The Meadows Mirror Vol 34 Issue 1

August/September

Volume 34, Issue 1

The

Meadows Mirror Welcome Back Edition

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New Additions to The Meadows Family

by Jeremy Gregersen, Head of School

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hope all Meadows Family members had the opportunity to enjoy a great summer filled with rest, relaxation, and excitement. For my part, while I was able to get away for a portion of the summer, my time on campus was like it has been most summers: spent in anticipation of the return of teachers and students. This year, I had the honor of welcoming a fantastic group of new faculty to the campus on Scholar Lane, and it’s my pleasure to provide something by way of introduction to the group here.

LOWER SCHOOL Marge Appuglise (a) and Susan Washburn (b) have returned to The Meadows after finding that retirement did not suit them just yet. We’re thrilled to welcome them home!

Susan Davis (c) recently moved to Las Vegas from South Carolina. She brings to TMS six years of teaching experience and an M.Ed in Educational Technology. She is teaching 2nd grade.

Kristina Krulic (d) joins the Meadows to teach 1st grade. She has been teaching for five years at two local charter schools. She brings that experience, a Bachelor of Arts degree, and a high level of energy and professionalism to the primary grades.

Mary Pap (e) brings to us eight years of teaching experience at private and charter schools, along with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Ms. Pap came highly recommended by members of our current staff who worked with her at another school. We’re happy to welcome her aboard to teach 2nd grade.

Victoria Tuzzolino (f ) joins us this fall as our Meadows Teacher-in-Training. She brings her two years of classroom experience and Bachelor of Arts degree to the Lower School. She will work primarily with kindergarten faculty, then move around the school, learning all she can about the Cobbley program.

MIDDLE SCHOOL After spending some time in the Lower School as Teacher-in-Training, Matthew Shackley ’09 (g) moves to the Middle School to teach 6th and 7th grade science.

Lisa Goldschmidt (h) spent 17 years at her last school, St. Luke’s School in Connecticut. Ms. Goldschmidt holds an MA in English and an MS in Education. We are excited to welcome her wealth of experience and background as a teacher of English to our middle school.

Kailee Whipple (i) coached girls varsity basketball at TMS seven years ago, after which

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she was recruited to become an assistant coach at UNLV. She has since earned her Master’s degree in counseling. Having returned to TMS, Ms. Whipple will be overseeing Middle School study halls and coaching all three seasons, including taking on the role of girls’ varsity basketball coach once again.

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UPPER SCHOOL Dr. Kristian Lorenzo (j) comes to us most recently from Greece, where he spent the summer working on an archaeological dig.

Dr. Lorenzo brings to us five years of teaching experience at the college level and expertise gained through his coursework and research in earning his PhD and MA in Classics at the University of Wisconsin. He will teach Latin classes here at The Meadows.

Maria Ramirez-Lopez (k) has spent much of her ten years of teaching experience in college classrooms, including stints at Boston University and Harvard University. She has earned MA degrees from Boston University and San Diego State University in Hispanic Language and Literature and Spanish Literature, respectively. Her expertise and content knowledge will serve our advanced Spanish courses well.

ADMINISTRATION/BUSINESS Belinda Sapida (l) actually began with us in the business office last April. She worked for years in the office of another school locally and brings her attention to detail and work ethic to The Meadows. She has been handling some of Accounts Receivable and is responsible for Receiving.

Ric Anderson (m) officially took over the business office on August 1, having spent the summer learning the ins and outs of our finances from outgoing Director of Business and Finance, Melanie Orton. Ric has worked as Associate Director of Finance, Controller, and Director of Finance and Operations at three schools previous to The Meadows and brings a wealth of experience in private school management.

Archie Rufty ’10 (n) returns to TMS in a dual role. After gaining certification in personal training by the National Academy of Sports Medicine, Mr. Rufty first began working with middle and upper school athletes after school in the Key Fechser Fitness Center last year. Since then, he has taken on a full-time role as our Alumni Coordinator even while continuing to provide training for our sports teams.

