The Winter 2021 Independent

The Independent

WINTER 2021

Cardinal Chatter Class of 2021 Edition

“ I remember playing all sorts of tag games at recess in lower school. This seems simple but I look back really fondly at the time we had with past members of our grade and just playing and having fun. I also recall each tree decorating to be very joyful and a great way to celebrate the holiday season.”

What is one of your most fond memories from your time at SPS?

JULIA JALLO, STARTED AT SPS IN PRESCHOOL

“ There are many good memories – one that stands out is Pet Lovers’ Club in Fourth Grade.

We brought in foster kittens for an assembly, we built outdoor cat shelters for rescue organizations, and I brought in my own cat Pinky to show her off. We had a great time watching her and her friend Biscuit explore our classroom.

To this day that club is a really special memory for me.”

EVAN COHEN, STARTED AT SPS IN PRESCHOOL

Class photo taken in the fall of 2019

“ My fondest memories are from this year during the fall when Eleni and I would dance around in the classroom to Christmas music.”

SOPHIA LE, STARTED AT SPS IN THIRD GRADE

“ Winning the election with Sophia in Seventh and Eighth grade.”

GAVIN EWING, STARTED AT SPS IN SIXTH GRADE

“ In Third Grade, Ms. Miller’s class got to watch a baby sloth in a bucket video.”

“ One of my fondest memories at SPS is of traveling to Echo Hill in Fifth Grade. It was a wonderful bonding experience with the sixth grade and brought everybody in our grade closer together.”

EVIE PEASE, STARTED AT SPS IN SECOND GRADE

WILLIAM KESSLER, STARTED AT SPS IN FIRST GRADE

Meet Nurse Valerie Hill, MPH, BSN, RN Perhaps the most critical step our School took last spring, while preparing for our reopening in September, was to bring Valerie R. Hill, Certified School Nurse, MPH, BSN, RN, on as part of the Administration. “ One of my fondest moments at SPS was all of the times when we enjoyed a candid four square game.”

ELENI MURPHY, STARTED AT SPS IN PRESCHOOL

“ One of my fondest moments at SPS was School House Rock.”

ALEXANDRIA STEPHENS, STARTED AT SPS IN SIXTH GRADE

“ Boat building in Sixth Grade.”

BRUNO MICOLUCCI, STARTED AT SPS IN KINDERGARTEN

She has been invaluable in helping steer our health and safety efforts, and offering her vast experience and knowledge as we worked to execute the COVID-19 protocols.

Valerie received her Bachelors of Science in Biology from Tougaloo College, her Bachelors of Nursing from Georgetown University, and her Masters of Public Health from Mercer University.

Before making the career switch to school nursing, Valerie worked for over 10 years developing public health programs for various federal, state and local governments as well as nonprofit agencies on issues concerning children and families. A lifestyle shift founded her nursing career, and as a NICU nurse, she learned what it means to treasure every moment of this unpredictable life. In her spare time, Valerie enjoys her time with her family and boxer puppy, Rocky.

“ The first day I came to SPS in PK, and seeing everyone for the first time. A lot of the people I remember meeting I would know for 10 years!”

JIARAY SHI, STARTED AT SPS IN PREKINDERGARTEN

“ I think that my fondest memory, or rather ongoing tradition, is the Quote of the Day. When someone says something funny, unusual, or ridiculous, a member of the class of 2021 writes it on the board in the Quote of the Day section, which is a square we drew with dry-erase marker. An example of a previous quote is, ‘I’m going to make Egg Man a geometry concept!’ It’s a fun way to blow off steam and confuse anyone who wasn’t there to hear the context. ” MAISIE QUINN, STARTED AT SPS IN KINDERGARTEN

“ Boat building was really fun.”

EMMA GIORDANO, STARTED AT SPS IN PREKINDERGARTEN

Have a question for Nurse Hill?

Email her at vhill@st-peters-school.org.

