@SPS Newsletter Spring 2022

325 Pleasant St, Concord, NH 03301 www.SPS.edu

Spring 2022

CARING FOR HERSELF AND OTHERS

Meet Elizabeth Esteves ’23 When Elizabeth Esteves ’23 joined the St. Paul’s School community as a Third Former in fall 2019, there were challenges and opportunities she was looking forward to: invigorating academics, the chance to pursue her interest in photography, and a school community where both she and her twin sister, Catherine ’23, could nurture their distinct identities in a way that hadn’t been possible at the tiny K-8 charter school they had attended in New Jersey.

THE SCHOOL TODAY:

2021-22 Admission Cycle

157

new students, including 97 Third Formers 44 Fourth Formers 16 Fifth Formers

Coming to SPS from

27 U.S. states and 17 countries Elizabeth Esteves ’23, Friends Program peer leader and Self-love Club founder.

47

Percent of new students who self-identify as non-Caucasian

1,509 Number of applications for the 2022-23 academic year

15.7 Acceptance rate as a percent of applications

One challenge she hadn’t counted on was trying to keep a fourth grader engaged in a 45-minute virtual meeting every week.

“It’s hard,” she says with a laugh. “Fortyfive minutes on Zoom is really, really long with a 10-year-old.”

During the 2021-22 school year Esteves served as the Fifth Form peer leader for the Concord Friends Program’s Youth Mentoring Program, which pairs SPS Fifth and Sixth Formers with elementary schoolers at Concord’s public Broken Ground School. As the head mentor for her form, she communicated directly with the adults at the Friends Program. She also met weekly with her own mentee — over Zoom — playing virtual chess, completing Harry Potter trivia quizzes and otherwise following the lead of the shy girl with whom she was matched in the fall.

“It’s something I wanted to do starting as a Third Former,” Esteves says of serving as a mentor, explaining that she was inspired by a close friend, a senior, who would bring her mentee to the Upper for dinner as part of their two-hour mentoring session every week. “It was just so cute, and it seemed so fun.”

The program was suspended in spring 2020 because of COVID-19, and shifted to an online format when it restarted.

Esteves is hopeful that she and her mentee will be able to meet in person when the program resumes in the new school year. “There’s a lot of things that make in-person easier,” she says, “but I think one of the most important things is that the program is focused on students who have difficulties at home or need additional support for whatever reason, and being able to bring them [to SPS]

where they can be around high school students gives them a vision of something different, what opportunity can look like.”

Esteves also hopes her Sixth Form year will give her the chance to bring to life an initiative she started with Audrey Biles ’22 and Dru Strand ’22: the Self-love Club, aimed at promoting self-care among her fellow students — something she believes is needed at a school as academically rigorous as SPS. “I think it can get a little overwhelming sometimes and when students focus on their homework or their community responsibilities or their athletics, then they don’t devote any time to their own needs,” she explains. “It doesn’t have to be big things; we’re thinking goody bags with self-care products, emails with self-care tips, maybe smallgroup de-stressing events like meditation and yoga.”

Esteves has a busy year ahead. In addition to continuing as a peer leader for the Friends Program, she will be a prefect in Ford House (her sister will be a prefect in Conover Twenty), extend her leadership role with the Saturday Night Life club, and do photography for both Humans of SPS and the yearbook — a passion she’s pursued through a range of classes in the SPS Art Department and may try to continue in college. Her goal with the Self-love Club is to establish a routine and a format that will allow it to continue after she graduates from SPS. “It’s so easy here to get caught up in the workload and the expectations you set for yourself — I’ve done that myself,” she says. “What we really wanted with this club was to remind students that it’s always okay to take care of yourself.”

