S p ot l i g h t
2021
The 2020-2021 school year was full of bumps and curves, but it was also full of opportunities to put the classic Orchard House creativity and spirit to work making it an unforgettable year in all the right ways. Students rose to the occasion through bigpicture displays of leadership and modeling, with a flexibility that gave them perspective on focusing on the possible rather than the impossible, and through everyday
5th graders covered our block in messages of encouragement and courage.
adaptations like distanced games for recess. Keeping everyone safe for traditional events like Grandparents’ and Grandfriends’ Day and graduation meant that guests who weren’t typically able to join us due to distance could tune in to connect with their granddaughters and watch their graduation speeches live. The 8th grade class created a week of costume challenges that resulted in our most successful Spirit Week ever.
Students’ academic inquiry remains despite masks and distance—so did Ms. Brookman’s cast of science We welcomed grandparents and characters! grandfriends virtually, letting us connect with loved ones from all over. (left) Eighth graders presented their graduation speeches to live audiences at school and online.
Above all, teachers and students were able to build and nurture the relationships that form the essence of the Orchard House mission—these bonds are what truly cultivate our girls’ intellectual curiosity, social responsibility, and emotional integrity while ensuring their physical well-being.
The Class of 2021 dressed as the security detail for 8th Grade homeroom teachers Taylor Hollander and Maria Howard.
WELCOME TO THE
SPOTLIGHT Amid the flurry of unknowns and ever-changing Covid guidance, Orchard House School opened its doors for the 2020-2021 school year certain of two things: that the health and safety of our community was our top priority, and that our mission of educating and inspiring middle school girls was more important than ever for their well-being and growth. In this issue you will see how OHS continued to introduce our students to inspiring individuals in the Richmond and global community, kept traditions alive using creative and flexible mindsets, and endeavored to share our mission through outreach despite the restrictions placed on us by Covid. What you may not see is the bravery, trust, compassion, and hard work displayed every day by every member of this community - faculty and staff, students, parents, and our OHS Board. You may not see the ways we held space and supported one another as we processed the realities and emotions of a challenging year. Laura Haskins Head of School Orchard House School
Our combined efforts, both seen and unseen, not only strengthened our school but sharpened our dedication to our mission and our students. As I look back on the 2020-2021 school year, my heart is filled with pride and gratitude. I am happy to share this year’s Spotlight with you.
Sincerely,
HAPPY TRAILS TO MS. PELNIK! In June 2021, longtime Orchard House teacher Cathy Pelnik said goodbye to her classroom and students as she solved for x a final time. A beloved fixture of OHS since before we even opened the doors to our first students in 1998, Ms. Pelnik has been with the school through its inception and its growth. Beginning as a business manager and a technology teacher during Orchard House’s first year, Pelnik set up the school’s first website and computer network by the second year, but she found her passion when she taught a section of 6th grade math. From there, this passion grew into teaching all grade levels of math during her time at OHS and eventually co-chairing the math department. In retirement, Ms. Pelnik is able to focus on some goals she has had in her sights for quite some time. “I am excited for the flexibility of my next life phase and am looking forward to traveling in Peru and Cambodia to pursue some hiking and cycling experiences. I am also planning on volunteering at the Jifundishe School in rural Tanzania, where I will be tutoring adults who are preparing for their university entrance exams.” Some of her favorite moments throughout the years include exchanging math jokes with the girls, early morning chat sessions with students, watching the girls’ enthusiasm grow as they understood how easy it was to do algebra, and seeing where
alumnae’s lives are leading them. “One of my dearest OHS memories that always makes me smile is dancing in the faculty room with other faculty members while eating donuts!” While much has changed since the time when OHS was a school of 17 girls in 1998, Ms. Pelnik says that one thing that has never changed over the years are the personal connections with the girls and faculty. Thank you, Ms. Pelnik, for the years of sharing your mathematical passion with all of us!
