- The Global Leadership Summit cohort is coming into the 202324 school year ready to make an impact. (pg. 1)
- MFS reshapes teacher honorifics policy to adopt traditional a Quaker practice. (pg. 1)
Student Affairs
- With a new clerk dynamic, Student Government is looking to continue past endeavors. (pg. 4)
- To self-study or not to selfstudy, that is the question of many MFS students (pg. 4)
- WordsWorth recounts the history of MFS’s time in the Friends School League, from decades-old MFS championships to the present day. (pg. 2-3)
Guten Tag, Global Leadership Summit!
By Charlotte Nesevich ’25, Associate Editor-in-Chief of Blog
The work has just begun for MFS’s seven juniors and six seniors who attended the Global Leadership Summit (GLS) this past July in Europe. GLS gives students from all over the world the opportunity to “hear from world-renowned keynote speakers, work with local and global experts, and collaborate with peers in small international teams,” according to the organization’s website. This year, the conference took place in Berlin, Germany, revolving around the theme, “Creating a Sustainable Future.” Through “Impact Projects,” each member of the cohort will have the opportunity to continue working collaboratively towards a more sustainable future - right here in New Jersey.
While in Europe, the cohort was accompanied by Head of School Julia de la Torre, history teacher Jackie Scully, and science teacher Matt Lubicky. Embarking on their journey on July 7, the group spent the first half of their trip visiting important locations across Switzerland and Germany. Cohort member Sarah Huynh ’25 said she thought the tour provided important context to the summit: “It was really to give us an idea of a different environment, other than our own. It exposed us to how other countries deal with the impacts of global warming and climate change.”
Switzerland was also home to several important sites. One city in particular, Lucerne, boasts many locations where students witnessed sustainability first hand; the group visited Mount Titlis, a mountain located in the Uri Alps, and the Entlebuch Biosphere, a UNESCO-designated reserve.
The tour continued into Germany, starting with the Black Forst and culminating with tours in the cities of Freiburg and Berlin. Max Wang ’25 said that “going around Europe and visiting cities and learning about Europe’s sustainability was really interesting … a ten out of ten.”
At GLS itself, the MFS students gathered with “students from all over the world … they worked in small groups to come up with a creative project that had to do with sustainability,” Scully said. Students presented first in rooms filled with several small groups, then selected finalists came
together to pitch their projects to the entire conference. A panel of judges chose a winning group, whose work will be featured in the Nobel Prize Museum. One MFS student, Maya Deandrea ’25, was part of a group that advanced to the final round.
But the group’s efforts to increase sustainability are far from over. When the trip was first introduced to students and families in May of 2022, the idea of attending the summit and then, during the following school year, creating Impact Projects, was presented in tandem. The projects give each member of the cohort the chance to continue their efforts towards a more sustainable future on a much smaller and focused scale while drawing ideas from their experiences. “They’re inspired by the projects from the Summit, but they’re also looking at the places we visited and how they might connect to our local community,” says Scully.
The impact projects were not assigned by the Summit itself and are unique to MFS, allowing the process to be flexible. Scully continued, saying, “Ultimately, the brainstorm stage will be sometime in October. We’ll be meeting once or twice a month … [Head of School Julia de la Torre] envisions that this will be more than a one-
time thing - that this will grow into other groups of students doing trips like this and bringing it back to the school.” In the cohort was Environmental Committee clerk Tara Esposito ’24, who expressed the importance of these impact projects: “We’re going to use the knowledge we learned, and we’re going to try to involve the community. We gained this experience, so we can lead groups from the community that weren’t in Berlin to make a change.”
Additionally, Esposito shared some of her ideas for the Impact Projects. Esposito said, “My group at [GLS] came up with an idea for kits for school to start their own composting and farming … That would be a good thing to bring back to the school”.
Huynh also recognized the lasting effects of the group’s time spent in Europe: “You have to remember that the impacts of global warming and climate change are not just in your small community. It’s affecting the whole world … The importance of perspective definitely came into play on this trip.” Through the group’s experiences and impact projects, MFS as a whole can begin to say goodbye to practices that aren’t environmentally friendly, and “Guten-Tag” to a more sustainable future.
