Summer 2011 Now & Then @ Wheeler

Now&Then @Wheeler summer 2011

The Class of 2025 What will they need to know?

The possibilities are imagined by our Academic Departments ALSO INSIDE: Reunion 2011 Profiles & Events

Now&Then @ Wheeler Vol. 9 Issue 2 Summer 2011 Editor: Laurie Flynn Board of Trustees President: Meredith Curren Alumni Association President: Geoff O’Hara ‘87 Parents Association President: Ro Mede Director of Institutional Advancement: Geoffrey Liggett Cover: Members of the Wheeler Class of 2025 — this past year’s Nursery — leave campus. Photo by Vickers & Beechler Photography Nondiscrimination Policy: The Wheeler School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or handicap in the administration of its educational, admissions, and financial aid policies, faculty and staff recruitment and hiring policies, athletics or other programs or activities administered by the school. www.wheelerschool.org Published by the Office of Institutional Advancement The Wheeler School 216 Hope Street Providence, Rhode Island 02906 401-421-8100

Coming in 2014 — The Wheeler School’s 125th Anniversary!

Plans are forming to celebrate the School’s 125th year. A group will meet this fall and winter to consider events and a timeline for the celebration year.

We need ideas, Wheeler memorabilia and YOU! Contact Laurie Flynn laurieflynn@wheelerschool.org 401.421.8100 ext 129

Message from the Head of School The best schools are progressive; they evolve, experiment, take risks to best prepare their students for a rapidly changing world. Wheeler has always been this kind of forward-looking institution, and so in this edition of the Now & Then we have asked several academic departments to think ahead – to speculate about the future. In particular, how might things be different in our classrooms in 2025, the year 2010-11 nursery students are slated to graduate?

As you will read, it’s a challenge. Think back just fourteen years to when our recently-graduated seniors, the Class of 2011, entered school. Cell phones were as big as Subway sandwiches, and “text” was still a noun. The internet was in its infancy, email was almost non-existent, “portable” laptops weighed twelve pounds.

Skype? Google? Wikipedia? iPad? In the span of a single student’s journey through Wheeler, two fundamental skills – acquiring knowledge and communicating it – have undergone radical, dramatic change.

Such a reality inspires/requires school to adapt, and so, for instance, we are beginning a multi-year, multi-million dollar renovation of Morgan Hall, our Upper School building. All will be, as they say, “state-of-the-art,” and, critically, configured to be flexible and responsive to the next generation of change.

But for a moment, allow me a contrarian point of view. According to legend, Plato, one of the most influential teachers in the history of our planet, scratched figures in the dirt with his staff, his class assembled beneath a tree. Forget the internet, he didn’t even use chalk. He was “wireless” before there were wires. But his teaching inspired some pretty smart students, including Aristotle, and his lessons have endured for 2,500 years. All our technology – like Plato’s staff – is simply a means to an end, and not an end unto itself.

Great teachers are inspired by their subject matter, gifted in their translation of that passion, and sensitive and responsive to the students in their care. This is the timeless and technology-free reality and the constant, the critical variable, that has, and must always, be our guide.

Dan Miller

Plato, one of the most influential teachers in the history of our planet, scratched figures in the dirt with his staff, his class assembled beneath a tree...He was ‘wireless’ before there were wires.

Heading To The Future

> MESSAGE FROM DAN MILLER (OVERLEAF) With Department Essays

> SCIENCE > MATH > PHYSICAL EDUCATION > LIBRARY > MODERN LANGUAGES > VISUAL ART > ENGLISH > PERFORMING ARTS > TECHNOLOGY > AERIE

WHAT WILL THE NURSERY STUDENTS FROM THE 2010-11 SCHOOL YEAR NEED TO KNOW BY 2025 WHEN THEY GRADUATE FROM WHEELER? WHAT WILL THEIR CAMPUS EXPERIENCE BE LIKE IN 2025?

CAMPUS ACADEMIC LEADERS IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES IN THIS SPECIAL SECTION.

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A Look Ahead to 2025 Even our youngest students should be able to perform “cost-benefit analysis” of the use of Science and Technology in our society.

Science

By Sarah Berthiaume, Science Department Head The Wheeler School Class of 2025 can look forward to learning Science through inquiry and investigation-based processes in an interdisciplinary learning environment.

The classroom environment will need to focus on collaborative, student-centered learning with the use of computers and technology fully integrated into all aspects of teaching and learning. Teaching students the process of scientific thinking and how to question critically will continue to be the cornerstone of teaching scientific principles.

These lessons will start with our youngest Science students and continue to build with each activity, laboratory investigation, and classroom experience. This will result in a scientific method of thinking and problem solving that is both a comfortable and natural way to process information. As we look ahead to educating the students who will graduate in 2025, emphasis will be on using the scientific process to make better informed personal decisions. We must continue to stress data literacy and information literacy, as students must be proficient in utilizing the resources available to them and evaluating information available from the scientific community and the popular media.

Teaching ethics and its applications in science will be vital for students in 2025.

Even our youngest students should be able to perform “cost-benefit analysis” of the use of Science and Technology in our society.

This is a skill that must be nurtured as the children mature as students of Science and citizens of our global society.

In the classroom, students will experience learning Science as a truly interdisciplinary process, focusing on applied math and technology as integral tools for the scientific inquiry process. Math and technology will continue to be an important part of the fabric of teaching and learning Science, but students (and faculty) will only become

Math more comfortable by seamlessly integrating these tools to create a multidisciplinary environment that includes all academic departments, with an emphasis on Math and Technology.

As educators of a rapidly changing field, the Science Department has already integrated many of these methods and principles into the current curriculum, but as we look toward the future we can only imagine what the landscape of science education might look like. This year the department added a Biotechnology course as part of the Upper School elective program. This course is an excellent example of the important principles and overarching themes of the future of science education.

Students are studying a cutting edge field, utilizing collaborative learning strategies and laboratory team work, and learning the fundamentals of data literacy as they access and process data and information from all over the world. The students also learn and apply the principles of ethics and risk assessment as they study geneticallymodified foods and by designing and conducting their own experiments which research the topic further. In addition, students also conduct independent or small group research on the controversial topic using current scientific research and popular media, evaluating the ethical issues surrounding the emerging field of Biotechnology. This course is a culminating experience for our senior Science students, and it is also an excellent model of how a science course of the future may operate.

Science students in the Wheeler School Class of 2025 will emerge from the program as citizens who are literate in the languages of Science, Math, and Technology, who can critically evaluate data and information through the process of scientific thinking, and who can make informed personal and professional decisions in our intricate and changing global society.

Now & Then @ Wheeler

By Page Stites, Math Department Head

The old model of teaching as an act of sharing information and imparting knowledge to students is already outmoded.

Students today don’t lack for access to information – even some of our youngest students are comfortable looking things up on the Internet, and Upper School students are as quick as ever to pull out their smartphones and use them as a resource for information. Computational knowledge engines like Wolfram Alpha have already made finding mathematical facts and formulas, not to mention performing advanced computations, as easy as a Google search.

Teaching and learning math will draw increasingly over the next fifteen years on creative, imaginative, and collaborative approaches to problem solving, and on connections between the “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines.

While computers can perform sophisticated computations for us, we have to get better at formulating the right questions, interpreting the results, and building and refining the mathematical models we employ. Collaborative and multidisciplinary problems are an excellent vehicle for teaching these important skills. This isn’t so different, except for the compressed time scale, from what we’ve seen over the past several decades with the increase in computing power of the handheld calculator. As Middle School math teacher Kate Dabney is fond of telling her students about their calculators, “Garbage in, garbage out!”

Increased access to information and our global society’s increased reliance on data to inform decisions also make it critical for our students to become “data literate.”

The rise in popularity of Wheeler’s Upper

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Will they enter the gym, pick up a portable device, clip it on their waistband and have every move, skill, and pulse rate recorded and downloaded onto a computer?

School Statistics course over the past several years is just the beginning of a significant trend. Across all divisions, we will be asking math students fifteen years from now to be more nuanced and sophisticated in their understanding and critical evaluation of data and information.

Regardless of the unforeseen twists and turns our relationship to information will take in the coming years, a Wheeler math education will continue – just as it does today – to rely on a foundation of mathematical intuition that comes from simply playing with numbers. The same fascination that humans through the ages have felt in exploring the magical ways that numbers work is just as powerful today as it was millennia ago. Cultivating this sense of wonder and enjoyment in our students will always be our greatest and most worthwhile undertaking.

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Increased access to information and our global society’s increased reliance on data to inform decisions make it critical for our students to become “data literate.”

Physical Education

By Jean Carlson, PE Department Head, Siperstein Teaching Chair

I can only imagine what the future will look like in 2025….

Will sneakers have built in devices to measure distances, heart rate, and speed?

Will the Madden Gym have a huge wall for climbing and belaying?

Will there be Wii fitness stations set up throughout the gym? Children can bowl; play tennis, baseball, ski, run, golf all within their own personal space.

