Moorestown Friends School, Moorestown, NJ
DECEMBER 15, 2016
2016-2017, Issue 1
Head of School Van Meter Announces Retirement
By Chloe Jones ’18, Blog Editor
In This Issue GIFT GUIDE
Page 2-4
WordsWorth has you covered for everyone on your list. From the PE/Health department to the Math department, it’s all inside.
What’s CLICKIN’ ON MFSWORDSWORTH.com What’s Our Status? By Alex Horn
MFS Students and Alumni React Online to 2016 Election From Moorestown to the Big Screen By Kayleigh Schweiker
MFS Runs Commercials on TV MFS Seniors at the Polls: Some First Times During a Year of Last Times By Chloe Jones & Ali Chesnick
“While senior year is filled with nostalgic “last” experiences, it is also filled with brand new experiences; this year, numerous MFS seniors will vote in their first Presidential Election.” Field House Gym Gets a New Coat of Paint By Noah Magaziner
“The Field House Gym (FHG) had not been refurbished for many years, and with the other ongoing refurbishments, this year was a perfect time to make sure the gym stayed up to date. KEEPING THE FAITH By Chloe Jones
Checking in with MFS’s New Quaker Leadership DAN SUSSMAN Q&A By Ewan Larkin
“While the transition for new teachers can be tough for some, Sussman has seemingly slipped effortlessly into his new routine, adding his own creative spark to the MFS English Department.”
GALLERY
A rush of buzzing noise enters the Head of School’s office as middle schoolers push their way through the doors of Stokes Hall. “All the energy, just all the noise we just heard in Stokes Hall, I love that, and I’ll miss that,” said Lawrence Van Meter, Head of School. “Because in retirement I won’t be in settings where hundreds of kids of all ages are running around and enjoying their experience.” In November, Van Meter surprised the MFS community with the news of his forthcoming retirement, effective June 2018. As perhaps the most prominent figure in the MFS community for the past 15 years, this announcement shocked students and teachers alike, who were left to wrestle with the truth that all things must come and go. When Van Meter first came to Moorestown Friends, it was as a student. As an “original,” he spent 14 years at MFS, graduating with the class of ‘68. When Van Meter compared the MFS he knew as a student to the MFS today, it was clear that he is proud of the changes that have been made: “[When I was a student] it was not diverse at all. There were no students of color, and my class was mostly either Quaker or other Protestant kids and Jewish students. For the most part, there were no Catholic students and there were certainly no Hindus or Muslims.” In addition to the lesser diversity of the time, MFS was also a much smaller place: Van Meter’s graduating class consisted of just fifty students, and even that was unusually large for the time. This smaller scale meant not just fewer students, but fewer teachers, classes, and extracurricular opportunities. However, Van Meter recognized that many things have indeed stayed the same, and he said he likes it that way. “So those things were very different, but I would say that the really important things haven’t changed much, and I’m thinking particularly of the sense of community in the school, and the incredible teachers we had then and we have today,” said Van Meter. He especially noted the supportive relationships students and teachers had then, and continue to have today. Somewhat ironically, Van Meter noted that while more Quakers attended MFS during his time as a student, what he calls the “Quaker Dimension” of MFS actually feels stronger today. “[It’s] what I like to refer to as the Quaker Dimension of the school, which was sort of automatically strong back in the ‘50s and ‘60s because about a quarter of the students were Quaker,” said Van Meter. Today, only about 3% percent of MFS students are Quaker, which is typical for a modern Friends school. Yet despite this decline, Van Meter argues that the Quaker aspects of MFS education have only gotten more prominent over the past 50 years. He noted “[That is] in part because we are much more intentional about it, and we teach more about it. We take Meeting for Worship more seriously than we did when I was
a student here,” Van Meter said with a laugh. “That doesn’t mean every student today thinks Meeting for Worship is wonderful, but I would say most students respect it, and appreciate it for an important part of the life of the school.” Van Meter also reflected on coming back to MFS as an adminisrator, and not as a student. Despite the fact that the middle and upper school hadn’t changed much physically since his time as a student, there were still changes to transition to; “I hadn’t been in these halls for, at that point, around 30 years, and just being in the spaces as a middle-aged adult, was very different, “ said Van Meter. Being back in South Jersey was a transition as well, considering the area was more suburban than both what it was before and the places he had been living. “But coming back ... became, ‘It’s my home, and it’s my work,’ and I tended to reflect less on my ancient history in the school.” Referring to the “call of Moorestown Friends” in his letter to School Committee Clerk Nick Smith, Van Meter elaborated on this phenomenon. “It’s my hometown, home school, I grew up in this Friends Meeting, my sisters went to school here, my mother was on the school committee, so there were all of these pieces that collectively were a very strong draw.” Of all of his