The day Ezibu Muntu visited our Zoom, the day ended with laughter and lightness. The local African dance, music, and culture organization began with a drum call to get everyone into the meeting and led students and faculty through a demonstration of their instruments and then a dance. Members of Ezibu Muntu, who have been bringing West African art and culture to students in Richmond for almost 50 years, encouraged everyone to let go of their insecurities and move their bodies however we could, even if they felt silly—”Everybody’s always a student, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” By the end of the program, everyone in the building had found a way to find joy and celebration in movement. Ezibu Muntu was one of four programs organized by a parent and faculty group for Orchard House School’s first Black History Month series. Deciding on a focused theme of Local Black Art in a Time of Protest, the group invited artists that represented dance, visual art, music, and theater to talk to students about their creative process and how art can be and has been used to make an impact. Other guests were the teenage co-founders of Brown Ballerinas for Change, local theater organization The Conciliation Project, and renowned public artist and community art organizer Hamilton Glass. During the lead-up to the month-long series, students took a deep dive into the lyrics of songs by Black artists, displaying posters they created throughout the school to highlight literary devices found in the lyrics and as a way of sharing a communal “playlist.” During the visit with the young co-founders of Brown Ballerinas for Change, they spoke to students about their viral photo taken in the summer of 2020 at the circle at Monument and Allen, an experience that led them to found a nonprofit devoted to creating advocacy opportunities, championing social justice, and increasing participation of underrepresented populations in ballet. The ambitious teenagers talked to our students about channeling your art into activism, balancing dance, school, and their new
organization, and how to handle backlash. Students learned that being an activist is not easy, but it helps to do your research, be genuine, and remember, “There are always going to be people not on your side, but it’s hard to hate on girls doing what they love. We won’t change what we fight for, what we love, and what we do.” The Conciliation Project (TCP) is a Richmond-based organization that focuses on faciliatating open dialogue about racism and systems of oppression through dramabased activities and workshops. TCP’s workshop asked students to think about what makes a story true. An onthe-spot collaborative experimental theater piece planned and led by students demonstrated the difference between conventional western theater and the participatory nature of ritual poetic drama. Hamilton Glass impressed upon students the power of art for an individual and for a community. His explanation of the concept behind his Mending Walls project, which paired up local artists from different cultures and backgrounds for a collaborative public mural, focused on being willing to have difficult conversations about varying viewpoints and to approach collaboration in a way that incorporates more than one voice. Especially in the case of public art, Glass noted, “Sometimes you have to expand your ideas so you can be a voice for many.” He also encouraged students to experiment and explore, telling them, “It’s okay to make a mistake in front of someone because you’re growing every time you make a mistake.” After the program, students all received a page of a composite mural designed by Glass to commemorate the series. The mural, which incorporates imagery from Black art as well as from protests in Richmond, includes work from every OHS student reflecting on what resonated with them during the series and was hung by parents and faculty in the school’s front stairwell to serve as a reminder of the ongoing impact of local Black art in changemaking.
RESPONSIVENESS | SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY | INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY | EMOTIONAL INTEGRITY
LOCAL BLACK ART IN A TIME OF PROTEST
CREATING A COMMUNITY OF READERS
RESPONSIVENESS | INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY
In typical years, when you walk through the Orchard House library you are almost guaranteed to find girls buried in a book with legs dangling off furniture, students meeting for their afternoon peer tutoring session, or groups rehearsing their lines for a skit they’ll perform in history class the next day. It is truly a hub for curiosity, creation, and collaboration. But this wasn’t a typical year, and as the library became the 6th grade classroom to accommodate physical distancing, the usual earmarks of OHS reading culture took on a different form. In her first year at Orchard House School, English language arts teacher Lindsey Leeth took on the task of strengthening the community through reading with a multi-pronged approach. Mrs. Leeth, who teaches 6th through 8th grade, had been researching reading engagement before starting at Orchard House and is active in social media communities of readers and educators. “My goal here as a teacher at Orchard House is to establish and create a community of readers, not just within ourselves, but to extend it beyond our walls,” says Leeth. An immediate and tangible extension of this reading community came in the form of participation in the annual Global Read Aloud, a program run by a teacher who identifies a book in a variety of developmental levels—from early childhood to young adult—and encourages classrooms in over 80 countries to read the book on the same 6-week schedule. The classrooms can then use the GRA interface to seek out connections with other classrooms, via Flipgrid, email, teleconferencing, or whichever way works best for a classroom. This year, the 7th graders read the middle grade selection Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park, connecting with classrooms in Illinois and Michigan through flipgrid and eventually exchanging pen pal-style letters with a classroom in Canada. They began by making plot predictions and responding to the 1800s setting and the theme of discrimination, but quickly students from both classrooms were interweaving their personal experiences with their analyses as they continued their backand-forth writing.What feels like a tradition of yore—the snail mail international pen pal—is a link in a chain of approaches to authentic reader response writing. “That’s what reading is all about is making connections, either with your reading, or with other cultures, or with yourself, and that’s what they were doing.”