First Name Basis: MFS Evolves Forms of Address Policy
By Himanshu Sahore ’24, Staff Writer
In a new policy aligning with the Quaker value of plain speech and providing the opportunity for enhanced self-expression, MFS faculty and staff now have the opportunity to choose how they wish to be addressed by students. The decision, instituted at the start of the 2023-24 school year, allows teachers to move beyond traditional honorifics such as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” and strengthen this Quaker practice at MFS.
Dan Zemaitis, the Chester Reagan Chair for Quaker and Religious Studies, explained that the policy reflects MFS’s commitment to following Quaker testimonies: “From a Quaker perspective, [the policy] really has to do with Quaker history and making sure that the school’s practices align with our Quaker values. We looked at what a number of other schools do, and there are some that maintain the traditional honorifics. But a lot of them have moved to either a model of Teacher [first name] or just [first name] or letting the teachers pick, and we felt that that was the best way to go about it, because it more closely aligns with putting [our Quaker values] into practice and letting our lives speak.”
History Department Chair Mary Anne Henderson expressed their support for the decision, saying, “I’m glad that the policy is in place for the ways it opens up the opportunity for intentionality on the part of teachers, to reflect and think about ‘Why do I use the name that I use? What do I want to convey? What kind of relationship do I want to have with my students?’”
The policy change comes at a time in MFS history when the school is making a conscious effort to recognize and uplift the diversity and identities of all community members.
Sharing their personal experiences using forms of address, Henderson added, “One of the big reasons why I use the name ‘Mary Anne’ is connected to gender identity for me. Being a non-binary person, a lot of the time honorifics, especially the gendered honorifics, don’t feel quite right. Using my first name is a way to just get around that and feel a lot more confident and genuine in myself. I think something about the policy changing that really helps is that, because I’m not the one person, or one of the few, that are doing this, it makes me feel more included in the community.”
Explaining how the decision came into practice, Zemaitis said, “We spent about two years as a faculty discussing this and figuring out what the best way forward was. So, instead of making a decision saying everybody has to do the same thing, we felt it was best to allow each individual faculty and staff member to make that decision for themselves.”
Describing the implementation of the policy and how teachers made their decisions, history teacher Clark Thomson said, “[Head of Upper School Noah] Rachlin, when discussing this with us at the beginning of the year, gave us a way to think about it … he said, ‘How would you sign an email to a parent of one of your advisees before you knew them?’”
While the new policy has prompted reflection and choice among teachers, many students feel adapting to the change will require significant adjustment. Ali Sabir ’27 shared his opinion, saying, “I think it’s important to respect what teachers want to be called, but it’s definitely a big transition for students. In certain cultures, it’ll definitely
be awkward having to communicate with teachers using their first name.”’
Elaborating on the cultural use of forms of address, Elina Shah ’24 said, “Although I understand the Quaker practice of calling teachers by their first name, I have been raised in a culture that shows respect for its elders by using honorifics, and I feel I’m being disrespectful when I address teachers by their first names.”
Esha Acharya ’25 concurred with her peers’ views, saying, “I prefer using Mr. and Mrs. because that’s what I’ve been raised on, but I’m glad teachers have the chance to express themselves by sharing what they want to be called.”
Thompson noted that many of his students already spoke to him without forms of address, but the policy change made him reevaluate how he wanted to be addressed moving forward: “Even though students called me just ‘Thomson,’ not ‘Mr. Thomson,’ and I sign emails and letters to them with that, as I thought about [formal communication], I could never just write Thomson to a parent; in fact many times when I’ve written to a parent I always have to remember to put in the Mister. So the idea of the nickname versus the honorific was something I had to consider. But as I considered that, I decided perhaps the way I can meet that is just by going with my first name.”
