Spring 2018 Independent

The Independent

SPRING 2018

Student Spotlight

Alumni Spotlight

THE HAUGEN SIBLINGS ’18 ’23 ’23

PACE AND SUZANNE DUCKETT ’88 ’87

ONE OF THE GREATEST BENEFITS OF THE PRESCHOOL THROUGH EIGHTH GRADE JOURNEY AT ST. PETER’S SCHOOL IS THE CONNECTION SHARED BY STUDENTS FROM AGES THREE TO FOURTEEN. This special relationship is amplified when a student has a sibling in another grade. Maddie Haugen ’18 was in Fourth Grade when her twin siblings, Gwen and Jamie ’23, started Prekindergarten at SPS. Maddie found it sweet when they would run up to her in the hallway just to say hello, and for Gwen and Jamie, it was exciting to have someone older and “cool” to greet every day.

All three of the Haugen siblings love art class and the May Day Celebration, but if you ask them, the similarities stop there. Gwen and Jamie love the addition of difficult math concepts in Third Grade, while Maddie preferred the history lessons and field trips she was able to take in Second Grade.

Jamie loves his sports class, Gwen thrives in a girls’ running group, and Maddie focuses on dancing. Despite their differences, the siblings enjoy the time they get to spend together both at home and at school. Maddie has become the twins’ French tutor, and offers lots of advice on how they can succeed without her help in their years to come at SPS. Next year, Maddie will go to The Baldwin School, a fact which Jamie especially is not looking forward to, as he loves seeing his sister in the hallways at school. Although she is excited about the freedom and challenges that await her in high school next year, Maddie says that she will miss the small size of St. Peter’s School. This environment has allowed her not only to grow close to her own classmates, but all of the other classes and faculty as well. She says of SPS that “Even if you don’t have siblings, you know the younger kids from buddy lunches and other things, who will come up and hug you, which is a lot like having younger siblings and a school family.”

Suzanne ’87 and Pace ’88

Pace and brother Warner

WHO WOULD IMAGINE THAT A CHANCE ENCOUNTER WITH A ST. PETER’S SCHOOL CLASSMATE, MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AFTER GRADUATION, WOULD LEAD TO A GREAT LOVE STORY? Suzanne ’87 and Pace ’88 weren’t particularly close friends during their time at SPS. However, Pace will tell you that “the liberal arts education at SPS with theater, music, and the arts, as well as things like the Thanksgiving Walk, those experiences engrained a sense of traditionalism, and shared values, which reconnected us when we met again in our twenties.”

When they ran into one another that fateful night in the early 2000s, Pace still remembered Suzanne as the star of the stage at St. Peter’s School. She had been the lead in both the Christmas and Shakespeare performances in her Eighth Grade year, which set her up for success in her continued education, and eventually as a professional actress. Suzanne says she is “really grateful to have been cast in those roles, which paved my future and opened the door to the excitement and passion I had for acting which I went on to continue studying.”

Although he had performed as an extra in the same Shakespeare play where he first glimpsed Suzanne’s acting talent, Pace’s life took a very different path after SPS. Pace is now a doctor focused on child and adolescent psychiatry. Pace explains that “the sense of closeness, security, and safety that St. Peter’s had for us did impact how I think about the education systems that kids are in now...Posey Barlow embodied what a good listener was to children. To give a kid a sense of respect when they read a poem or spoke in class, embodied the sense that you were valued as a student and person.”

Pace and Suzanne, now married, are still in touch with well over half of their classmates. Occasionally the friends will get together for reunions and they are grateful to have these truly unique friendships. Pace paraphrased the movie Stand By Me, “We don’t make better friends than we do at 12,” to describe the relationships that come from St. Peter’s School. The idea of this close-knit community becoming actual family has been wonderful for the Ducketts, and many others who, perhaps unknowingly, found their forever partners in this beloved school.

Boat Building Project “ We found out that we were going to start doing ‘boat building’ in the fall.

When I first heard about it, I thought we would be building model boats, not something as big as the boats actually are. I was so surprised, and excited, to see that we would actually be able to use them.” SARAH TAYLOR ’20

Sarah had the exact reaction that Upper School science teachers Mr. Parker and Mrs. Rekstad were hoping to elicit from students when they joined together with Philadelphia Waterborne to bring boat building to SPS. When taking an urban watershed course with Nick Pagan, the creator of Philadelphia Waterborne, both teachers were amazed to see what a connection being on the boats could give students to their natural environment. Every other US grade at SPS had a major science project, the Carver Science Fair in Fifth and Seventh and the Rube Goldberg Project in Eighth, so they were inspired to bring this project into our Sixth Grade curriculum.

This project also made the most sense in terms of crosscurricular connection. There are opportunities to include discussions on the history of navigation and exploration, geography, different cultures experienced through travel, and

even to participate in George Washington’s historic crossing reenactment. At its core, boat building is the ultimate hands-on STEAM project involving science (buoyancy, simple machines, the environment), technology (hand tools, power tools, even the 3D printer), engineering (blueprints, construction), art (painting/decorating the boat), and math (measurement, fractions, scale, proportion, etc.). According to Mrs. Rekstad, “When doing the project, the kids are measuring and it has to be precise. Every once in a while you’ll hear a student say Oh, we just did this in class and for them to be able to apply that is really cool for them, and for me as a teacher.”