I can see Dance Dance Revolution pads set up with music piped in through individual earphones.

Perhaps the children playing virtual games in the gym wearing their glasses, immersed in fantasy adventures on the large drop down screen?

Will they enter the gym, pick up their portable device, clip on their waistband and have every move, skill, and pulse rate, recorded and downloaded onto the computer? Will the instructors monitor each student’s fitness progress from nursery through senior year?

Will the weight room be ‘supersized’ with top of the line cardio and weight machines?

Our children are fascinated with computers and gadgets! I can envision these items encouraging healthy lifestyles and promoting physical fitness in our students.

This can be Wheeler’s future!

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Now & Then @ Wheeler

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A Look Ahead to 2025 Class is over. She powers down her tablet and walks to the Tech Free Zone . . .

Library

By Ben Goulet, Lower School Librarian Spring 2025: She wakes up to the heat, humid and nearly unbearable, even for early May. Rushing with a quick breakfast of homemade granola and blueberries from the farmer’s market, she makes the Hope Street light rail just in time. Her tablet schedule reveals a day full of electives: bicycle maintenance and repair, composting at the Brown Community Garden, and a visit to First Grade to collaborate on a lesson about Rhode Island’s new local currency.

After school, she has a meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers to discuss her plans after graduation (high school graduates who volunteer for two years with the Corps by rebuilding a low-income neighborhood or tutoring its school children receive a full college scholarship – the Obama Grant). Daydreaming as the train pulls up to Wheeler, she’s nervous, yet excited.

But first, she has Library. She finds a shady spot on campus and signs into her Library wiki. Others students begin to sign on, the Library Media Specialist signs on and class begins. Each student is working on citing information, specifically information by anonymous Internet journalists who regularly break news via blogs and government leaks. How does a student source these underground writers and how is the information confirmed to be true?

“Selective reality” has become a hot topic of discussion in Library, as climate change deniers have a majority voice in local and national government, even in the face of daily evidence to the contrary. As traditional corporate news declines in influence and the publishing industry splinters into Web-based niches, the volume of information online (both industry and self-published) has exploded, coming from politicians, scientists, academics, experts and laypeople alike. Conspiracy theories, esoteric scientific analysis and crude manifestos are regularly published and disseminated messily to a confused and angry public; publications that blur the lines of fiction and nonfiction, fact and opinion.

Copyright law is another issue debated in her Library class. To her, information is not a commodity, but something that is free and easily accessible, be it music, art, journalism, or literature. As copyright lawsuits clog the courts, some argue that intellectual property rights are only available to those who can afford to defend them. Should the Walt Disney Company still own the rights to Mickey Mouse and other characters or should they enter the public domain as they should have in 2003, even after receiving numerous extensions by the United States Congress?

Companies like Disney desperately attempt to hold on to copyrights in order to profit from their familiar brands (especially since, as energy prices have made air and automobile travel prohibitive for most Americans, popular entertainment has become much more localized).

Class is over. She powers down her tablet and walks to the Tech Free Zone, an area of the school specifically created for students to disconnect from technology, giving them a chance to meet with their classmates face to face, sit quietly and read book, or just relax for a moment, free from the endless demands of the school day. She sits and closes her eyes.

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Pre-college programs will connect students to community organizations and people where they can use and develop their language skills in real-world context.

Modern Languages

By Summer Sheeley, Modern Languages Department Head The National Center for Languages and the Center for Information on Language Teaching articulates a vision for language education as critical to a well-functioning global world. In their vision statement, they clearly see: A society in which everyone recognizes the value of languages and intercultural relationships and is able to use more than one language.

What will the world of languages look like in 2025?

• All adults will be able to understand a conversation in a language other than their native one • Multilingualism will be widely recognized as vital to international understanding, global business, economic health and social cohesion • Governments will demonstrate a commitment to language study for all elementary students • High school programs will require oral language proficiency as a graduation requirement • Adult programs will exist to help people maintain, refresh, and develop skills in their language learning • Pre-college programs will connect students to community organizations and people where they can use and develop their language skills in a real-world context • Technology will connect students in language exchange globally

Rising senior Jeffrey Fleming, speaking to the members of the Education Committee of the Board of Trustees, last April said: “We visited a local Spanish restaurant with our class to meet the owners and enjoy a meal. We spoke only Spanish while we were there. Now when I visit that restaurant with my family, I am comfortable speaking in Spanish and in greeting the owner and her family. The connection my teacher facilitated gave me the opportunity to use Spanish with confidence.”

Where else can our students take their language fluency? Inspired by her skills in speaking Spanish and a love of soccer, Wheeler graduate Larkin Brown ‘06 (daughter of Suzy Williams and Otter Brown) has been working with Soccer Without Borders in Nicaragua. Soccer Without Borders runs “community-led, year-round youth development programs in under-served areas in the USA and abroad to provide programming to socially, politically, and economically marginalized youth who are systematically excluded from sports-based and extracurricular activities.”

Larkin’s language skills learned at Wheeler are helping affect the future of young people beyond our borders. Whether in this country or another, facility in languages is key to our world’s success.

Website References www.cilt.org.uk/home/about_us/our_ objective.aspx http://www.soccerwithoutborders.org/ http://www.blogger.com/ profile/01269068073292480055

Already at Wheeler, we see some of the forward-thinking goals of the CILT in place:

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Now & Then @ Wheeler

Visual Art

By Bob Martin, Visual Arts Department Head I hope that Wheeler’s future art program continues to integrate new digital and electronic image-making technologies without losing the traditional values that underlie our current curriculum: the direct engagement of materials guided by the consort of mind, eye, heart and hand.

That, and of course, jet packs.

We will definitely want jet packs to get around campus.

A Look Ahead to 2025

English

By John Campbell, English & Language Arts Department Head What will English classrooms or pedagogical techniques look like in the year 2025 ACE? Will printed text fade out of use as so many futurists predicted it would way back in my Apple 2E youth? Will classrooms be ruled by robots, one part mechanized pedagogue, one part Roomba—devices that can vacuum the room even as they teach?

Looking back on the predictions of futurists from the 1980s, I realize how difficult it is to play Edward Bellamy. Who among us could have predicted the iPod, or the proliferation of the cell phone (and the virtual extinction of the payphone)? I know I couldn’t have conceived of such things. So it seems wise for me to stick to what I know best— literature—and leave the vatic engineering to my colleagues in math and science.

Within the confines of my discipline, the interesting question for me is not so much how technology might change the trappings of everyday life, but rather how might technology and its influence on postmodern life affect literature and the literary imagination. The study of literature provides us, I tell my students, with the opportunity to wonder and revel in the potentialities of the human imagination and to become more familiar, albeit imaginatively so, with perspectives and experiences that can be vastly different from our own.

In my classroom, I have already experienced the early effects of the digital

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age on the imaginations of my students, and I would cite as an example of that a recent class on the contemporary poet Paul Muldoon. For homework, the students read Muldoon’s poem “Tithonus;” it was their first encounter with the work of this poet noted for his playful, whimsically allusive style. Many adult readers of Muldoon’s poetry, even a few well known critics, find the witty, yet often idiosyncratic movement of his poetic imagination challenging. In “Tithonus,” for example, the poem begins as the speaker hears a chirping sound and wonders what it might be. Could it be a smoke detector with a low battery? The jingling stirrups of a Civil War era cavalry troop? The historically distant rattling of an ancestor’s medicinal whiskey? The clinking of pennies stored in a coin collecting society on 155th Street? Or is the speaker hearing “the two-thousand-year-old chirrup/ of a grasshopper”? The “grasshopper” is, of course, a mythological metonym for Tithonus, the Trojan youth beloved by the goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and cursed, by a cruel technicality, to live a life of immortality without eternal youth, a life in which he would age until all he could do was chirrup like the grasshopper he was eventually turned into.

My paraphrase of the poem can’t do justice to the ease and facility with which Muldoon’s whimsical imagination moves us through these stanzas, circling around

the possible origins of the sound, until we find ourselves, with the reference to the grasshopper, back to the beginning again.

As I prepared to teach this poem, I expected to have to explain the way in which these seemingly disparate stanzas were connected, to introduce the students to the idiosyncrasies of a new writer’s style and sensibility. To my delight, though, such mediation was entirely unnecessary, for the students were able to grasp the wanderings of Muldoon’s imagination as analogous to clicking one’s way through the hits on a search engine. In a sense, reading “Tithonus” and encountering its wildly inventive musings on what might be making such chirping was an experience not too dissimilar (for my students) from googling “Shakespeare” and encountering websites devoted to the playwright’s life, his work, and fishing poles!

I don’t mean to suggest that Muldoon’s work has been influenced by internet search engines—he’s been publishing his poetry since 1973—but rather that a familiarity with such search engines has helped my students understand and keep pace with the facility of this master poet’s imagination (an imagination, I might add, that often confounds very experienced critics). One can only wonder how such intellectual and imaginative facileness will continue to grow by the year 2025 ACE.