7th grade students excitedly read the replies from their Canadian literary pen pals.
“My goal here as a teacher at Orchard House is to establish and create a community of readers, not just within ourselves, but to extend it beyond our walls.” Students were also tasked with keeping track of their independent reading by sharing their reviews of books on a website Mrs. Leeth and librarian Penn Ward planned as a means of community recommendation. “I thought, ‘What makes me an engaged reader?’ And that’s knowing which books to choose.” Based on the popular online reading community interface Goodreads, OHS Reads asks students to review a book, tag it with key themes to make it searchable, note each book’s genres, and assign a rating. At year’s end, students had submitted over 200 reviews, and while the first batch of reviews were overwhelmingly positive, as the year progressed, students became more and more comfortable submitting critical reviews. Mrs. Leeth notes that the community-building of OHS Reads even led an 8th grader to ask if she would be able to have continued access to the site once she left Orchard House. “That’s pretty cool that she still wants to be a part of that book community that we’ve created.”
(left) 7th graders exchanged letters with pen pals from Saketchewan during the 2020 Global Read Aloud. (right) Students submitted over 200 book reviews this year to OHS Reads, the Orhard House School site that collects book ratings from student readers.
To keep up the enthusiasm of reading in a community, Mrs. Leeth capitalized on one of the greatest motivators for adolescent students—independence and choice. A midyear survey of 7th and 8th grade students showed that they were not enthusiastic about reading books chosen for them. “I was making great efforts to find books that were relatable and different, but I get it. They are so often given a book in English class and told, ‘Here’s a book and we’re all reading this.’” To offset the convention of the assigned book, Mrs. Leeth compiled an array of choices guided by the book selections from Project LIT, a grassroots movement composed of reading circles that focus on culturally sustaining stories and diverse authors. Students took a few days to read descriptions of the books, filling out a form eventually to rank their top choices. Once selections were made, each group of around 4 students formed a book circle, setting their own reading pace and leading their own discussions every Monday in class. This autonomy also allowed students to consider thoughtfully what commitments they could reasonably make in terms of length, complexity, and intensity of emotional content. At the conclusion of the book circles, students wrote reviews for the OHS Reads site, and some created book trailers to entice others to read their selection.
Students filmed and edited book trailers to entice others to read their selections.
To give the 6th graders an opportunity to experience the book circle format, Mrs. Leeth announced the creation of an optional book club, which would vote on a book to read collectively and meet once a week during lunch. The majority of the class joined and decided to read Time Bomb by Joelle Charbonneau, a thriller written from multiple points of view. After a month of energetic discussions with one another, the 6th grade hosted the author on Zoom for their final meeting and met her with plenty of questions about her process— Where did you find inspiration for your characters? (Chats like these!) Have you ever written something that didn’t get published or that you didn’t finish? (Yes! Whether you’re an athlete or a writer, you always need practice to get better.) In the end, this community of readers was indeed extended beyond the walls of the classroom. And the question that was on everyone’s tongues when the call with the author ended? “Did you guys see her bookshelf?” These group experiences centered on chosen reading are so important to Mrs. Leeth’s approach. “To create a community and to have them doing it together and seeing that it is cool and fun—that it’s not just something that one person does in a corner hiding with a book, that it’s this thing that everybody does—creates that positivity around reading so that it can become a habit that they take with them throughout high school and adulthood.”