— Kristin Duisberg

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Tola Olorode ’22 Named a Gates Scholar When Omotola (Tola) Olorode ’22 started at St. Paul’s School in fall 2018, he was clear about what he was looking for in a high school. Following in the footsteps of his brother, Taiyo ’20, the Third Former from New York City knew, as his family already did, that SPS would emphasize character-building as well as academic rigor and the opportunity to engage with public service and athletics. Four years later, he’s equally clear about how those attributes will carry forward as he graduates from SPS as the School’s first recipient of The Gates Scholarship — a highly selective college scholarship from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that will fund the full cost of his attendance for four years at the University of Chicago.

“I feel honored, really honored, to be a Gates Scholar,” Olorode says. “But this scholarship isn’t an end goal — it’s a means to an end … the job attached to this honor hasn’t yet started.”

Olorode, who is thinking about studying business economics or biomedical engineering at UChicago, is just one of 300 graduating seniors out of 37,000 applicants to be selected for the Gates Scholarship. “My college adviser, Mrs. Singletary, was the one who suggested I

his Sixth Form season and the COVID-19 pandemic both limited his opportunities to compete, but his contributions to SPS and the AAU basketball teams with which he has played since 2015 were sufficient to earn him an invitation to a camp for recruited studentathletes at UChicago last year, and then a call from his future coach last Dec. 26. “UChicago was my dream school,” he says, laughing as he adds, “Christmas came only a little bit late. For both sports and academics, it’s a perfect fit for me.”

Olorode is one of 300 U.S. high school seniors to earn the prestigious scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

apply,” he explains. “Whether I had a question about the college applications, the Gates Scholarship, the interview process … she was always there to answer my questions and be a positive influence. For the Gates, she told me not to let the numbers affect my view of my chances at it, and if it didn’t work out, just to be ready to pivot and move on to the next thing.”

That it did work out is a testament to Olorode’s hard work and the time he devoted to activities both in and outside the classroom at SPS — in addition to academic achievement, the Gates Scholarship emphasizes leadership and has a significant public service component.

Olorode counts among his favorite experiences at SPS his two years as a Friends Program mentor for an elementary school student at Concord’s Broken Ground School, despite the fact that COVID-19 restrictions meant he and his mentee could meet only virtually. He also was an Advancement Student Ambassador and a member of Onyx, the School affinity group for students who identify as Black, African American or of African heritage; he served as head of SPS Japanese Society — Olorode’s mother is Japanese and his father is a Yoruba, Nigerian, and he grew up speaking both Japanese and Yoruba — and he sang in the SPS Choir for two years.

Olorode, who will play basketball at UChicago, played soccer and ran track as a Third Former in addition to suiting up for the SPS varsity basketball team his Fourth through Sixth Form years. Injuries during a portion of

For all his hard work, Olorode is quick to credit others for his success — including his parents and his teachers, personal basketball trainers and other adults at SPS. In addition to college adviser Myra Singletary, he names science teachers Theresa Gerardo-Gettens and Ally Bryant, humanities teacher Colin Campbell, math teachers Lacey Fredericks and David Morgan and former basketball coach Michael Glazner. “They’ve helped me along the way, literally kept doors opened for me and my peers, day to night, whether in person, at office hours or on Zoom,” he says. “I hope to give my best efforts to the Gates Scholarship and make everyone who has made this honor possible for me proud.”

Olorode, who graduated on June 5, will begin his journey as a Gates Scholar at the end of June, when he travels to Los Angeles to attend the Gates Scholarship Summer Institute, a four-day program to learn more about the scholarship, college, and career building opportunities and to network with his new Gates peers. He says that as exciting as these next steps are, it’s not the prestige of the scholarship that matters most to him. “It’s more of what I can use this opportunity to do,” he explains. “One of many things that’s been emphasized to me by my family is to be able to give back to kids just like me — to be able to create opportunities, just like the Gates Scholarship has created one for me. Just like UChicago has created one for me. Just like St. Paul’s has created one for me.”

— Kristin Duisberg

DID YOU MISS . . .

Watch a video of the culminating event.