Acknowledging the complex situation students, faculty, and staff will navigate as they acclimatize to the policy change, Thomson remarked, “I don’t know how comfortable it’s going to feel after thirty-two years of teaching without being called Clark.”
The cohort poses with their coach driver, Franz, while on a tour in Freiburg, Germany before the Summit in Berlin. Photo by Julia de la Torre.
Photo by Powershift2012 on Flickr.
(Licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0)
Friday, September 15, 2023
A Friendly Goodbye: MFS Begins Last FSL Season
By Dinah Megibow-Taylor ’24, Editor-in-Chief
Following a 43-year tenure, Moorestown Friends’ fall 2023 sports season will be its last in the Friends School League (FSL). Students were first notified of the potential departure in a message from Head of School Julia de la Torre on December 7, 2022, and the decision to leave the FSL and subsequently join the Burlington County Scholastic League was publicized in a press release on February 16, 2023. Multiple factors influenced this departure, namely the concern that out-of-state league participation was greatly hindering the ability to achieve higher seeding in state playoff tournaments.
A founding member of the league in 1981, Moorestown Friends enjoyed over four decades of league competition with the eight other independent schools — Abington Friends School, Academy of the New Church, Friends’ Central School, Friends Select School, George School, Germantown Friends School, Shipley School, and Westtown School — in the FSL. Though not all of these institutions are Quaker schools, a common misconception among students, all league members “are drawn together by the common Quaker belief of the value of healthy competition in athletics in the context of strong community and shared values,” according to the official FSL website.
Danielle Dayton, MFS Athletic Director, noted that she derives the most joy from seeing students out on the fields playing in a league that they love, and for many years, the FSL was that league. The palpable sense of community that came out of FSL home games, in particular, was special to Dayton: “It brings us together in cheer [and] in enthusiasm as a school.”
An alumna of Moorestown Friends, Administrative Assistant to the Athletic Director Debra Collins Williams ’74 has seen MFS athletics through two lenses: from the perspective of a tri-sport athlete herself and as an administrator in her 33rd year. “Prior to [the inception of the league], MFS played Friends schools … I remember traveling to Germantown Friends School, to George School, to Friends’ Central, [and] Friends Select,” Williams recalled.
“Because [regional Friends schools] were playing each other for so many years, they decided, ‘Let’s form a league!’” mused Williams. As a tennis player, she noted that despite differences in MFS game culture, there was still a sense of competition akin to that which students feel today: “Our coach used to drive us to matches, and a parent. So we would pile into a station wagon … that’s how different [it was compared to today]. But there was still that competition.”
Dayton explained that before 1981, MFS and other Friends schools would compete “in the spirit of Friends,” that is, in games that fostered athletic competition in a way that adheres to the Quaker testimonies. “That grew into a desire to make [competition] more formal, and that was at a time when sports were forming leagues,” said Dayton. “If you think about the history of sport … as [high school sports] continued to grow, schools decided to form these groups together, which we call ‘leagues,’ to say, ‘Oh, let’s do this together.’” Thus, more formal competition between Philadelphia-area Friends schools came to be.
MFS has won 30 FSL Varsity championship titles and 18 JV titles since the league’s founding. In both Girls’ Tennis and Girls’ Basketball, MFS has won seven FSL championships. The most recent championship, though, belongs to the MFS Golf team, which has clinched two consecutive FSL victories. Hannah Puc ’24, helping to bring home both FSL Championship titles while earning the first place individual award, capped the MFS Golf team’s experience last spring: “I went in not even thinking about winning individually,” said Puc. “We went in, and we really wanted to win. We [had] been talking about it since last season — how we want[ed] to go back and win again, so when we finally got it done, it was such a good feeling, especially since it was our last [season] in the Friends League. Going out with a bang was super cool.”