Equity & Social Emotional Learning

An Ongoing Commitment to our Mission and the Community Code As students, faculty and staff continue to navigate an unprecedented school year together, our new initiatives around Social Emotional Learning and Racial Literacy have been instrumental in helping to build resilience, equity, and community.

The Kindergarten Class learns about skin, and skin color, as part of the RLC lesson on melanin.

Racial Literacy

Character Development At the core of our Social and Emotional Learning curriculum is the focus on connecting and building relationships with each student.

Coming from this place of mutual understanding, we are able to more effectively impart the skills to manage emotions, resolve conflict and improve self-awareness. SPS adopted the Character Strong program this year, which is a curriculum built around essential character traits and social emotional skills, including Courage, Respect, Perseverance, Gratitude, Honesty, Kindness, Empathy, Responsibility, Cooperation, Creativity.

Using the tools provided by CharacterStrong, our students and faculty work together through lessons that equip them with ways to understand, practice, and reflect on these traits and skills. We are truly committed to weaving social-emotional learning and character education into the daily fabric of everything we do as educators, and the implementation of this new CharacterStrong curriculum is yet another step in cementing this part of the program into the St. Peter’s School experience.

This year, our School also embraced a new Racial Literacy Curriculum (RLC), which was developed by Monqiue Vogelsang for Pollyanna. This curriculum aims to encourage kindness, bravery, and empathy as students explore and gain a better understanding of the cultural and racial diversity of local and global communities.

RLC lessons are designed to develop a more inclusive and positive perspective of self, others, and the larger world in regard to race, ethnicity, and culture.

This initiative has been years in the making, but took on a new sense of urgency in light of the acute social injustices our nation is experiencing and the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The RLC program gives us age-appropropriate tools and language to tackle the current cultural shift from “colorblindness” to antiracism. For our youngest students in the ECD, this means weaving lessons on empathy and kindness into what we teach every day, and celebrating differences in ourselves and others. In the upper grades, discussions turn towards inequality and activism, looking at existing policies that promote institutional racism, effects on different communities, as well as examining our own implicit biases.

As the creator of the curriculum, Monique Vogelsang says, “we want to teach our children to think, not what to think.”

The goal of the RLC is to provide our students with the opportunity to form their own educated opinions based in facts and broader perspectives, in an environment where they feel comfortable and supported in challenging their own thoughts and the thoughts of others.

Pollyanna’s Racial Literacy Curriculum for Grades K-8 is designed to help students gain knowledge about race as it has been constructed in the United States, and aims to help students acquire an awareness of their own racial socialization and skills for engaging in productive conversations about race and racism.

City Curriculum

Engaging with the Greater Philadelphia Community While the pandemic has prevented our students from exploring our City of Brotherly Love in the ways they have in the past, it hasn’t stopped our teachers from coming up with inventive ways to tap into the wealth of educational resources and industry experts that Philadelphia has to offer – in a safe and socially distant manner!

Eighth Grade class met virtually with a representative from the Bethesda Project to learn about homelessness in Philadelphia, as part of the research phase for their Independent Study Projects.

First Grade hosted visitors via Zoom, to enhance their Social Studies Curriculum about our urban community and what it means to be a “community helper.”

And FUN FACT: they are all class parents!

• A pilot for the National Guard presented to the students, who then had the opportunity to construct a plane out of balsa wood.

Seventh Grade completed their Boat Build project, which was carried over from last school year, and saw the finished projects – two fully functioning row boats – head off to be used by the general public at Bartram’s Gardens.

• A Director at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission talked with a class about building a city, to help them prepare for a project.

REGULATIONS OF THE CITY PLANNING COMMISSION

• A volunteer for the Community Tree Planting in Philadelphia had students simulate planting trees using cardboard, string, and playdough.

Third Grade “went” to the Penn Museum to experience the Global Voyagers program and learn about ancient artifacts from around the world.