Public service, environmental leadership and the arts were the focus of three “Her Purpose” panels held during the Winter and Spring Terms that highlighted the stellar intellectual talents of 11 St. Paul’s School alumnae. The culminating event of the School’s YEARLONG CELEBRATION OF COEDUCATION took place on Anniversary Weekend and featured an in-person panel of current and former SPS women faculty members who reflected on their role helping to shape the SPS experience. While the official observations may have ended, the School will continue to add alumnae profiles to the coeducation website throughout the summer.

The Rt. Rev. Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of N.H., delivered the SPRING TERM CONVOCATION on March 28. Hirschfeld’s message, built around the theme of “I am enough,” emphasized a common struggle: that of accepting one’s own sufficiency and “enough-ness.” In sharing his own self-doubts, Hirschfeld reflected on an experience — and a piece of spiritual wisdom that had recently helped him embrace his “enough-ness”: “And then something happened. I began to pay attention to my breathing. … Mysteriously, wonderfully, these words came to me: ‘All that I crave. … has already been given to me.”

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A pair of VISITING SPEAKERS brought insight and inspiration to the SPS Chapel, Humanities classrooms and more. Pulitzer Prize winning poet and two-time U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith spent April 5 on grounds as a Conroy Distinguished Visitor, delivering a poetry reading in Memorial Hall followed by a question-and-answer session, two class visits and lunch with students. On April 7, Jonathan Brundstedt, the 2022 Schlesinger Writer-in-Residence and author of “The Soviet Myth of World War II,” arrived for a two-day visit to Millville that included a Chapel talk and classroom and evening discussions of history, memory and writing.

TEAM EFFORT

Robb Arndt Focuses on Student Well-being When asked to describe a typical workday, Associate Dean of Students Robb Arndt rattles off a fairly diverse list: engaging in conversations with students, teaching a LinC class, meeting with student leaders or faculty, maybe leading a seminar or working on programming.

But the connection to each task is clear: student well-being is at the core of everything done by Arndt and his colleagues in the Dean of Students Office.

Arndt spends much of his time focused on students’ mental health and wellness, be it through working with a group or sitting down one-on-one to discuss a particular challenge or an aspect of life at SPS. In all cases, LinC, which stands for Living in Community, is a linchpin. “The LinC curriculum guides the LinC classes, the in-house/dormitory meeting curriculum, leadership training, as well as how our faculty talk about students,” Arndt says.

During their Third and Fourth Form years, SPS students take part in a yearlong LinC curriculum that covers such topics as cultural competency, diversity and inclusivity, personal identity, sexuality, drugs and alcohol, gender and wellness. Fifth and Sixth Formers participate in three-times-per-term LinC seminars, and Fifth and Sixth Form LinC leaders develop the programming for once-per-term LinC Days, which focus on specific topics of interest identified by students.

In all things, Arndt says, talking to students is the foundation of what his office does — figuring out what they’re experiencing, what they’re feeling, what programming they would like more of and what can be scaled back. “It’s continuing those conversations to gauge what’s at the forefront of student interests

and concerns, to know the challenges they face and figure out how we can best support them,” he says.

That support was particularly important during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when, as they did everywhere, stresses and challenges at SPS not only multiplied but became magnified. Now, having moved back to what Arndt calls a “less-new normal,” support of student health and wellness is akin to what was in place when Arndt joined the SPS community in fall 2019. “It’s not just me working on this,” he says. “Our office works in partnership with every other adult on campus.”

In addition to his work in the Dean of Students Office, Arndt, who graduated from Colby College in 2012 and spent seven years at the Millbrook School in Millbrook, New York, before coming to Millville, serves as an assistant coach for baseball and the boys basketball team. It’s the baseball player in him that comes out as he describes his role in the Dean of Students Office as that of coach, and Dean of Students Suzanne Ellinwood as the owner or general manager.

“Everything we do is a team effort,” he says, noting that the goal is to optimize student experiences and provide the resources and support that allow students to succeed. “Part of what I really like about the work is that sense of team and adult community.”

