild.net/what-is-going-wild/.

by Kyle Riseley, Director

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Radio Play

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Since 1999, Friends Academy students have traveled to New York City in the fall of their eighth grade year. Originally planned to complement the seventh grade camping experience in Chewonki and to provide students with a cultural experience, the trip has grown to meet that goal and many others.

First, students are given an opportunity to apply much of what they have learned over the years to an urban orienteering experience. Each day on the trip includes as much as three to eight hours of group choice time. In the days before they leave, students work in small travel groups to research sites, subway and walking routes, dining options, and to plan their days. Once they arrive, students use maps, street signs, knowledge of how the city is organized, and sometimes the kindness of strangers to navigate their way around. Each group’s itinerary and experience is different, with the exception of three all-school events—a Broadway play, and visits to the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some additional places visited this year included the Tenement Museum, Rockefeller Center, Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Staten Island Ferry, Times Square, the Steinway Store, and the High Line.

Navigating their way around New York gives eighth graders an opportunity to expand their worldview and make new connections with their classmates. In a few short hours, students are transported from Dartmouth, where the tallest things around them are trees, to one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world where even the tallest of trees are dwarfed by the city’s smallest buildings. This and the sheer volume of people they come in contact with helps students to under-stand that they are citizens of a much larger planet.

While surrounded by millions of New Yorkers and visitors from all over the world, students are also mixed together in different travel and hostel groups. They live with one group of students and travel with another, thus having an opportunity to spend time with a wide range of class-mates, some of whom they might not know as well as others.

by Blinn Dorsey, Sally Borden Program Science Teacher

TRY THIS RECIPE

Select

10 strangers

Remove social dependencies

friends, family, wristwatches

Place on the edge of a pan

filled with unusual and stressful

circumstances

Give a slight push

and watch to see they are all fully

immersed

Add

the opportunity to learn and master skills

Shake

a sprinkling of natural grandeur

Stir in

a soup can of skilled instructors

Simmer carefully

skim off the fat and deep-freeze until

needed

Derek Pritchard, the first Executive Director of Outward Bound International

Some say Chewonki is an Algonquian word that means “place of the turning.” What an appropriate word for a place where the tides turn in two directions off the rocky Maine peninsula, and where peoples’ lives can be transformed.

Friends Academy has wisely chosen to send their seventh graders to this place of the turning for many years. The goal of the week outside the classroom is for students to push themselves past their comfort zone, learn what strengths lie within them, and how they can use those strengths to support others. Seventh graders are in the midst of drastic changes in their lives: physically, emotionally and academically. Chewonki offers them the opportunity to develop skills and strate-gies to overcome challenges they will face as they grow into adulthood.

For some, it is the first time they are away from their families. Students are asked to grow into the independence that lies deep within them all. For others, it is the first time they are traveling by canoe.

Paddling a canoe straight in order to cover distance and get to your island campsite is challenge enough. Throw a strong wind in your face and it becomes even more of a challenge. Add an outgo-ing tide and mudflats that are impossible to paddle through (as my group had) and you can imagine the frustration in the minds and shoulders of young folks! Torrential rains, thunder and lightning, cooking in one pot, or learning how to use a “wag bag” for a toilet, these challenges push seventh graders to learn what lies within them and how they can support each other.

Students earned “challenge beads” this year to represent the different ways they pushed themselves and helped each other to make a successful experience in places and ways that are well “outside the classroom.” Seventh graders are turning a corner in their lives; Chewonki gives them a chance to learn who they are, and what they can do for each other, both outside the classroom and in their lives beyond Friends.

by Dave Lobato, Middle School Math TeacherWhat is Chewonki?