Activities, Adjustments, and an Addition

by Sara Carlson, Beginning School Director

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elcome new and returning families. The Beginning School students, ages 3-5, are working on academics and creative activities each day. We enjoy watching the beginning stages in the development of a lifelong love of learning. The academic day is accompanied by a variety of activities for fun and skill building. To name a few, children explore science, art, writing, and dramatic play (complete with costumes) in their classroom centers.

Outdoor activities include bike riding, sand play, pretend picnics, climbing, and sliding. Just running and laughing seem to be immensely popular as well!

Children are learning to play together and make decisions about desired activities for the day.

The beginning of a new school year is always full of adjustments, especially for young children. A new environment, new friends, new teachers, and new choices present many opportunities for growth each day. Each child adjusts to the new routines in his or her own time, but the school year is in full swing and things are settling down nicely.

A big adjustment this year has been the construction of a new addition to the Beginning School building.

The children have enjoyed seeing construction trucks driving on and off campus. An occasional peek out the windows highlights the progress on our new classroom and the surrounding grounds. Everyone is excited for the hammering to stop and the new section to open. Stay tuned for more as the weeks go by.

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A Book to Die For: Harvard Lore

by Shana Marek, Lower School Director

This summer, I had the opportunity to attend classes at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The HGSE, as it is called, was the first to establish a doctor of education program and prides itself in supplying “usable knowledge.” Some of that knowledge, for me, included hearing the history of Harvard’s oldest buildings.

The Harry Elkins Widener Library contains fifty miles of bookshelves, three million volumes, and sits in the middle of the oldest university campus in America-Harvard’s. Apparently, Harry Widener, a true lover of books, graduated from Harvard in 1907 and then went on to collect priceless first editions in England. In 1912, Harry secured passage on a boat back to America, aboard the Titanic.

According to Harvard lore, when the ten-story Titanic began sinking, Harry boarded lifeboat No. 4, but then, dashed back to his cabin to retrieve his most precious book. Harry perished along with his father. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library was built soon after, thanks to a $2 million donation from Eleanor Widener, his mother.

The day I arrived on campus for classes, the Widener Library turned 102 years old. Back in 1915, when it opened, U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge proclaimed, “This noble gift of learning comes to

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us with the shadow of a great sorrow resting on it.” The Harry Widener Memorial Room, inside the library, contains 3300 books from its namesake’s collection, including first editions of Charles Dickens and Robert Lewis Stevenson. At the request of Eleanor Widener, fresh flowers are placed near the Library’s portrait of Harry every day.

At The Meadows School, we have a similarly enduring devotion to books and learning and, as our mission states, we aim to “develop in our students a love of, and respect for, learning.” And while our Founder and Trustee Emeritus, Mayor Carolyn Goodman was famous for correctly saying that “buildings don’t teach; teachers teach!”, thinking about the Widener Library makes it clear that libraries do play a role in promoting and developing higher learning.

For this reason, it was a pleasure to return to The Meadows and see all the work that has been done in refreshing our own Lower School Library. It may not be quite 100 years old yet, but the new woodwork, carpets, and paint have refreshed a space that sees every Lower School student visit each week. The TLC our library received will help it to inspire yet another generation of Meadows students.

Letters from Camp

by Brian Siegel, Middle School Director

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hen I was in elementary school, each year we seemed to start off writing a story titled “What I Did on My Summer Vacation”. Unfortunately, most of my summers as a child were going to day camp and two weeks of family vacation within driving distance of New York City. Being an active child, I loved camp and when I turned 17, I was hired at an overnight camp. The selling point for camps back then was to get children out of the city, gain independence and responsibility, have fun, and make lifelong friends. None of these reasons for going to camp have changed; however, new reasons have emerged.

The biggest change is that children at most overnight camps must learn to live “unplugged.” This may be the most important change and the best reason to send a child away to camp. The ability to have time away from their phones and computers allows for children to be creative and think of ways to entertain themselves.

Learning to think and be creative is important for development and future success.