Within the confines of my discipline, the interesting question for me is not so much how technology might change the trappings of everyday life, but rather how might technology and its influence on postmodern life affect literature and the literary imagination.

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. . . at the core of this creativity will always be the hands-on of a musician, actor or dancer making the initial movements and sounds either with their voice or own person.

Technology

By Karie Hayes, Technology Department Head

Performing Arts

By Jeff Griffith, Middle School Music Teacher What will the future of Performing Arts Education at Wheeler look like? What will be required of students in the 2020’s, 30’s, and beyond? How will we encourage life-long involvement in the performing arts?

Two things are very clear: 1. technology will have an impact on how we access our arts, store and process related information, and even practice our respective crafts; 2. The basic foundation and convictions underlying our current teaching philosophy will never change.

The future will provide new venues for performing artists to create and share their imaginations and technology is already having an impact. iPods and iPads may become obsolete, but in the mean time they offer immediate feedback to students with recording, editing and playback features.

The future holds virtual stages and character interaction, orchestras and choruses, digital enhancements for scenery, make-up and costumes, satellite links for global performances, new tools for composition, orchestration and film scoring. But at the core of this creativity will always be the hands-on of a musician, actor or dancer making the initial movements and sounds either with their voice or own person. This will continue to be taught one on one and require involvement and participation from the students.

Regardless of new technologies of the future, music, drama and dance will continue to be an old path that will be forever open to those that choose to walk it.

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The classrooms of the future will be filled with technology resources; however technology will not be the focus, but rather a tool that enables students and teachers to achieve their learning goals.

Teaching and learning will look and feel different in the future. Education will move from a mostly passive event on the part of students to active, truly self-directed learning. Learning will take the form of individual information seeking, sharing with social communities, game-based learning and exchanges with subject experts.

All of these learning forms take place both during school hours and after.

Mobile devices will be in the hands of all students and faculty members. E-books and e-textbooks will be the medium for print resources. Further, the school itself will create much of the learning content and create their own e-textbooks from teacher subject knowledge as well as student work. Video will be another resource both students and teachers can contribute to as a medium for creating content for individual courses.

Students will use e-portfolios to showcase their mastery of content skills as well as achievement of educational goals.

Assessment of an individual student’s academic proficiency will be based on academic standards that are demonstrated through a variety of projects, portfolios, selected examples of work as well as the student’s personal self-evaluation.

The classroom of the future will be rich with technology resources. In classrooms with such an abundance of educational tools, students, with guidance from their teachers, will assume a more active role in setting educational goals. Teachers will help facilitate exploratory learning, experimentation and peer sharing to help students define their own learning objectives. Students’ active investment in

Now & Then @ Wheeler

the content and structure of their academic environment along with a collaborative model of student/teacher interaction will foster a more authentic learning experience.

Classrooms will become very dynamic and exciting environments where different types of learning activities happen simultaneously. Just imagine . . .

• In the nursery students are watching a projected image of the teacher’s computer screen where there is a video session enabled with one of the nursery student’s grandmother reading a story to the class.

• A small group of kindergarten students working at a dual-display Smartboard, where they use their fingers to trace the shapes of letters on the board and practice writing.

• Upstairs a second grade class is absorbed in quiet reading time using their e-readers.

They are able to highlight words they don’t recognize, have the definition displayed and then create a vocabulary study guide.

• Middle School students in a Chinese language class are video conferencing with peers in a school in China taking turns using both languages. Students use their tablet computers for writing Chinese language characters during the lesson.

• An Upper School music teacher records a video of her student vocal group working on a new piece in class. Using her mobile device she uploads the video as well as a digital version of the score. Students are able to watch the video on their smartphones.

• A biology teacher gives his class a lecture while being videotaped. He will post the video to his web portal so students can watch that video if they missed class or for review and reinforcement.

• In a common area of the school there are couches and mats where students and faculty members are able to find a quiet place for talk, reflection, reading or catch up on email.

A Look Ahead to 2025

The View From the Aerie 2025

By Mark Harris, Aerie Department Head Hmm. 2025 seems so remote. Plugged-in kids zooming around with jetpacks, and holographic teacher images doing the instructing, right? Kids using 4-D helmets at home, jumping and jogging through virtual gym class. Time-traveling to peek at the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk or at lumbering maiasaurs tending their young. Little nutrition pills replacing lunch.

Cryonically-preserved teachers from the Twentieth Century, lecturing in the Virtual Gallery.

But wait a minute. 2025 is the year my daughter will be in college, a year after graduating from Wheeler (I hope.) Maybe it’s not so far off, after all. Fourteen years in the future. Well, fourteen years the other way would make it 1997. My son was a 1st Grader then. Buddy Cianci was the mayor. I started seeing a young woman now known as Mrs. Harris. Is today’s school so different from that Wheeler era as to be unrecognizable? Sure, certain things weren’t around. Facebook. Twitter. Texting. Mr. Miller. Smartphones. iPads and iPods and the I-Bridge. Commencement at the Farm. Our beautiful playground, courtyard, public art installations, and Student Center.

Through the ’97 glass I do recognize Wheeler, though. The senior art exhibitions still mark each spring in a special way, and the students’ work is still amazing and they still use paint. Field Day looks the same. So do the kindergarten room and the Senior Room and the French Dining Room. “Otter” and Jean Carlson and Tedd Merlan and so many other teachers who may have arrived for a short stay but were somehow lured into dedicating their professional lives to this unique institution- they’re here as I write.

So I suspect that most 2011 grads will still recognize the place in 2025. Some of the same faces may still be around. But a lot will be new and some things will be markedly different, I’m sure.

Believe it or not, the school is already looking that far ahead. Campus planners have enough designs on the table that it may take 14 years to implement them all. Driving those plans are extraordinary student programs that create the demand for facilities to match: performing arts spaces, science facilities, and renovations and infrastructure projects for buildings which still have enough life in them for another few decades.

What will be completely new? Plenty. I suspect that the “wired” generation of today will be the “wireless” one of tomorrow.

The school will still be in a battle to keep up with technological innovations that bring wildly unpredictable changes in the way kids can connect with the world and with information and with people. But the school will continue to bring some sanity to those changes, to help young people ground their ever more empowered selves to values that transcend gizmos and speed. The Farm, our “living endowment” for over a century, may have a Quidditch arena by then, but it will still complement the urban programs a few miles away, and the fall colors will still be just as dazzling.

And in early June, a freshly-minted batch of well-educated, self-reliant young adults will march confidently off to shape the world of 2050.

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Cryonically-preserved teachers from the Twentieth Century, lecturing in the Virtual Gallery. . .

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Athletic Season Highlights

Check out sports highlights and scores 24/7 at www.wheelerschool.org/athletics

By Allie Chernick ‘12

Boys Varsity Basketball finished 11-10 overall, and 9-3 in SENE action in Sean Kelly ‘02’s inaugural season as Head Coach. Will Manville and Nate Balcom earned 2nd Team All-SENE and Finlay O’Hara earned SENE Honorable Mention.

BOYS VARSITY TENNIS compiled a 5-11 record in RIIL Div I with seniors Anil Tipirneni and Larry Chan (above) and freshman Jeffrey Gagnon earning All-Division Honors. Matt Janigian won the Individual Sportsmanship Award, and the Wheeler Team earned the Div I Team Sportsmanship Award as well. Anil Tipirneni and Larry Chan each earned 2nd Team All-State.

By Patrick Vivier

The team qualified for the RIIL D-II Playoffs for the second consecutive year with an 11-7 regular season record, including a late-season 12-9 victory over First-Place Central High. The team went 1-2 in the postseason before bowing out of the Double-Elimination Tournament.

GIRLS VARSITY BASKETBALL The team finished with a 4-15 record, 3-9 in SENE play. The girls finished the season playing their best ball including two thrillers with the Hyde School winning one at home and losing a one point game in OT at Hyde.

By Patrick Vivier

VARSITY BASEBALL

By Vickers & Beechler

NEW UNIFORMS DEBUT FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL SOFTBALL

SPORTS WIRE VARSITY GOLF-The team had a 5-6 record on the season, including victories over Moses Brown and PCD. Peter Satterthwaite finished 2nd Overall at the SENE Golf Tournament shooting an 84 and earning All-SENE Honors.

SENE CHAMPIONS 3-PEAT!

VARSITY TRACK - This season culminated the careers of Nick Codola and Wylie Barker. Nick earned 52.42 in the 400 (3rd Place Overall) at the NEPSTA Div IIII Track and Field Meet, while Wylie finished in 7th in the 3000 with a time of 9:58.87. Junior Addie Glazzard landed a 14’3.5 in the Long Jump, for 6th Place. Junior Cybele Greenberg ran 1:04.92 in the 400 for 6th Place.