In the fall, Mr. Pagan came in with a drawing of the boat construction with scaled measurements. Students took the drawing and, under the guidance of Mr. Pagan, built the boats from the planning stage to completion. Although initially the

project. Just making it as a class made us all closer.” That is not to say that there weren’t obstacles in working as a class as sometimes one student would struggle with a new skill they were learning or they would disagree on design elements. This project became a lesson in teamwork, as much as science or woodworking.

grade wanted to divide into one team per boat, they came to realize that it would be more effective to take advantage of everyone’s different strengths on both boats to help overcome any issues that arose. As student Connor Loughran-Moore ’20 said, “Working together as a class on a big project that we will all get to use and benefit from was my favorite part of the

On a rainy day in May, several grades from St. Peter’s School headed out to Bartram’s Gardens for the official boat launching. The Sixth Graders were able to not only see their boats succeed in the primary goal of flotation, but they were able to row out and experience them for themselves. The students felt an incredible sense of accomplishment and fulfillment seeing the boats in action. One of the boats was purchased at the SPS Annual Auction, and the other will remain at Bartram’s Gardens for visitors to use to experience nature first hand, thank you to our Sixth Grade Class. We are looking forward to seeing this project grow and continue for years to come.

Class of 2018 Secondary School Decisions

ANGELINA ATACAN, William Penn Charter School

OTTO HUBER, LaSalle College High School

TEMI BAMBE, Church Farm School

CARSLIE JONES, Friends Select School

PHOEBE CLOUSER, Academy at Palumbo

CHRISTIAN JALLO, Germantown Friends School

DREW COHEN, Germantown Friends School

ANTHONY KINSEY, Friends’ Central School

CHRISTIAN CROWDER, The Haverford School

AVA PLACHTER, Merion Mercy Academy

BILLY DONATO, Springside Chestnut Hill Academy

LILY SHEMTOV, William Penn Charter School

CHARLOTTE DUCKWORTH, Central High School

SAHAR WILLIAMS, Science Leadership Academy

MADDIE HAUGEN, The Baldwin School

Read for the House IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY, YOU CAN’T GO ANYWHERE AT LUNCHTIME, RECESS, OR AFTER SCHOOL WITHOUT SEEING A STUDENT READING A BOOK. Although reading is fundamental year-round at SPS, in February the stakes are high as students participate in Read for the House. Coordinated by Reading Specialist, Mrs. O’Brien, this program is presented by Beneficial Bank as a servicelearning project that raises funds for the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House through school partnerships. The Ronald McDonald House is a non-profit organization that provides the families of children staying in local hospitals with housing and programing to create a home away from home. Every grade at SPS participates, either in the classrooms or individually.

Through participation, our students are helping families in need, while also improving their reading comprehension, grammar, critical thinking skills, and hopefully developing a love of reading that extends far beyond the month of February.

This program has been an SPS staple for many years, but recently it was included in our Garnet and Grey competition. This has added an extra challenge and momentum to the program, as students earn points for their team and raise money for charity with each minute they read in February. Our School has raised over $6,000 each year since 2015, and this year we raised over $10,000 for the Ronald McDonald House. Several of our top readers attend a special awards ceremony held behind the scenes at major Philadelphia sports stadiums. Mrs. O’Brien is so proud of how involved and generous our families have been in supporting this wonderful program, and hopes that it will continue to grow in the coming years.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Program THE SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL) PROGRAM AT ST. PETER’S SCHOOL HAS BECOME A DEFINING ASPECT OF OUR CURRICULUM. Several passionate teachers, along with School Psychologist, Dr. Karen Edelstein P’89, and Learning Support Specialist, Mrs. Briana Mahon, who make up our SEL Committee have found creative ways to incorporate the concepts of SEL into our School. Our SEL Program now includes students in all grades, Preschool through Eighth. Social and Emotional Learning is all about being more aware of oneself and your needs. Students work on skills like being a good listener, being a good learner, being mindful, and focusing on empathy. For Mrs. Mahon, the hope is that once students are more self aware they are able to give back to other people because “when you feel good about yourself, your self esteem is higher which allows you to be kinder to others. It comes full circle.”

At first, students were hesitant to adopt these concepts and sometimes struggled to adjust to a mindful state. However, now four years into the program there has been a huge shift in the students’ perspectives. Students who start this program early have an easier time adjusting to social and emotional changes as they grow both inside and outside of the School.

Our Fourth Graders who began the SEL Program in First Grade, have even began to guide curriculum, asking for more opportunities to engage in acts of kindness within their

community. The SEL program has undertaken many studentled projects over the years, such as random acts of kindness and a take-a-smile wall, that have allowed students to spread the lessons learned in Social Emotional Learning throughout the School. In 2018, the entire school participated in a positivity month where our SEL program engaged not only the SPS community but the larger Philadelphia community through a wall display and social media challenge.

DON'T FORGET TO GIVE!

St. Peter’s School Annual Fund st-peters-school.org/give

Photography by Kathryn Raines

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