The benefits of camp are often realized by the parents as well as the children. We have the ability to follow our children physically and digitally. Young people have the ability to summon their parents with the push of a few buttons and in return receive lunch, a computer or tennis racket left at home, or an early escape from school when they feel a little under the weather or are experiencing the “I have a test 5th period blues.”

Michael Thompson, the author of Homesick and Happy has written, “… there are things that, as a parent, you cannot do for your children, as much as you might wish to.

You cannot make them happy (if you try too hard, they become whiners); you cannot give them self-esteem and confidence (those come from their own accomplishments);

you cannot pick friends for them and micromanage their social lives, and finally you cannot give them independence. The only way children can grow into independence is to have their parents open the door and let them walk out. That’s what makes camp such a life-changing experience for children.”

“To this day, I fondly recall the challenges of building a fire, pitching a tent, climbing a New England mountain, canoeing on a lake. Camp songs still resonate inside me. Competition exists at Keewaydin, of course, but nobody fails summer camp, a nice respite from winters of fortune and misfortune at school.” --Michael Eisner

According to Adam Grant’s book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, researchers at Michigan State University found that to receive the Nobel Prize, you need deep study in your field and those broad experiences. They studied the winning scientists from 1901 through 2005 and compared them with typical scientists living at the same time. Grant writes that the Nobel Prize winners were: • Two times more likely to play an instrument, compose, or conduct.

• Seven times more likely to draw, paint, or sculpt.

• Seven-and-a-half times more likely to do woodwork or be a mechanic, electrician, or glassblower.

• Twelve times more likely to write poetry, plays, novels, or short stories.

• And 22 times more likely to be an amateur actor, dancer, or magician.

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A Sharper Focus on Wellness - Step One: Ditch the Device

by Dana Larson, Upper School Director

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his year in The Meadows Upper School, we have introduced a new policy regarding hand-held/worn devices. Simply put, we have asked students to put their devices away in their backpacks or lockers while they are in the Upper School. Prior to this year, I was disturbed to notice how many students constantly had their cell phones in their hands, like it was a part of their hands - reading texts and alerts while walking down the halls, spending more time at snack and lunch focusing on their screens than the people sitting around them, texting, playing games, and watching videos in study hall and sometimes in class, even taking their phones into the bathrooms. We decided to ask students to put their phones away after spending much of last year observing this type of behavior and doing a good deal of reading and research, in addition to heeding the advice and concerns of the experts, including one of our guest speakers from 2016-17, child psychologist Dr. Catherine SteinerAdair, author of The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age. At The Meadows School, we want our students to have freedom and the ability to make choices, however it became very clear that no matter how much we suggested it, students would not voluntarily put their phones away.

Addiction is a heavy word, but one that unfortunately seems most appropriate for how dependent on their technology our students have become. (I think many of us can agree that we as adults also have the same tendency, maybe just not to the same degree, so we can understand this impulse.) I realized the extent to which these devices are a problem last year when we enacted the policy that students were not allowed to text between classes in the halls. I confiscated a number of phones, but on one particular morning, there must have been something in the air, because in one passing period, I acquired at least ten smartphones. I took them back to my office and placed them on my conference table, and I was amazed throughout the day to see how many times they lit up and buzzed

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from across the room - it was like a light show or something akin to the Bellagio fountain. When students came to retrieve their phones at the end of the day, I noticed a mixture of anxiety on the faces of some and relief on the others - anxiety because students admittedly felt that they could not exist without their phones, and relief for those who realized that not having their phones turned out to be a nice break. (Interestingly, almost all of the students from both groups revealed that most often it is a parent who texts them throughout the day about appointments, grades, etc. and lamented that this was a major cause of distraction for them. As a parent, I have been guilty of this, myself...)

Lack of focus is a major problem when it comes to academics.