VA R S I T Y / J VS Q UA S H The team had one of their strongest seasons in recent years, finishing with a 5-6-2 record, including victories vs St. George’s and MB. Seth Neel earned Class C 3rd Place in first flight, and Ned Liggett earned Class C 4th Place in fifth flight.

VARSITY SOFTBALL-The team made great strides throughout the season, and capped things off with a 5-4 victory over Central High School.

Sports Stats provided by Coach Eric Stein

Girls Varsity Lacrosse won its third consecutive SENE Championship with a 15-3 defeat of Lincoln School in the Tournament Finals.

Priscilla Tyler (pictured), Maggie Godley, Hogan Vivier, Nicole Evangelista all earned First Team SENE. Charlotte Platt and Hannah Broderick were 2nd Team SENE, while Julia Rice garnered Honorable Mention.

By Patrick Vivier Breck Wagner ‘12 and Eric Esposito ‘13 (left) represented RI at the US Rowing Youth National competition in Tennessee this June earning medals for their home Narragansett Boat Club. photo by Susan Esposito.

Farewell to Sharon Tatulli Upper School Science Teacher

By Ben Goulet In the fall of 1986, Upper School science teacher Sharon Wolff walked onto the Wheeler campus for the first time. Fresh out of graduate school from the University of Toronto and with the nervous energy of a new teacher, she gave herself “five or six years” to get her career started, with the plan to move on to something new, somewhere else.

Twenty-five years later, telling that story now, she pauses and smiles. As she prepares to leave Wheeler and move to Delaware with her new husband, Gary Keamer, and a new position teaching chemistry at the Tatnall School in Wilmington, Sharon reflected on what she’ll miss most about Wheeler.

Immediately she mentions the sense of community here. As we discuss how difficult it is to describe that unexplainable magic to the outside world, her voice trails off, and we listen to the eerie quiet of the empty, late spring hallways.

“I’m fine with leaving Rhode Island,” she says, “but what’s hard is leaving Wheeler.”

With classroom hours logged in the thousands and a mindboggling roster of subjects taught, from AP biology and chemistry to physics, Sharon’s legacy here is intact. Assistant Head of School Judy Poirier has followed Sharon’s career at Wheeler from the beginning and she speaks in awe of Sharon’s unique talents.

“She is an extraordinary classroom 12

teacher,” Poirier says. “Anything you read about modern methodology in the classroom, any new strategies that are out there, I can guarantee you, Sharon is using them.”

Poirier described Sharon’s use of “multi-sensory teaching” in a project called “The Edible Cell.” Every Halloween, students model a cell in the form of food and vote for them under the categories of “Most Creative,” Most Tasty” and “Most Disgusting.” Dressed in wild outfits, from monsters to 1950’s housewives, photos of the students (and even their teacher below) showing off their creations line the science classroom. Sharon describes the project as a way for the students “to express what they know in a different medium.”

Poirier also notes Sharon’s constellation of extracurricular activities, student organizations and committee appointments. From her involvement on the Social Committee, BioMedical Club, and the Christian Fellowship Club, her energy towards these commitments has been Now & Then @ Wheeler

an incalculable enrichment to student life on campus.

Sharon’s pioneering work travels outside the classroom, as well. A horseshoe crab research team of Upper and Middle School students, dubbed Team Limulus, studies horseshoe crab populations in Warwick’s Gaspee Point. In collaboration with the University of Rhode Island and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the students have contributed their findings to national research databases and given presentations to the Audubon Society’s Massachusetts chapter. As an advisor to the BioMedical Club, Tatulli has drawn alumni who work in the sciences back year after year to speak to students and share their insight, expertise and memories.

In the wrong hands, a complicated project like Team Limulus could fail, but Sharon is an educator born with a rare gift: She knows how to make science fun.

Whether it’s her ability to get imageconscious teenagers into chest-high waders, her long hours, multiple after school activities and more, she has earned admiration among her colleagues for her devotion to her students and her application of real world examples that make science come alive in the classroom.

Upper School science colleague Chris Perkins calls her work with the students “inspiring,” adding he has “always really admired the dedication she has for her classes and the time she spends on her kids.”

Before I leave, Sharon asks if I would like to meet Jon Paul, the Upper School science snake. I agree, but fearful of snakes, I stand back and cautiously watch him tangle up in her arms. But like the students on Team Limulus, once you enter the quiet confidence of Sharon’s orbit, you leave your own comfort zone behind, and suddenly I realize I’m petting a snake on the head like a house pet.

Soon after graduation, Sharon will travel with her husband to present about her work with Team Limulus at the International Symposium on the Science and Conservation of Horseshoe Crabs in Hong Kong. Upon their return, she will leave the comfort zone of the Wheeler School to begin her next adventure.

Mr. Merlan’s Magic Teacher Retires After 33 Years A series of special moments this spring helped to honor the 33 years that Lower School teacher Tedd Merlan dedicated to Wheeler and the hundreds of Kindergarten students he taught. He retired at the end of this school year, but alumni will have a special chance to honor Tedd this October as he will be the Guest of Honor at Alumni Night at Wheeler during Reunion Weekend. All alumni from all classes will be invited to the event.

Top: The Wheeler Athletic Association invited Tedd to carry in the American flag at this year’s Field Day Grand March.

Center: Class parents Etienne Granito Mechrefe ‘95, Wendy Nilsson and Lee Mamdani had each student in this year’s Kindergarten/Transition class make a quilt square for a special going-away gift. Below: Co-teaching colleague Caroline Fields surprised Tedd at the final faculty meeting with a lunchtime blues band comprised of professional musicians and Wheeler faculty such as Jeff Griffith and Chris Capaldi (on the left).

Headline News!

Wheeler School Receives $2 Million Grant From Malone Family Foundation This spring, Wheeler received a $2,000,000 endowment grant from the prestigious Malone Family Foundation, based in Englewood, Colorado. The award — one of only 38 made by the Foundation nationwide — will ultimately provide scholarship aid for “Malone Scholars” at Wheeler who demonstrate extraordinary academic promise as well as significant financial need.

Head Dan Miller, in making the announcement, said, “This is one of the most significant financial aid awards available to independent schools in this country. It is a tremendous honor for the school and a powerful endorsement of our program, culture, and community. Most important, it will provide opportunity to talented and motivated students who will, in turn, strengthen this school immeasurably.”

The Malone Family Foundation was founded in 1997 by Dr. John C. Malone, well-known communications and media executive and investor, and his family, with one principal objective: to improve access to quality education for gifted students who lack the financial resources to best develop their talents. Schools chosen as grant recipients are selected through a rigorous research process, and only by invitation, resulting in the addition of a few top-level schools nationwide to the Malone Scholars family each spring. Wheeler is one of four New England schools to receive the honor.

“With a full and diverse core curriculum extended by its individual Aerie course opportunities, The Wheeler School is obviously rich with options for its fortunate students, who were among the most enthusiastic and talkative I’ve met. I believe Wheeler will be a model of the Malone philosophy,” said Cathie Wlaschin, Executive Director of the Foundation.

Philanthropy@Wheeler

STUDENTS REACH OUT FOR ALUMNI SUPPORT

By Amanda Lazarus, Wheeler Fund Director

This year, more than 25 students participated in a new initiative to connect with alumni to support The Wheeler Fund. Thank you to everyone who took their call! The students enjoyed sharing their Wheeler experience with you, and also loved learning about Wheeler when you were here. Together they raised more than $30,000 for the Wheeler Fund from more than 250 alumni. Thank you to everyone who contributed and participated in this fun and exciting new initiative. The students will call again in October, and they look forward to speaking with you and connecting over your shared Wheeler experience.

75% OF PARENTS MAKE WHEELER FUND GIFT THANK YOU to the 75% of Wheeler families who supported the school through the Wheeler Fund last year. Together, you are shaping the Wheeler experience and ensuring that wonderful things continue to happen at school each and every day. Your contribution is a vote of confidence for the students, faculty and programs at Wheeler.

Many thanks to all of the volunteers who helped make this successful year a reality.

Co-Chairs Lauri Lee Meredith Curren Division Chairs Upper School: Julie Andrews Middle School: Stacy Emanuel Lower School: Suzanne Bornschein Hamilton: Carolyn & Peter D’Agostino Volunteers David Beitle Princess Bomba Alicia Carroll Kathy Chaquette Susan Desmarais Ray Esposito Cindy Feinstein Helena Foulkes Lauri Friedman Mary Gagnon Rick Godley Donna Goldin Cynthia Hughes Nina Insler Deb Jacobson Scot Jones Joan Kwiatkowski Susan Koelliker Peg Langhammer Julie Larosee Joni Leone Jennifer Mathews

Jane Mignone Mark Morse Jeremy Moses Meenakshi Narain Shelley Roth Steve Shalansky Adam Singer Sarah Windsor Interested our joining our team of Wheeler Fund volunteers? Please contact Amanda Lazarus, Director of Annual Giving at amandalazarus@wheelerschool. org or (401) 528-2151.