— Jody Record

FIVE QUESTIONS WITH

Laura Hrasky Having spent many summers working at overnight camps in New Hampshire, Teacher of Mathematics Laura Hrasky P’18 always knew she wanted to be a teacher — but she’d thought her calling would be working with elementary schoolers. At Tufts University, she majored in mathematics “by accident” and then stayed on to earn her master’s degree in education. She taught middle school for four years in Cheshire, Connecticut, before spending nine years as a math teacher, dorm parent and coach at the Pomfret School in Pomfret, Connecticut. She joined the St. Paul’s School community in 2001, when her son Joshua, who graduated with the Form of 2018, was a one-year-old.

Q1

You’ve been at SPS for 20 years this year. What keeps you here?

Q2

So is that what makes you smile in the morning?

Q3

Every day is new. There are always new opportunities or new things that are happening, or I’m teaching a new class, or I have a new colleague that I’m getting to know and work with and learn from or a new group of advisees that I’m getting to know. So even though I’m doing the same thing year after year, it’s different because it’s different students, it’s different adults that I work with, and you just never know what to expect next. At Family Weekend, I often find myself saying to parents that if you told me when I was in high school that I’d still be in high school when I was older, I would not have been happy. But I’m so lucky that I get up in the morning and I’m so excited to go and start my day.

What makes me smile when I get up in the morning is knowing that I’m going to come to school, that I’m going to get to see the students that I work with.

That I’m going to take my dog on a walk later in the afternoon on our campus, which is this beautiful place. And that as I’m walking every person that I walk by is going to say hello to me and I’m going to know that I’m at a place where I am appreciated.

In addition to teaching, you’ve been a tennis coach since you got here. You also advise the Student Council, work with the Hillel Society, serve as an adviser and work at the Ma Pool. How do you balance all those pieces?

I think at times it’s easier than others, but the thing that makes it all easier is when you have those days when you come home and you’re just so excited to share: “And this happened in class! And then I had this conversation with this other person … .” It’s the energy that I think I feel from my students or I feel from my colleagues. The other thing is that I’m one of the Penn Teaching Fellow mentors. My mentee, who will be returning next year [as a faculty member], and I sit and plan our classes together and that’s another place I get my energy and inspiration. I feel like I’ve grown more as a teacher in the last couple of years than I did in my first few years — and I felt like I grew a lot in those first few years!

Q4

Is there an experience among these that you’re most proud of?

Q5

Do you have a teaching philosophy?

Actually, I think the thing I’m most proud of is a role I didn’t even mention: I was a head of house [in Ford] for a long time. That was probably the job here at the School that I’m most proud of, because I think that role, head of house, is really at the heart of who we are as a fully residential school.

What I try to repeat to myself as a teacher would be the same as what I do as a coach and adviser: Remember that these students, inspiring as they are, are still young people, and while what I cover in the math classroom is important, what’s more important to me is how they are growing, how they are learning to learn, how they might take a piece of something we do in class and apply it to their interactions with each other. For me, the culture of the classroom is really important, and it has nothing to do with math. I begin the year with our class agreements and we do a little exercise to come up with how we’re going to treat each other and how the class is going to run. Because to me, ultimately, those are the most important lessons that I think anyone can learn.

— Kristin Duisberg

Earlier this year, Hrasky spoke at length about her SPS teaching career. Watch the video.

A SPRINT THROUGH SPRING There were student-directed plays, and Sixth Form advanced studio art shows. There was Holi and Field Day and a full slate of athletic contests. With Chapels and classes, field trips and campus visitors, the Spring Term of the 2021-22 school year felt as close to normal as any term has since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Convocation may have taken place in snow, but by the last day of classes the Millville grounds were in full bloom, and the 146 members of the Form of 2022 celebrated their final week as SPS students — with prom, an Alumni Association induction dinner, Baccalaureate, Graduation, the awarding of the Form of 2011 Club Cup and more — under clear blue skies. Scan the QR code above to see a gallery of images from Graduation week.