MFS wraps up its decades-long
in the FSL, it will walk away with
and
with other Quaker and independent schools in the
Dayton stressed that even though the formal relation to the FSL has ceased, MFS will look to keep these Friends school relationships in the future through out-of-league competition.
by semicolons, captions correspond with photos descending from top left.) Beating Westtown 1-0 in double overtime, MFS Varsity Field Hockey won its first FSL Championship title in 1985, four years after the founding of the FSL; Girls’ Basketball circa 1990 huddles together during a game. Their 1989-90 season marked their 3rd FSL Championship title; In 1998, David Mouber ’98 (above) defeated his Abington Friends School opponent 6-1, 6-1 to become the 1st Singles FSL Boys’ Tennis individual champion. Alongside Mouber, Sean Meckley ’98 defeated Friends’ Central to become the champion in the 2nd Singles bracket; At the turn of the century, FSL competition remained strong as MFS took the tip-off against FCS in a Girls’ Basketball game; MFS celebrated the centennial of soccer competition between Germantown Friends School, Friends Select School, and Moorestown Friends in September of 2009. Pictured is former Head of School Laurence Van Meter ’68 with student athletes; In 2014, Baseball won its first and only FSL championship title under the guidance of former Coach and Athletics Assistant Director Ronald Obermeier. On George School turf, MFS won 4-2; In fall of 2016, MFS won its first Boys’ Soccer FSL championship after advancing from the semi-finals where the team narrowly beat Germantown Friends with a score of 0-0 and 6-5 PKs. In the finals, MFS won again on its penalty kicks against Academy of the New Church 0-0 with 8-7 PKs; In 2019, Girls’ Tennis won their 3rd consecutive FSL Championship title, winning 5-0 against Germantown Friends to secure an undefeated FSL season. This championship marked the program’s 7th all-time FSL Championship title; Donning first place medals and bringing home the plaque, the 2023 Golf team
post-FSL victory. Pictured (L-R) is Coach Joe O’Hara, Alex Kwak ’23, Hannah Puc ’24, Katherine Lee
poses
’25, and Colin Montenegro ’23.
Photo by Danielle Dayton.
MFS Summer Courses: Structure Matters
By Maya DeAndrea ’25, Chief Copy Editor
While some students stay as far away from school as possible during their break, other MFS students use the summer as an opportunity to take additional courses. This past summer, MFS sponsored study for two classes: Algebra II and Biology I. Each course offered both independent study and class options for students to choose from, but MFS students found that
more structured courses helped them feel more prepared for their exams.
Algebra 2 students chose between learning material independently or taking a 6-week course at Good Life Learning. The course, recommended by MFS, was a total of 12 classes, 3 hours each. In terms of course difficulty, Ali Sabir ’26 shared that the course work was man-
ageable and not overly complicated. This confidence in the material was not shared by Livia Kam ’26, who chose to self-study: “I’m kind of going [into the placement test] blindly.” Kam said she wishes that MFS would have provided a bit more structure to help students who didn’t have the time to take the Good Life course. Similarly, Biology students either learned independently or partnered with One Schoolhouse, an online program, to take a more structured course. Andrew Zhou ’25 chose the former option and commented, “It’s fine [for me] because I’ve taken Biology previously, but for people that have never taken the class, it is tough to grasp.”
Another student, Gabe Harvey ’25 was disappointed in the course he took with One Schoolhouse. Although MFS recommended it for students who wanted a class-like setting, it was “completely asynchronous” according to Harvey.
Sarah Huynh ’25, along with Harvey, offered a unique perspective, having taken both the Algebra 2 class at Good Life last year in addition to Biology I independently this summer. Comparing the two models, Huynh reported that “going to a class every day was super helpful
because it was dedicated time you put towards studying. You can get that same amount of dedication with self-studying, but it all has to come from you.”
Harvey agreed that not having the structured course to motivate himself was difficult: “I didn’t wake up and say ‘Hey I want to bio today,’ it was the last thing I wanted to do. If it’s a class then I have to do it; it feels like there’s more purpose.”
Both Harvey and Huynh acknowledged that they felt more prepared going into the Algebra 2 test than their Biology test this summer. Kam, taking the Algebra 2 test next week, also feels unprepared for her exam, as opposed to Sabir who feels that “with some review [he] will be fine.”