Next year’s Wheeler Fund effort will be led by parent co-chairs Abby Stranahan and Stacy Emanuel and alumni giving chair Trudy Coxe.

Trustee-parent Abby Stranahan, left, and alumnaparent Stacy Kaufman Emanuel ‘87 will lead next year’s Fund.

Now & Then @ Wheeler

SENIOR PARENT GIFT SETS NEW RECORD Wheeler is grateful to the Class of 2011 Senior Parent Gift Committee which has worked tirelessly on behalf of the school in support of their children’s education. We are delighted to announce that the committee raised over $375,000 this year for Wheeler from senior parents and grandparents, with 78% of the class participating! Congratulations to the committee, and a big thank you to all of the donors that contributed.

2011 Senior Parent Gift Committee Co-Chairs Brock & Jamie Manville Suzanne & Al Hall Members Paul Cantor Joanne Carlino Meredith Curren Beth Dwyer Joyce Gifford Susan Guerra Cathy Killian ‘79 Alan & Marianne Litwin Mary Maguire Noel Karen Mancini David Rubin Barbara Schoenfeld Lisa Ballou Tyler ’75 Patrice Wood John & Kim Zwetchkenbaum ‘83 15

In And Out Of The Classroom LEFT— Lower School students were amazed by the lesson on bubbles and science from bubble artist Keith Michael Johnson in this Aerie assembly.

BELOW LEFT — The Class of 2011 were eager to leave favorite book selections for future readers in the Prescott Library.

BELOW RIGHT — 5th graders wrote expressive essays of their Farm School experience: “I climbed into the pigpen and landed with a small thud on the straw” and “The farmer asked Ellen to try to squeeze the udders. She said, ‘euwwwww!.’”

BOTTOM — 8th grade history students created examples of their imagined agoras for Providence complete with public art such as can now be found on their own Wheeler campus.

Gr. 6 teacher Dana Tatlock (left) was one of 110 exceptional teachers from around the United States selected by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State and IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board) to participate in a two-way exchange program that provides professional development opportunities to secondary school teachers from around the world. Tatlock visited schools in Bangladesh for two weeks in June.

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CAN YOU SPOT THE GRANDPARENT?* Biology lab at this year’s Grandparents & Special Friends Day *Cassie Izzo’s grandmother, Rose Marie Izzo is at right.

Student Awards Are Chronicled In Online Listing Wheeler students earned numerous awards and honors this year — from taking the Lower School championship of the RI Elementary Chess League (see some chess winners above), having a Middle School student named the RI Jefferson Award teen winner for volunteerism, to seeing one of our seniors named the RI female student winner of the US Presidential Scholarship. (Previous Wheeler winners were Mary Beth Woodcome ‘91 and Adrienne Gagnon ‘93) Use your smartphone to scan this QR code to visit our Awards & Honors page on the web at www.wheelerschool.org/awards where you can read about these and other honors from this school year.

photo by Donna Lizotte

HAMILTON 8TH TRAVELS TO DELAWARE FOR RESEARCH WITH UPPER SCHOOL’S TEAM LIMULUS In May, Hamilton 8th graders with chaperones Bob Schmidt and Lanny Goff headed south to Delaware for three days.

Accompanying the Middle School students was a group of Upper Schoolers from Wheeler’s Team Limulus with Sharon Tatulli and Brett Robichaud ‘04. The crossdivisional horseshoe crab research trip was an excellent opportunity to gain practical field experience for all of the students involved.

Now & Then @ Wheeler

photo by Bob Schmidt 17

Performing Arts

See — and hear — the spirit of the Performing Arts online @ www.wheelerschool.org/performingarts

Middle School students performed ANNIE this spring under the direction of Andrew Hall. photo by Steve Jenks

Performances by Wheeler’s Guitar Ensemble highlighted several concerts this year. Plus, new guitar faculty member Jared Maynard brought noted Italian guitarist Giuseppe Ficara (photo at left) to campus to lecture.

Jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding (above) was the ‘upset’ winner for Grammy’s 2011 Best New Artist, the first jazz artist to win this category.

Wheeler students will remember her when she visited campus in 2006 (see photo) for our Contemporary Improv Performance Series, directed by jazz teacher Francisco Cardoso.

18 WHEELERS EARN NATIONAL PRESS THIS YEAR — Releasing their latest music CD (at right) was one of many highlights for Kristin Sprague’s a cappella group this year as they also had some unique attention-getting performances and auditions — from a ‘random act of music video’ surprise at the holidays at the Providence Place Mall that hit YouTube and two invited auditions for network television programs “America’s Got Talent” and “The Sing Off.” But most fun of all for the group? Performing in the Kindergarten in the little kids’ ‘rhyming chair’ where the group showed their rapping skills for the future singers in the class! See videos, hear tracks online!

BELLS SOUND FROM BOSTON TO BERMUDA — (below) Dan Moore led his Concert Handbell Ringers to Bermuda over Spring Break for concerts and classes, joined the Boston Handbell Festival in May and finished the school year with a new music CD.

CHESS A PERFECT MATCH FOR UPPER SCHOOL — The musical CHESS (above) was the Upper School Spring performance. Director Lisa Brackett brought in Russian language teachers to help her actors hone their accents and history teachers to help them understand the context of a demanding story that impressed the audience with book and song!

NEW YORK TRIP A HIT FOR THEATER STUDENTS — Stage combat classes were only part of the annual NYC trip for student actors.

Casting agents and Broadway wowed the group as well.

JAZZED FOR A CAUSE — Jeff Griffith’s Middle School musicians (left) used their May 1st concert this year to display their talents AND raise consciousness about the homeless for the Gotta Have Soul Foundation.

EGGROLLS & DRUMROLLS — Adult jazz performers salivate to play at Chan’s Jazz Club in Woonsocket, RI and Wheeler’s Jazz Ensemble did just that this winter with Francisco Cardoso.

Speeches, video, photos online at www.wheelerschoolorg/graduation2011

March On All Loyally

Graduation 2011 features largest class in School History + an acclaimed musician

Ninety-six seniors march across the field at the Wheeler Farm to become the newest — and largest — alumni class in school history. AT TOP: Graduate Sara Hall flies her advisor group’s “Campbell Kite” one last time.

Head Dan Miller welcomes the graduates and their families.

Co-President Rebecca Knisley

Co-President Zachary Rubin

MacArthur Foundation Grant winner Sebastian Ruth followed his address to the graduates with an improv viola performance with a student from his Community MusicWorks.

Letting their “voices ring” in the School’s alma mater are new alums Sam Kase, Genetta Kah and Dylan Igoe.

Veteran faculty members from left: Annie Funnell, Bob Schmidt, Ken Clauser, Dana Hahn, Donna Holmes and Mark Harris listen to the speakers. photos by Pam Murray

Best & Brightest Visit to Inspire

Left: Haley Fox ‘03 (on right) represented her family at the dinner for 2011 Fox Family Speaker Paula Nirschel (center).

Teny Gross (center above), Executive Director of the RI-based Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, was the 2011 recipient of the Wheeler School Community Spirit Award. Gross received his award at the SICA Family Potluck and posed with SICA members during the dinner. SICA, Students Involved in Cultural Awareness, is an organization of Upper School students who represent Wheeler at local and national conferences and who work on campus to raise awareness about the rich diversity at Wheeler and Hamilton.

Wheeler honored three exceptional individuals this year and was honored in return when all three visited campus to speak to students and the community about their work. Above: Harvard/Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr. Matt Schneps accepts the 2011 Hamilton Life Achievement Award from Dan Miller and Jon Green at this year’s “Mind Your p’s & q’s Party.” Above left: students from the RI-based, national Initiative to Educate Afghan Women spent the day on campus and presented an evening program about their lives as part of the 2011 Fox Family Speakers Series.

photos by Laurie Flynn, Philip Hall and Bridget Malachowski

WSPA — Wheeler School Parents Association Outgoing WSPA President Mary Gagnon (left) and new President Ro Mede. photos by Sloane DeAngelis

THE WHEELER ADVANTAGE: OUR INVESTED PARENTS

By Ro Mede

We are all automatically members of WPSA, The Wheeler Parent Association. Every parent at Wheeler and Hamilton can participate in any way they may choose this year, or over the years, to match their schedule, interest and skills — a lot or a little — with the needs of our school. And, by doing so, we reap the benefits of all our perspectives and experiences.

The mission of WSPA is to encourage parent participation, act as a liaison between the parents and the school, serve as good will ambassadors in the larger community, plan events for social and enrichment purposes, help raise funds and assist the administration and faculty as necessary.

But, I believe there is also a very unique advantage that cannot be achieved with additional revenue or professional development, cannot be strategically planned and, through its varied mosaic, provides a rich foundation of support for all of the above. It is the many different kinds of parents and families that make up the parent community at Wheeler.