“To have them doing it together and seeing that it is cool and fun—that it’s not just something that one person does in a corner hiding with a book, that it’s this thing that everybody does—creates that positivity around reading.”
Author Joelle Charbonneau Zooms in to talk to the 6th grade book club.
6th grade book club students pose with their copies of Charbonneau’s novel Time Bomb.
RESPONSIVENESS | INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY
CREATING A COMMUNITY OF READERS
RESPONSIVENESS | EMOTIONAL INTEGRITY
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM ALUMNAE The high school application process is often a challenging few months for 8th graders, but their inability this year to visit prospective schools made it all the more difficult for them to get a feel for the intangible feel of a high school campus or event. Luckily, Registrar and High School Counselor Maria Howard, who is also the P.E. and Health teacher, gathered a group of OHS alumnae who graciously and enthusiastically shared their experiences both of their specific high schools and of the transition from Orchard House to high school. Alumnae fielded questions about everything from workload and academic support services, to sports opportunities and dress code, to extracurricular activities and how to get comfortable trying new things.
Here are the things our alumnae wished they knew before going into high school:
• Although change is really scary, it can be a good thing. I’ve met so many great people and gotten so many opportunities, and although I was very reluctant about it, it really worked out.
• At Orchard House, lockers were a big deal, and we liked our lockers a lot—but lockers in high school, at least at my school, aren’t really used a lot, and it kind of slows you down having to go.
• High school isn’t really that scary. I think it can be talked up a lot, but at the end of the day, wherever you go, you’ll make friends. Just make the most of where you go and have fun with it.
• Maggie Walker’s kind of its own whole little thing—you can’t really apply your normal rules of high school to it, because you’re just going to get stressed out. So you just kind of have to give yourself a break.
• It’s really important, at least for me, to branch out and try new things because it’s really important to explore your interests.
• Don’t slack off in the beginning. Work hard all years because, trust me, when you get to senior year, GPA is a really big deal. So I would just say always work your hardest.
• Ask for help, because someone will give it to you, and it’s much better than being stressed out by new things, like not knowing how to find your homework and turn in assignments. • Try a little bit of everything, because it really helps you find your passion in the years moving forward, and it helps you find your group. Thank you to our alumnae for being so generous with their time and expertise!
Anastasia | OHS ’17 Eliza | OHS ‘18 Evelyn | OHS ‘18 Jessica | OHS ‘18 Jordyn | OHS ‘17
Lindsey | OHS ‘18 Nicole | OHS ‘18 Rose | OHS ’18 Sarah | OHS ’17
• Take advantage of extracurricular activities that the school has to offer. My school is really big, so I was overwhelmed at first, and then I started to go to more football games and I ended up meeting some of my best friends from just putting myself out there.
High Schools Represented
Appomattox Regional Governor’s School Collegiate School
Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School of Government and International Studies
Open High School Glen Allen Center for Education and Human Development St. Catherine’s School James River High School Center for The Steward School Leadership & International Relations Trinity Episcopal School
Was 2020-2021 a breezy, typical year here at Orchard House? No way! Did we find ways to keep traditions, celebrate our bonds, and build community further? You bet.
THRONE PARADE The presentation of the 8th Grade Thrones is a tradition we worked hard to maintain this year. When we couldn’t hold Winter Ceremony like usual in December, we waited for warm weather and took to the streets for an outdoor Throne Parade.Throughout the rest of the year, 8th Graders used their Thrones when they delivered their reflective Throne Talks to the school community and again when they graduated.