Alumni Spotlight

Jack Taylor ’54, St. Peter’s Choir School for Boys If he closes his eyes, John “Jack” Taylor ’54, can still smell the campfire smoke from the many bonfires hosted at Camp Wisawanik, the summer home of the St. Peter’s Choir School for Boys, where Jack was a student from 1948-1954. St. Peter’s Choir School is the name by which SPS was known prior to becoming an independent school in 1969. Today, Jack is a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the US Air Force and resides with his wife, Linda, in Washington. He recently shared a series of detailed memoirs he wrote about his time as a student under the direction of the famous choir and headmaster, Dr. Harold Wells Gilbert.

At the time, the School’s choir performed locally and throughout the East Coast under the guidance of Dr. Gilbert.

The boys were busy with performances throughout the year, appearing on stage and in department stores in Philadelphia, at Carnegie Hall in NYC, and Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. It was considered a great honor to be in the choir and required countless hours of work and dedication. The boys also studied history, Latin, science, math, literature, and other traditional subjects. In addition, Jack and his classmates learned the art of public speaking by memorizing poetry and short passages – much like our Declaimers today!

Attendance at Camp Wisawanik was considered a reward for participation in the choir and was free for choir members. It was located on a small plot of land deep in the woods of South Sterling, PA, and was owned by Dr. Gilbert’s family. Campers put on skits, spent the night in (leaky old) tents, marched on nature hikes, swam, competed for awards and more. While the camp no longer exists, it lives on in the hearts and minds

Linda and Jack Taylor ’54

of many of our choir school alumni era, whom, as “city kids,” relished the opportunity to be in nature for an extended time.

Says Jack about his time at Camp Wisawanik and St. Peter’s, “St. Peter’s Choir School and Camp Wisawanik and the many experiences they gave me in my formative years, played a significant part in developing my character, teaching me leadership skills, building a strong educational foundation and setting the stage for how I would grow into adulthood. In these, my later years, I fondly reflect upon those days and think about my classmates and schoolmates who enriched those days and my life so significantly. My memories are filled with the sounds of the voices of young boys of long ago and the faces of so many who made me who I am. I am most thankful for my years at St. Peter’s Choir School.”

“St. Peter’s... played a significant part in developing my character, teaching me leadership skills, building a strong educational foundation and setting the stage for how I would grow into adulthood.”

JACK TAYLOR ’54

Ways to Support Our School The role that fundraising plays at SPS is now more crucial than ever. Independent schools have always relied on fundraising to “close the gap” between tuition and operating expenses, and the plain fact is that during this pandemic, that gap has the potential to be wider than normal.

We hope you will consider joining our community of families, faculty and alumni who have already made it a philanthropic priority to support St. Peter’s School. And if you have already made your gift to the School – we are so appreciative of your participation in the Annual Fund. To read our Case For Support or make a gift, visit:

st-peters-school.org/give

A Note to our Teachers When “Thank You” Isn’t Quite Enough

There are so many superlatives we use to describe things we are grateful for and when you arrive at a moment when you really truly want to recognize a group for their tremendous dedication, unwavering support of children, and steadfast care through challenging times, no words seem like enough.

Saying thank you is an important part of our day for us all. It is also an important way we share in the collective success of what we have all accomplished this fall.

Thanking our students for their flexibility and comfort in adapting to something new and thanking the families for their sacrifices and willingness to keep our students safe to come into the building are important aspects of our community.

Thanking our teachers for all they have done and for all they continue to do is equally important.

We benefit from an outstanding group of teachers at St. Peter's. They are excellent educators, but more importantly, they are wonderful human beings who have sacrificed a great deal in order to keep our students safe and properly cared for while in the building this year.

“ The SPS faculty are amazing, they are the best of the best. The faculty have every attribute that is needed for St. Peter’s to be a great community and school. I know if there is anything that I need help with I can go to them and they can get me the help that I need.”

Gavin Ewing, SPS Student Government Vice President

We remember with such fondness the morning we walked into School on a Monday morning in November, to see that our families (organized by the Parents’ Association) had taken to the black top and the sidewalk with chalk over the weekend to write message of appreciation to our faculty and staff! See back cover for more photos.

Preschool (Age 3) through Eighth Grade 319 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147 | 215.925.3963 | st-peters-school.org