There are many, many ways to get involved. You can serve on the WSPA board; be a class rep; help with social and 2011 Big Event Chairs l to r: Deb Schiafundraising events — the Fall Fest, Faculty/ vone and Mary Farrell for Celebration Staff Appreciation Lunch, Clothing Sale & Chris Murphy and Dana Cazzani for Clothing Sale. More than $257,000 was and the Big Event; mentor new families; raised at last year’s Big Event. bring snacks; attend ad hoc committee meetings, etc. You can bake or decorate or plan events. The choices are wide open.

As President this next year I hope to make it easier for all parents to find the opportunities that are the ‘right fit’ and to join in the fun and fulfillment of volunteering.

When I arrived three years ago, I called Sloane DeAngelis ‘86, Director of Alumni and Parent Relations, and asked: could I attend the monthly Upper School Division Meeting or were only the class reps invited? Her resounding YES! has allowed me to meet so many terrific Wheeler parents and has helped me understand the school and all it offers in the short 4 years we will be here. I hope you have a terrific summer and hope to see you at your Division Meetings and beyond in September.

New Mobile Web App Debuts!

Take the Wheeler website with you via smartphone.

We’ve launched a mobile version with the calendar, sports schedule, news and more! Sign in to search the Parent Directory or watch videos! Visit this URL on your phone’s browser and then save it to your homescreen: https://www.wheelerschool.org/mobile/ Now & Then @ Wheeler

FAREWELL FROM MARY GAGNON I would like to take this opportunity to thank all you, as members of the Parents Association, for your hard work and dedication that you have exhibited in so many ways this past year.

One of the Executive Board’s primary objective was to present as many opportunities as possible for parents to stay connected and involved. We were thrilled to see so many parents attend the parent representative’s division meetings.

In addition to many of the annual events sponsored by the Parents Association, such as Fall Fest, Big Event, Celebration of Reading and Faculty/Staff Appreciation, there were also some new ideas that were tried and very well received including: Muffin & Mittens and Snack Days for the Upper School during final exam week.

Over the last few years, the Executive Board has made a conscious effort to set aside some funds with the intent of inviting a national guest speaker to Wheeler. I am pleased to report that the Parents Association and Wheeler were able to secure a speaker for the 2011/2012 school year. (Editor: Parents, watch your email for a video announcement!)

The Executive Board has a very strong succession plan, and I know that Ro Mede, your incoming President, will do a fabulous job. Ro, as President-Elect this year, worked very closely with me and the other members of the Executive Board to continue the many traditions and events that have been the foundation of the Parent Association, while at the same time, introducing new community-building initiatives that we believe will continue to enhance the Wheeler community.

I wish you a wonderful and relaxing summer and look forward to seeing you in the fall.

23

Place-Based Education

For the birds . . .

Ornithologist, eco-journalist and Wheeler graduate Drew Wheelan ‘93 helped add a new twist this year to the Fourth Grade’s unit on birds by meeting the students, teachers and some lucky parents for an early morning birdwalk at nearby Swan Point Cemetery.

During their unit, the students from Wheeler & Hamilton develop research skills working with Lower School librarian Brooke Strachan to study a particular bird of North America of their choosing. They create a powerpoint using their information to describe the appearance, habitat and range, nesting and mating habits, diet and song of their bird. Then they use the information to craft a persuasive speech to convince their classmates why their bird should replace the bald eagle as the next national bird.

As a conservation coordinator with the American Birding Association who exhibits his photography in South County galleries, Wheelan was able to provide expert information for the group. Plus, he shared his own memories of how birding at Swan Point with Upper School science teacher Rob “Otter” Brown when he was a Wheeler student began his path and passion for ornithology.

After the walk, teacher Susie Dorr said, “The day was glorious and the bird sightings – two species of hawks, Baltimore orioles and a wild turkey – were impressive. What I loved most, however, was seeing the genuine excitement fourth graders experienced watching these birds in their natural habitat and how interested they were in what Drew had to share. This experience changed fourth graders and helped them develop an appreciation for the beauty and importance of birds that library research alone couldn’t give them.

I kept thinking perhaps the next Drew Wheelan has begun his journey today.”

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Hamilton 4th grader Mia Ruggieri holds discarded nesting material.

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Read Wheelan’s gulf oil disaster blog at ww.birding.typepad.com/ gulf

Mock Trial — Now & Then “The case is imaginary. The passion is real.”

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT…

By Michael D’Ippolito ‘08

When looking back on my Wheeler career, I see myself not in the classroom, but rather in the courtroom, crossexamining the defendant in a murder trial. To me, the witness on the stand is Chris Lee, a twenty-year old part-time sales clerk guilty of shooting his girlfriend. To the rest of the world, the witness is a sixteen-year old student from Providence Country Day whose name I never caught. The lawyers and witnesses are all high school students. The case is imaginary. The passion is real.

It’s interesting to hear Aerie labeled as an “enrichment program,” because for me.

Aerie was much more than that. Through Mock Trial, it was the fundamental core of my education at Wheeler. In all honesty, I can’t tell you much about Taylor Polynomial Series or the significance of the SmootHawley Tariff Act. I can, however, explain how to use pieces of information to best convey your argument, or can bore you to death explaining the best methods to captivate an audience (irony intended).

While the verdict from a mock trial has no bearing on the real world, the skills developed in preparation for battle in the courtroom are invaluable. In no other activity can you find the rare combination of strategizing, public speaking, and thinking on your feet. Even if you don’t believe your future is in the legal field, the tools you learn and develop in mock trial are helpful in all walks of life.

Wheeler Mock Trial helped me realize my love for the courtroom, and I have continued this passion at the college level.

I currently serve as Vice President and a captain for Duke Mock Trial, one of the top-ranked programs in the nation year

2010-11 Mock Trial team - undefeated in regular season play

MOCK TRIAL TEAM ACCEPTS FINAL VERDICT

By Jiawen Tang ‘11

There is nothing quite like Mock Trial. What other extracurricular activity can bring together actors, historians, athletes, politicians, environmentalists, musicians, and philanthropists? What other competition requires both endless hours of careful preparation and the ability to think fast on your feet? What other club met religiously every week (and occasionally on Sunday afternoons) to craft a legal case? The Gagnon Mock Trial Team had a very successful season due to our dedication, teamwork, and diversity. When we put on our power suits and stepped into the courtroom, we combined our different talents into one cohesive legal unit. Our ability to work together and immerse ourselves in our roles as attorneys and witnesses made us a formidable opponent. Mock Trial has presented challenges to each of us—from writing an opening statement under the strict time limit, to conquering the nerve-racking feeling of being cross examined by opposing counsel, to having the confidence to make a strong objection and speak with conviction. And while we may not always like the final verdict, we were able to walk out of the courtroom every time knowing that we gave it our all and we put up a good fight. Finally, a special thank you to Ms. Gagnon for her wisdom, guidance, and encouragement—we really couldn’t have done it without you!

after year. Last year, over 600 college teams competed from across the country. Of those, Duke Mock Trial placed two teams in the top twelve. I am so grateful to Wheeler Mock Trial and Aerie for giving me the foundation for this success.

Mock Trial defined my years at Wheeler, shaped my years in college, and inspired me to become a lawyer. I owe all of this to the Aerie program, and wish Wheeler Mock Now & Then @ Wheeler

Trial the very best as they go after another state championship this coming year!

For more information on The American Mock Trial Association, please visit: http:// collegemocktrial.org For more information on Duke Mock Trial, please visit: http://duke.edu/web/ mocktrial

25

Physical Education Department Chair and Varsity Field Hockey Coach Jean Carlson, a member of the faculty since 1976, has been selected by the Faculty & Staff of The Wheeler School as the recipient of the Jason and Carly Siperstein Faculty Chair. The three-year appointment recognizes an “inspirational, influential, and dedicated full-time teacher” with at least ten years at Wheeler. Head of School Dan Miller said when making the announcement, “Jean Carlson is beloved by students of all ages, alumni/ae, colleagues and families. Her energy and enthusiasm, her optimism, her professionalism, her dedication to teaching, are all simply extraordinary. No teacher could be more deserving of this honor than Jean Carlson.”

The Jason ’06 and Carly ‘03 Siperstein Faculty Chair is one of two faculty chair endowments at Wheeler and was created in 2005 by alumni parents Gary and Mynde Siperstein in honor of their children to recognize the importance of faculty at Wheeler. Previous recipients were Lower School Art Teacher Ann-Marie Gillett and Diversity Program Director & Teacher Philip Hall.

TWO VETERAN FACULTY EARN TEACHING CHAIR HONORS Upper School Math teacher Kathy Johnson, a member of the Wheeler faculty since 1998, has been selected by the Upper School faculty and staff as the recipient of the Michael Brown Endowed Chair in Teaching. The three-year appointment recognizes teaching and advising excellence for faculty with a minimum of 10 years at Wheeler. Upper School Head Neeltje Henneman said when making the announcement, "Kathy is a beloved and admired 13-year member of the math department. Her teaching and advising are characterized by warmth, flexibility and humor, and her work ethic is beyond compare." The Brown Endowed Chair is one of two faculty chair endowments at Wheeler and was created by a number of generous donors to honor the former Head of Upper School Michael Brown who retired in 2001. Previous recipients have included Ken Clauser, Rob Brown and Marcie Cummings '72.