The commonality between interviewed students who feel confident and well-prepared? They took their course with a more structured model. Harvey describes that his ideal structure would be an in- person class at MFS. As Harvey puts it, “You’re actually being taught by the school, you know what you’re supposed to be learning, and it’s in person. That’s simply a better environment.”
Promises of Progress: What to Watch for in Student Government
By Luke Iacono ’25, Opinion & Editorials Editor
Moving into the new school year, MFS Student Government is keen on continuing a tradition of on-campus change inspired by student voice. Ending last year with the induction of a largely novel roster of clerks alongside myriad proposals, new and returning, the realm of student government is set to be a point of innovation and experimentation as committees adopt new approaches in realizing the concerns of the student body.
Speaking to continued initiatives in Agenda Committee, Agenda Clerk Mason Levens ’25 expressed his excitement about a variety of student-proposed efforts, such as a revised scheduling system for clubs and committees. Levens also cited the committee’s persistent efforts to bridge the gap in communication between students and school administration regarding the status of proposals drafted within Student Government, noting in particular “a physical organizational board in the Upper School Hallway for students to monitor the progress of Agenda proposals throughout the decision-making process.”
Speaking more generally, Levens stated: “Agenda Committee is the primary liaison between students and administration and things like the progress board really help us serve that function in a way that’s accessible to the whole student body.”
Echoing similar sentiments, Meeting for Worship for Business Clerk Dinah MegibowTaylor ’24 commented on the importance of bringing a greater sense of clarity to the processes by which proposals are acted upon
within Student Government by better “defining the lines of what is in [Student Government’s] control as a decision making body.” MegibowTaylor additionally stated her resolve in using MFWFB to “keep everything aligned [across committees] once this school year gets started.”
Beyond individual decision-making spaces, Recording Clerk Miles Wilkins ’25 noted an increased focus placed on cross-committee synergy throughout the coming year: “We’re in the process of updating the Student Government website to reflect a larger number of school committees with more information about each of them.” In addition, Wilkins said, there will be attempts to “create more cooperation between the work done in, usually separate, spaces like Agenda and Diversity.”
Efforts such as updates to the website and bulletin board, according to Wilkins, are the product of deliberate effort within the Upper School student government to, as stated by Levens, “ensure the Committees serve as spaces that serve the entire student body in the most comprehensive way possible.”
Editor-in-Chief - Dinah Megibow-Taylor ’24
Associate Editor-in-Chief of Blog - Charlotte Nesevich ’25
Associate Editor-in-Chief of Print - Sophia Lalani ’25
Associate Editor-in-Chief of Broadcast - Hannah Puc ’24
Managing Editor - Elina Shah ’24
Chief Copy Editor - Maya DeAndrea ’25
Opinions and Editorials Editor - Luke Iacono ’25
Chief Social Media Director - Katherine Lee ’25
Podcast Producer & News App Director - Vikram Verma ’25
Chief Sports Editor - Charlotte Nesevich ’25
Chief News Editor - Mason Levens ’25
Art Director & Science Columnist - Alicia Leung ’24
Deputy News Editor - Zaydan Lalani ’26
Deputy Art Director - Chloe Marshall ’26
Deputy Social Media Director & DEIB CoordinatorMakenna Wakahia ’26
Deputy Sports Editor - Jack Cranmer ’25
Deputy Sports Editor - Gabe Harvey ’25
Features Editor - Livia Kam ’26
DEIB Coordinator & Weather Correspondent - Charlie Beetham ’24
Staff Writer - Ethan Cohen ’26
Staff Writer - Gauri Kulshreshtha ’26
Staff Writer - Himanshu Sahore ’24
Adviser - Diana Day Adviser - Debra Galler
Whether in a class or individually, students will use these textbooks to guide their summer study.
Photo by Sophia Lalani ’25.
Clerks Mason Levens ’25 and Miles Wilkins ’25 work on the designated Student Government bulletin board in preparation for the 2023-24 school year.