U R B A N O R I E N T E E R I N G O N T H E I S L A N D O F M A N H A T T A N

O U T S I D E T H E C L A S S R O O M

Manhattan Muppet Moment

On their field trip to New York City,

what started out as an unscheduled revisit

to the site of a lost (and by the way safely

returned) wallet, turned into an unsched-

uled fifteen minutes of fame for three

eighth graders. Mae Harrington, Audrey

Bird, and Sophie Yates were approached

by Muppets in Times Square that Friday

morning. First they were interviewed

and then they were filmed while a Muppet

named Murray asked them to spell

the last name of ABC’s Good Morning

America host, George Stephanopoulos.

The footage was later posted on ABC’s

Yahoo Good Morning America website

and if you have not seen it, you can visit

the Friends Academy website and check

the news module on the front page.

Or you can paste this URL into your

browser: www.friendsacademy1810.org/

content/manhattan-muppet-moment-

friends-eighth-graders.

W H Y W E G O

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Birthday parties for five-year-olds are always a blast, and the five-year celebra-tion of the Sally Borden Program last spring was no exception. Recognizing our founding has given us an opportunity to reflect on where we started in 2008 and how far we’ve come.

When the Sally Borden Program opened in September of 2008, we followed a school-within-a school model to create a system for educating children with language-based learning differences. In our first year, 24 students were enrolled in grades 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8. Employing tailor-made, multi-sensory curricula, the program produced measureable results, and those early students thrived in reading and writing using instructional materials like Orton-Gillingham, Project Read, Carroll/Singapore Math, Making Meaning, and Being a Writer.

Beginning in classrooms situated upstairs in the Herring Building, Sally Borden students were separated from the rest of the school back in 2008, making inte-gration with Friends’ classes a challenge. With this in mind, the renovation of 2011 added two new classrooms, one

each for 4th and 5th grade Sally Borden classes, nested with their Friends Acad-emy counterparts. Third grade classes were situated together on the second floor of the Herring Building, and sixth, seventh, and eighth grades were housed in the Stites Building. Doors between classrooms were opened, materials shared, and integration was made more seamless. The plan worked well and better matched our inclusive community’s mission.

However, prospective parents were confused! “Where’s the school?” they’d wonder, and I could fully understand their confusion. They were looking for a stand-alone building, and we were completely integrated. In response to our configuration and to align ourselves more closely with the integrated model we were increasingly following, our name was changed at the end of 2012 from the Sally Borden School to the Sally Borden Program at Friends Academy.

Today, our faculty remains the mainstay of our program. Dedicated, determined, and highly trained, Sally Borden teachers work with students and their families to ensure that kids reach their potential.

T H E S A L L Y B O R D E N P R O G R A M 5 YEARS STRONG

affiliated and whose motto is: “no one can do everything, but everybody can do something.” Today, Hannah is teaching Spanish to lower and middle school FA students after teaching and traveling in the southern hemisphere, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, and Nicaragua. She is fluent in Spanish and holds a BA in Spanish from St. Lawrence University.

ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN

Nothing about Will Rennie is accidental. Educated at Georgetown, his volunteer work at the Center for Social Justice during his senior year impelled him to apply to graduate school, which led to an MA in education from Lesley Univer-sity. But Will’s connection to FA goes back to his days as a student at Wheeler. While on his eighth grade field trip to Washington, D.C., Will broke his arm on the National Mall while wrestling with a friend. The break was so severe that he was flown home with a chaper-one from the school, Steve Robitaille. Today, Will leads literature groups for sixth to eighth grade students as part of his work as the new Reading Specialist in the Sally Borden program where Steve Robitaille teaches 8th grade.

MAKING CONNECTIONS COUNT

By the time Katie Nelson attended college she knew what she wanted to do —and today, as a first grade teacher—

BEECH TREE BEGINNINGSwhat she values most about her job is the strong connections she is able to make with her students. “First graders bond significantly with their teachers,” she says, standing outside at recess. At that exact moment, as if to illustrate the point, two students run up and throw their arms around her declaring her a “safe zone” in a game of tag. Five years of classroom experience on top of both a BA and an MA from Smith College have prepared Katie for her role at Friends. Her O-G training at the Children’s Dyslexia Center of Rhode Island has given her an added leg up helping young people learn to read.