Wheeler’s Big Event Raises $257,000+ for scholarships at Wheeler & Hamilton

www.wheelerschool.org/bigevent

Both the Clothing Sale and the Celebration experienced increased attention this year as more shoppers shopped and more members of the Wheeler community gathered to CATCH THE SPIRIT that supports Wheeler.

Save the dates for next year’s Big Event and Volunteer • Shop • Donate • Party!

Clothing Sale 2012: April 19-21 Celebration 2012: April 28

From top: Providence Mayor Angel Tavares cuts the Clothing Sale opening ribbon with 2011 Sale chairs Deb Schiavone and Mary Farrell; clothes at the 63rd Annual Sale; 2011 Celebration chairs Princess Bomba and Lisa Ballou Tyler ‘75 with gondolier at “Carnivale In Venice” in the Van Norman Field House at the Farm; Alumnae Speaker Janee Wallace ‘05; Auctioneer and Wheeler grandparent Hugh Hildesley of Sotheby’s helps Celebration guests support the cause by bidding and pledging to FUND A FUTURE!

Special Gifts — A New Graduate Shares His Photo and story by Laurie Flynn “Hi, I’m Dan and I’m dyslexic.”

Dan Pickar isn’t being flip; he’s being forthright. As a second grader who couldn’t read he understood the stigma of stupidity often attached to people with dyslexia even if he couldn’t understand the word.

But Wheeler reading specialist Joyce Ball identified the dyslexia and soon Pickar was in a new third grade classroom at the Hamilton School at Wheeler, where he said, “Everyone was like me. None of us could read!”

Now as he graduates from Wheeler in the Class of 2011 and prepares to enter Tufts University in the fall, Pickar is upfront about his learning difference because, to him, it didn’t hold him back. Not when he appeared on stage in numerous leading roles in Wheeler theatrical productions from Middle School through Upper School.

Not when he auditioned for “America’s Got Talent” or “The Sing Off ” with his fellow a cappella singers in the 18 Wheelers and not when he applied and was accepted Early Decision to Tufts.

“My mom cried when she heard I was dyslexic. She was afraid I would lose my friends. But Hamilton taught me to read and write fluently using OG (OrtonGillingham method) and more importantly, Hamilton taught me confidence,” he said.

“You are embraced into a community at Hamilton. You just have a different style of learning and once I left Hamilton and entered Wheeler 8th grade and Upper School, few people who met me knew I had a learning difference. That’s why I don’t mind telling them I’m dyslexic. I even wrote my college essay about it.”

Pickar’s college essay expresses his belief that his dyslexia is a strength not a weakness. He wrote: “Some people think that because you’re dyslexic, it means you have a crippling disability and are somehow inferior, but I think just the opposite. For me, dyslexia has been a gift, allowing me to get a better understanding of who I am as both a student and a person. While relying heavily on the left side of my brain, my creativity blossoms, inspiring me to follow my passion for theater and music.

By performing leading roles in drama 28

productions and touring with my school’s a cappella group, I’ve gained both self-reliance and an appreciation for the way I learn. I’m no longer the second grade boy, terrified to express himself in front of people; instead, I am confident and proud of my abilities and excited to share them with others.”

Pickar says the self-confidence he developed at Hamilton came from the School’s being proud of — and celebrating — the dyslexic individual. “That pride helps defend against the people who think a reading disability means intellectual inferiority,” said Pickar. “Each year a noted individual with dyslexia comes to campus as the Hamilton Life Achievement Awardee,” he said. “This year (2011) it was Harvard astrophysicist, Dr. Matt Schneps. I went up to him while he was on campus at Wheeler and said I’d like to let him study me in a research project.

He told me he’d rather hire me to work for him so I’m getting a Smithsonian Institution scholarship this summer to work with him on his research into science learning and dyslexia.”

Such opportunities make Pickar grateful for being part of The Hamilton School at Wheeler. He graduates with his Wheeler classmates in a class of 96, largest in School history; but the smaller Hamilton program on the corner of Now & Then @ Wheeler

the Wheeler campus will always be special to him. That’s why he’s created a special stained glass art gift to hang in the new Wharton Whitaker Building at Hamilton as his senior project at Wheeler. Using his gifts as an artist means a lot to Pickar who said he’s inspired to be creative in numerous ways at a school founded by an artist.

“My dad always says to give back to Hamilton,” said this latest alumnus of the School. “This is a way for me to start.”

Dan Pickar ’11 with the stained glass version of the Hamilton School apple logo he made as a gift for the Hamilton School at Wheeler. The apple logo was chosen years ago because of the saying, “You can count the seeds in an apple but not the apples in a seed” explaining the potential of all students with learning differences.

REUNION 2011 October 14-16 50th Reunion

“I painted in the wonderful Wheeler art studio --- I can still smell the paint and easels there.”

HARRIET FULTON DWYER ‘61 When asked to help in rallying the troops for our 50th reunion I said I couldn’t possibly do the job required as my dear husband and I leave for the summer on our boat for Maine and the Bay of Fundy and don’t return until mid-September. Then I learned that Carol and Candy would be helping as well, and I couldn’t say no. So we are your “C. C. & H” rally team, ready to do anything we can to convince as many as possible that this is an opportunity that will never happen again, so just say “YES”.

The other day as I was “composing-to-convince”, the feeling came over me that what I was doing was very much like the Purple pep-rallies where I was inciting all the enthusiasm I could find to get energy and desire instilled in each of us to win the next event. In describing this feeling to Carol Lee Worthey, she wrote to me and said I could quote “this is not a pep talk for your Purples (you the “Captain”) or “my” Golds (although I was historically known as the “Klutz chosen last in line” and --- chuckle --- understandably so), but for ALL OF US Class of 61’ers”. That line did my heart good and though the old “let’s get them going” memories are still very strong, she gave me the additional pull that this team we are gathering is of course ONE strong team of reunion attendees from 50 years ago.

It has been very exciting making contact with old friends, and sometimes frustrating to not be able to find them as well. But hopefully with help among all our ’61 classmates between each other the “C.C. & H.” team can find missing links and enticements to get a huge number of us back for our 50th. I remember when we graduated that our 44 was the largest class in Wheeler’s history to that date, (1961 we were proud to say was the same right side up, AND upside down) and maybe now we can collect the largest percentage of that 44 for our 50th. Come December, I would love the Now & Then to have a picture of our 50th class reunion with so many of us pictured that it is hard to count us all!

Wishing for cheers and old memories galore between us all!!

CAROL LEE SYMONDS WORTHEY ‘61 Composer/Painter/Writer Carol Worthey here, now living in Los Angeles, California in the Hollywood Hills area. I definitely am coming to my 50th Reunion and am very excited about seeing my friends and classmates and all the new campus expansion and other exciting developments at Wheeler. I am so very proud of the great education I got at our amazing school --- it has stood me in good stead. My marvelous husband of 31 years, Ray Korns, will be joining me too!

When I was 5 years old, I was admitted (on weekends) to ADULT classes at RISD, where I studied anatomy, color theory, oils, etc. for seven years. And of course, I painted in the wonderful Wheeler art studio --- I can still smell the paint and easels there! Since then, I have had my visual artworks exhibited in Florence at the 2007 Florence Biennale International Contermporary Art Exhibit (where I also had my “Fanfare for the New Renaissance” for Brass performed on Opening Day, which won an award from the city), in exhibits in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica (California), Manhattan, Mexico and Aspen, Colorado. If you would like to see some of my paintings, go to the Gallery Page at http://www.carolworthey.com

45th Reunion MARY RANDOLPH DICKSON BALLINGER ‘66 Wheeler was a good school for me in many ways. I lived at the Farm my first year and that was special. We all had fun on our drive in and out of town. Mr. Morgan was especially supportive of me. Six of us lived in his house for one year and I felt very privileged to get to know him better at that time. I am afraid my thing was sports not classes and I loved that aspect of the school. Mr. Morgan did encourage tennis for me and even had me go to Don Budge`s tennis camp in Jamaica one summer. Now what headmaster would do that! I loved the Gold Team. I loved the friendships I met there some that have continued strongly into the present. When you are a boarder and you live there for five years you become very close to your friends.

Once I left Wheeler and went to college I woke up to the joy of learning and have to assume that Wheeler instilled that in me on some subtle level that just took a while to awaken. Since those days I have had a lifetime of activities and a wonderful marriage. I have been in the real estate business for a very long time, long enough now to retire, and I have been very involved in my community forever in so many ways. I have to credit Wheeler and sports and the Golds for encouraging me to nurture leadership skills that carried on. I really hope that so many friends will come back to Wheeler this fall as I want to see so many of you. It has been too long!!