plans for his time post-MFS, Van Meter’s move out of the Head House will be one of the most interesting. Van Meter shed light on this transition, saying, “Yeah, we own an old farmhouse about 40 miles South of here. We’ve owned that for about 15 years, so it’s long been our plan to move there.” With some current repairs and renovations, the house will be ready by the time Van Meter retires. “So we’ll remain in South Jersey, but not right here in Moorestown,” he said. Considering Van Meter has the same amount of time left at MFS as current juniors, he is already facing junior-year nostalgia. “Yeah, for sure, and that’ll only become more acute as the time passes,” he said. Due to the time he’s spent with the class of 2018, such as Lower and Middle school class trips, Van Meter feels a special connection with the junior class. “I’ve known for quite some time that that would be the class I would graduate with, so yeah that’ll be pretty emotional,” said Van Meter. As for his successor, while Van Meter will not be officially involved in the search, he remains a resource for the Search Committee. He told WordsWorth, “The Search Committee needs to be able to choose the person they think is going to be the very best, and that may be somebody who is a lot like me or maybe someone who is totally different from me, and that’s fine.” And in regards to the new Head of School, Van Meter had some advice.“Two things, really,” said Van Meter. First, he urged the new Head to be receptive to new ideas, while also respecting the traditions and culture of MFS. Secondly, he stressed the importance of the MFS sense of community, pointing out this is the most special thing about MFS. “That’s a culture that
Photo by Kat Clark, Former Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications
Van Meter giving a presentation about Quaker values to 2nd Grade in 2014. needs to be, that dynamic is one that needs to be fostered, supported,” said Van Meter. “I think it’s especially important that whoever comes in here is committed to fostering the great relationships that exist in the school,” he added. And as a message to the rest of the MFS community, Van Meter hopes they support the new Head. “Make that person feel really welcome. Present to that person all that’s great about this school,” he said. Of all things in and about Moorestown Friends, Van Meter will not miss just one specific thing; rather, in his own words, he will miss the “totality” of it. “It’s the totality of all of those everyday events,” he said. Connecting this feeling to the play Our Town, one of his favorites, he expanded on this idea. “The theme of Our Town is that it’s not the special events in life. If you could look back on your life much later, in the end what’s so important is just the everyday aspects of having spent — by the time I retire I will have spent, let’s see, 17 years here as Head, and 14 years as a student, — 31 years here, on a daily basis, over a nearly 70 - year period, so that’s a lot of collective experiences.” Despite the news of his retirement, Van Meter still has a year and a half or so to appreciate the joys of the MFS community, and to enjoy the sounds of hundreds of children outside of his office.
Then and Now: Head of School’s Impact
By Andrew Rowan ’19, Multimedia Editor
Photo by Andrew Rowan ‘19, Multimedia Editor
Dodgeball Tournament Winners Brendan Filoramo (‘20), Surya Reddy (‘18), Andrew Lin (‘18), Menarsh Patel (‘18), Lawrence Miles (‘18), Alyssa Runyan (‘18) See albums from Snowball, Dodgeball, and more on
Facebook.com/MFSWordsWorth
Back in the distant year of 2001, the average price of a dozen eggs was 90¢, a gallon of gas was $1.46, and the freshman class was not even born yet. However, between then and now, one thing has remained a constant: Larry Van Meter has been Head of School at MFS. By the time of his retirement in 2018, he will have sat behind the Head of School desk for 6208 days, and in that time, MFS has changed a lot. Perhaps most importantly is Van Meter’s creation of a plan that emphasizes two twin pillars as the school’s foundation. As noted on mfriends.org, one focuses on “academic rigor” while the other focuses on “spiritual and ethical growth.” Students and parents will agree that this is one of MFS’s greatest assets.
Van Meter has also overseen major improvements to academics, extracurriculars, athletics, and even facilities. His list of accomplishments goes on and on: He added the Senior Capstone program, took part in acquiring Hartman Hall in 2012, and saw the opening of the Field House and Arts wing in 2003. Van Meter also supervised the introduction of Mandarin into the World Language department, and to this day the Chinese program remains a core part of many students’ academic experience. And as School Committee Clerk Nick Smith noted, Van Meter has seen “three Friends Schools League championships (in field hockey, baseball, and boys’ soccer), ten NJSIAA South Jersey
Photo by Andrew Rowan ‘19, Multimedia Editor & Larry Van Meter ‘68
Head of School takes the first ever selfie at the 2015 Thanksgiving Happening
championships, and four boys’ fencing NJSIAA state championships.” Yet despite all these tangible accomplishments, perhaps Van Meter’s greatest asset has been the attitude and ethos he has established from the top. His down-toearth personality, combined with his motivation for each and every student to succeed, has allowed hundreds of students to successfully learn and grow over the last sixteen years.