BECAUSE EXPERIENCE MATTERS

Veteran Rhody high school math teacher, Debra Cowdin taught mathe-matics to freshmen at Portsmouth High School for thirteen years before traveling with her family, on sabbatical through-out Europe and Jerusalem. Her first days at Friends Academy were spent chaperoning the 8th grade trip to New York City. “It was a great way to get to know many of my future students,” she says. Debra loves to read the classics and is working her way through every-one from Austen to Tolstoy. She also enjoys cooking and travel. With a master’s degree from URI, this experi-enced educator is a welcome addition to the FA Middle School faculty.

REACHING OUT FOR FRIENDS

ACADEMY

When Hillary Parker extends a hand, it just might have a puppet attached to it. As Friends Academy’s Admissions/ Outreach Assistant, Hillary orchestrated “Toddler Two’s-Days” this summer, inviting young families to visit our campus and participate in a weekly stay-and-play program. Featuring puppet shows, music, art, story-time, and op-portunities for socializing, the program gave families a chance to meet Friends Academy early on, and experience some of what makes our school the creative, thriving hub it is. These days, Hillary is frequently off campus—meeting directors of preschools, medical groups, realty offices, libraries, and community centers—and providing them with admissions materials for potential new families. That puppet, though, stays at her desk for another day.

NO ONE CAN DO EVERYTHING, BUT

EVERYBODY CAN DO SOMETHING

Hannah Wetmore was in grade school when her youth group at the Unitarian Universalist Church put an ad in the paper that read: “Bunch of young kids looking to help people. Call us with your service project ideas.” Response was overwhelming and helped launch Change the World Kids, the foundation out of Woodstock, VT with which she is still

by Katherine Gaudet, Director of the Sally Borden Program

All SBP teachers are Orton-Gillingham trained, making it possible to continue small group or one-on-one lessons with students inside a larger classroom setting.

Most recently, the Sally Borden program has embarked on a training initiative, launching the Sally Borden Orton- Gillingham Institute to provide teacher training and mentoring via fellows of the Association of Orton-Gillingham Practicioners and Educators. From teacher training to innovative program design, in many ways we are setting the standard for the education of students with language-based learning differences. Stay tuned!

Katherine Gaudet with Sophie Stockwell ’13,

winner of the 2013 Sally Borden Award.

w w w . f r i e n d s a c a d e m y 1 8 1 0 . o r g

S O U N D I N G S F R I E N D S A C A D E M Y1088 tucker road, north dartmouth, ma 02747www.friendsacademy1810.org fall 2013

Every gift to the FRIENDS ACADEMY Fund is an

investment in the exceptional students and teachers

who make Friends Academy the school it is today!

Inquiring minds confident communicators creative problem solvers green thumbs respectful collaborators courageous learners joyful innovators inspiring artistsThese are the qualities that describe the students and teachers who benefit from your unwavering support.

The Challenge is Back! First-Time Investors

If you have not donated to the Friends Academy Fund in the past, a gift of $50 or more will be increased by an additional $50 from a challenge fund that has been set up by an anonymous donor.

RETURNING INVESTORS

Gifts from past supporters of Friends Academy who increase their last gift by $50 or more, will have an additional $100 added to their donation—twice the amount of last year’s challenge fund.

EITHER WAY, you’ll want to take advantage of this opportunity to increase the impact of your gift. Your support of the Friends Academy Fund helps us plan course-based field trips and outdoor education activities, to purchase new uniforms and equipment for our athletic teams, and provide tools and supplies for our art, music, and dramatic arts programs.

REMEMBER! Any donation is appreciated. Make your tax deductible contribution on-line by clicking on the green “Donate to Friends” icon at www.friendsacademy1810.org or call Jodi Pink, Director of Development, at 508-999-1356 x1129.

INVEST IN THE GRAY AND BLUE