Head of School Laura Haskins, presenting the Class of 2021 with her own Throne Talk —
GRADUATION
“Tradition was very important to the 8th graders, and they were saddened to know that we would not be able to sing live. After some back and forth, we narrowed it down to two songs, and we ended up doing a medley, which we recorded on Soundtrap, a digital audio workstation that let them record and collab separately at home or wherever they were. Then we combined their recordings to create a more choral sound. So even though they didn’t get to sing live, the tradition was still there when we played the recording during graduation, and they were the first class to hold that tradition in such a different way.”
VIRTUAL TALENT SHOW
OHS Librarian and Talent Show organizer Penn Ward on why this is his all-time favorite Orchard House event —
“Over the past year, you have faced challenges none of us could have ever dreamed of, and although it hasn’t always been easy, you have arrived at this day. No matter whether you realize it or not, you’ve cultivated strength, resilience, and grit over this past year. Even on the days when you felt down, or low, or bored, or even angry, with each day you sharpened your ability to do hard things. And when you pair that with all of your natural talents, gifts, and smarts, that makes for a very powerful combination. This foundation is going to help you stand firm as you leave Orchard House and carry on through life’s journey. I am incredibly encouraged to know that there is a strong, smart, and capable group of women who will lead their communities, and those women are you. We are in good hands.”
PHONATHON
Members of the hardworking OHS Board of Trustees put in some work on the switchboard during Spirit Week making calls for our Annual Fund phonathon! Our school community is grateful for a crew that wholeheartedly supports the OHS through leadership and service. To support the OHS mission, visit the support page on our website.
OHS music teacher Stacie Brown on how she was able to keep the tradition of the 8th grade graduation song alive amidst restrictions on live singing —
tinyurl.com/supportohs
#1: Each performer is putting part of her identity out there to proclaim who she is and what she loves. Figuring out what you’re all about is a huge part of middle school, and the talent show lets these girls give you a status report on how that’s going. #2: We are all about stretching in middle school, and performing in a talent show is exactly the kind of productive risk we like to see kids taking. #3: When we’re able to be all together in our auditorium, the applause and the cheers are shockingly loud, and it’s no different when we’re online. The chat box fills up with words of encouragement from fellow students, and you get to see in real-time what it looks like to have a community that bolsters these girls and reinforces their confidence.
RESPONSIVENESS | EMOTIONAL INTEGRITY
REIMAGINING COMMUNITY-BUILDING
Orchard House School 500 N. Allen Avenue | Richmond, VA 23220 orchardhouse.org | 804.228.2436
FROM BRAVE NEW GIRL TO TRIUMPHANT TWEENS Following the disappointment of having to postpone our March 2020 Brave New Girl conference, we welcomed the chance to reimagine the format using Zoom for an evening webinar series in February 2021. During the global pandemic, many of us were questioning what kids needed most from moms, dads, and teachers. The Insight into Today’s Up-and-Coming Tweens series focused on adolescent development and included discussion about social media, self-confidence, racial equity, adolescent education, and remote learning challenges. Thanks to a generous donation, Orchard House was able to invite public educators to attend the webinars and receive continuing education credits at no charge. Sara Gilliam, who with her mother Mary Pipher co-wrote the 25th-anniversary edition of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, explored changes—and constants—in the lives of adolescent girls, focusing on how culture impacts girls’ mental health. Diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioners Chéleah Googe and Abigail Whorley led a workshop on cultivating conscious children, offering concrete tools for engaging middle school students and beginning the work required of them as the adults in the lives of children.
Local therapists Louise O’Connor and Dr. Meghan Lawson presented tools to help families approach uncertainty, including effective coping skills, communication tactics, sibling rivalry, screen time, social skills, and when to seek outside help.
Expanding on her internationally-renowned TEDxTalk, Eva DeVirgilis shared how her experience as a makeup artist exposed her to hearing women constantly apologize for their appearance, as well as how to change our language so we model the body positivity, turn messes into successes, and embrace failure with no apologies.
Head of School Laura Haskins knew that gathering virtually as educators and parents to share what we’ve learned and what we’ve been seeking answers to would be powerful. Orchard House was delighted to provide that forum for parents and teachers to have these conversations and learn from one another.