Across all divisions, we have been speaking a great deal about wellness, and included in that conversation is the topic of workload and how our students often feel overburdened and stressed. What I know from being a teacher here in the Upper School for the past ten years and an administrator for two is that the workload conversation has been ongoing and the amount of work we have been requiring of our students has diminished more and more each year; it has never increased. But, the complaints certainly have, and with them, so has our concern for our students’ well-being. Overwhelmingly, the research (and a good bit of common sense) points to the demands of our technology, which steals our time and our attention, as one of the main causes of feeling overburdened. If a student cannot focus, a student cannot learn, which means the grades drop and the stress increases. It’s simple math.

It is early in the semester, and I am very pleased to say that the new cell phone policy has caused, to quote a too-often quoted T.S. Eliot poem, not “a bang but a whimper.” Although at first there were a few, small grumblings, the bottom line is that our students are smart, and even though they think they want their phones, they know better the importance of needing to focus in order to succeed.

Good Citizens Award Recipients This award is given to students who go above and beyond to show compassion and be productive members of the increasingly global society of the 21st century.

The following students were awarded the Good Citizen Award in August.

• Rie B. ’29 • Aliana B. ’27 • Mason B. ’29 • Harper C. ’25 • Ella C. ’26 • Colin C. ’28 • Jonah C. ’27 • Chanel C. ’26

• Ella F. ’27 • Zoe G. ’30 • Olivia G. ’28 • Tenley G. ’30 • Angel H. ’28 • Parker K. ’29 • Cadence L. ’29 • Simone M. ’27

Congratulations to TMS tennis coach, Frideric Prandecki, for winning Coach of the Year-Girls Tennis from Nevada Prep!

• Taylor M. ’25 • Billy P. ’27 • William R. ’30 • Drake S. ’25 • Gia S. ’29 • Dylan S. ’26 • Noah S. ’28 • Epiphany S. ’25

• Luca T. ’29 • Kyle V. ’26 • Ava V. ’28 • Sam V. ’26 • Victoria Y. ’26 • Enzo Z. ’30

For the ninth year, and fourth in a row, TMS was awarded the NIAA Award of Excellence in Academics, Athletics, and Citizenship!

Congratulations to Joshua O. ’18 for earning a perfect score on the ACT!

CONGRATULATIONS TO RAHUL M. ’22 AND CALISTA B. ’21

HOW DID YOU SPEND YOUR SUMMER?

Rahul and Calista placed second and third place respectively in the Annual Law Day Essay Competition. Both in Middle School at the time of the competition, they competed with students throughout southern Nevada in the Grade 6-12 category.

Madame Stamanis spent part of her summer in Cincinnati grading the composition portion of the AP French Language and Culture exam.

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Meadows Theatre Travels to Scotland

by Adam C. ’18, Tanner R. ’19

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o call the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a world of theatrical amazement and beauty is an understatement. With over 3,700 shows taking place in 300 spaces in one city, it’s art at its most beautiful state: wacky, unpredictable, and universally fun.

Surrounded by performers, history, kilts, and lush green meadows, fourteen eager Mustang students became immersed in the Scottish culture.

Being shipped overseas into the professional world, the cast and crew of Aristophanes’ The Birds were ecstatic. As if performing at

the professional Edinburgh Fringe Festival, handing out our flyers to promote our show, and performing for an international audience wasn’t enough, we visited castles, cathedrals, museums, and dungeons! The Mustangs from the grand lights of Las Vegas, Nevada, found themselves performing in the basement of an old, stone church with audience on three sides. The Space: Venue 45 is one of the oldest venues at the festival placed at the beginning of the Royal Mile. Thus led to the confident boasting, “Yeah, I work at The Space.” The

Mustangs were courageous, brilliant, and all together impressive when experiencing the professional theatre world firsthand!

Not only did the Mustangs experience a once-in-a-lifetime artistic heaven, but we grew closer and closer to each other. It is sure that The Birds cast and crew will have long lasting friendships. Experiencing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was without a doubt the trip of the year, but experiencing it while surrounded by best friends turned it into the experience of a lifetime.

Students in the Engineering Design course in the Upper School had the opportunity to help set up the School’s new 3D printers.

DETERMINED TO ENJOY THE SOLAR ECLIPSE COME RAIN OR SHINE.

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