Mary-Randolph Ballinger aka Randy Dickson

“I have to credit Wheeler and sports and the Golds for encouraging me to nurture leadership skills . . .”

JUDI KELLENBERGER STELLA ‘66 Before coming to Wheeler for my freshman year, I attended Lincoln School. My adoptive mother, Esther Kellenberger, came to Wheeler in the 1960’s to teach Latin. I believe Wheeler offered more of a financial scholarship than Lincoln - hence the change of schools. The adjustment was a challenge, but I gradually made friends at Wheeler.

Teachers and courses that made an impact on me during my four years were: my English teachers Mrs. Ryder and Miss Alden who was tough but fair, art history with Mr. Seeley (I recall spending my free time in his art studio,) and Miss Erlenmeyer, and her four-hour a night homework assignments, who taught me so much about France. Still to this day I love to travel and try to make it to Paris once a year. As for traditions and activities I remember most, I recall Field Day at the Farm and May Day where we danced around the May Pole.

I feel very fortunate to have had such a wonderful educational background. And after decades of volunteering, teaching college courses and working fulltime, I now job share an office management position at a small law firm in Boston. I work 2 ½ days per week which is just perfect for me.

I have four children, 23 to 34 years old, and four grandchildren. I have lived all over Massachusetts since moving to Boston in 1968 (Watertown, Belmont, Dover, Milton and Randolph). The past 24 summers have been spent on Cape Cod. Life is constantly changing, and I am constantly on the move.

What I am most proud of is finding my birthmother and my seven siblings; a story I hope to write about someday.

When I was at Wheeler, I knew the day students better than the boarders. So it was great having so many boarders return to Wheeler for our 40th. We had thoughtful conversations about Wheeler and I found their perspectives very interesting. I would love to reunite again this year to continue these conversations. I encourage everyone to return to Wheeler this October for our 45th. If you haven’t been back to visit in a while, you will be greatly surprised at the many changes.

40th Reunion SUSAN LYNCH ‘71

“I’m curious to see the Tapestry Room, if it’s still the Tapestry Room – I loved singing carols there with Meg Moody’s beautiful gold harp.”

Here’s a few snapshots from my memory and what I remember most about Wheeler. I’m pretty sure I was a purple – I’m a purple person in general. I remember: Tom Tinker Jr’s bemused smile in history class; Dancing ‘round the May Pole in our peasant blouses and dirndl skirts; Sunbathing before the days of sunscreen on the roof of Middle School; Sitting out on the third floor fire escape in Hope watching Richard & Mimi Farina give a concert in the field across the street in 1969; The 1970 outdoor dramatic production of Antigone, with yours truly as Antigone and fabulous modern costumes by Deborah Van Owen; Betsy, Liz and Allison Argo; Olive and Thayer streets; A particular April day in junior year when I heeded the call of the wild; Most of these memories are outdoor.

Wheeler changed my life, which changed dramatically after leaving Wheeler. I wasn’t there for senior year, but 1970 was a tumultuous year on campuses nationwide. I loved the close friendships we had as boarders (and day students) and all that we were able to do both in and outside of school, academically, artistically, culturally. I guess I would say that the times, what I was learning and experiencing at Wheeler, family conflicts and my personal soul quest combined to literally propel me into my own little Odyssey. Talk about the spirit giving life!

I would encourage classmates to come back for Reunion so that we can see each other.

I’d love to see everyone (although I don’t yet know if I’ll be able to attend). It’s been great to reconnect with many colleagues on facebook. Also, to see how different Wheeler is now.

I’m curious to see the Tapestry Room, if it’s still the Tapestry Room – I loved singing carols there with Meg Moody’s beautiful gold harp. And the little porch room next to it, where we were allowed have tea with any Moses Brown boy who had the guts to sit there on a Sunday afternoon, with a housemother as chaperone, as I recall. You see, way different. To relive and renew memories and connections. But I’m one to talk. Probably many colleagues have attended reunions already. I can’t believe it’s been forty years. That could rightly be termed a real mindblower.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: To read more of Susan’s story, visit the Class of ‘71 group on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wheelerschool.)

25th Reunion

Hello Class of 1986! It’s hard to believe that our 25th reunion is just around the corner. Our class page on Facebook has been a terrific way to catch up with classmates in cyberspace, but now it is time for the real deal! Those of us who were able, came together in 2008 to celebrate our collective 40th birthdays (see photo) and had such a wonderful time.

We are really hoping that, for the occasion of our 25th reunion, many more of us will be able to come together and share memories in person.

As we have all journeyed through life over the past 25 years, I am sure we all have come to value the meaning and importance of old childhood friendship in our lives. After all, how can we not be ourselves around people who have distinct memories (and in some cases, actual photos) of what our hair looked like in 10th grade (circa 1984)?

So, mark your calendars and start packing your bags. Whether you are coming from California, North Carolina, New York, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey, West Virginia, Florida, Washington DC, Vermont, Nevada, New Hampshire, Maryland, Connecticut, Maine, Ohio, Turkey, Massachusetts, or walking down the road from your house on the East Side (we have alumni living in each of these locations), coming to our 25th reunion will be a trip down memory lane that will create memories that we can reminisce about at our 50th reunion.

ALISIA ST. FLORIAN ‘86

20th Reunion PETER CARROLL ‘91 Since graduating from Wheeler, most importantly, my wife Erin and I have three wonderful daughters aged 10, 9, and 5. We live in Bethesda, MD right outside Washington DC. We’ve been here since 1996 and though we love it here, I still describe Providence as my hometown.

After starting my career in management consulting, I co-founded a venture-backed technology company focused on consumer lending products and services. I recently started an appointment working for Elizabeth Warren as part of her implementation team at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Its mission is to make sure consumers have the information they need to make financial decisions that are best for themselves and their families.

I entered Wheeler in the fourth grade. In lower school, it was all about the huge cement play “structure” in the courtyard. Back then we only had some mulch on the ground to break our fall. In middle school, I remember the amazing class trips to New Hampshire, Nantucket, and Quebec. We were having so much fun we barely noticed we were learning stuff.

Upper school is when I started to appreciate my education. So many teachers were brilliant at making you connect to their lessons.

For example, Sharon Tatulli’s comparison of human systems to a lawn mower inspired me to take AP biology. Michael Brown was a kind and approachable mentor and teacher.

Probably my favorite memory was facing Providence Country Day in our lacrosse semi-final playoff game senior year. PCD had an excellent team and we were clearly the underdogs. We fought hard but lost in sudden death overtime. I remember really hating that we lost that game. But I think we were all proud of what our team accomplished.

The teachers had a way of pushing you to try things out of your comfort zone. For example my forays into choir, while actually fun, didn’t exactly showcase my talents (to the delight of my friends). But I think these experiences taught me not to fear taking chances. I’ve spent a good chunk of my career as an entrepreneur where any success goes hand in hand with taking risks and persevering through challenges. I would say Wheeler had a big impact on me in this regard.

My best friends from Wheeler remain my best friends to this day. We all try to get together at least once a year. I have not met many people who say the same about their high school friends. I think that’s a special thing.

I’d ask my classmates to remember all the laughs that were had in the Senior Room. We were lucky to have a friendly class where folks got along well with one another. Many of us have reconnected on Facebook recently. It would be fun to actually get together in person and catch up.

Also, have you seen Wheeler lately? It’s amazing how much it has changed since our time – it looks incredible.

15th Reunion MARKY SOLOMON DARLINGTON ‘96

It seems like yesterday when we were marching down Angell Street side by side to the sound of bagpipes in our white dresses and Wheeler ties for graduation!

I have so many memories from our time at Wheeler…Girls’ soccer, team dinners, beating Moses Brown, Pingree games, AP Bio, Ski trips, Winter ball and Prom, and of course the Post-prom parties at Kerci’s. Oddly enough, one of the more funny memories that stands out is a day my senior year. It was in the fall during soccer season. All over the news, there was an employee who worked at Papa Gino’s on Thayer Street who was diagnosed with hepatitis A. Of course, where did the girls’ soccer team have our pre-game lunch that day…yes, we were all at the health department getting vaccinated after the game that night. I forget Navy flight surgeon Marky “Doc” Darlington if we won the game, but I remember the Hepatitis scare.

I will forever be grateful for the encouragement and support the faculty gave me. Despite their incredibly busy schedules, they always had the compassion and dedication to push you to excel as a student. Some of the faculty members that stand out in my mind are Mr. Brown, Mrs. Tatulli, Mr. Michel, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Ormsbee, Mrs. Sheeley, and Coach Aleixo. Looking back, I realize how influential your high school years are in creating the self-esteem and confidence needed for success in whatever you endeavor. Without the character and academic foundation which Wheeler provided, I would have found it much harder to pursue my dreams.

I can’t wait to find out what everyone’s been up to! Meeting everyone’s families, hearing about the career paths chosen, where people are living…all the exciting adventures people have been on over the last 15 years. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Read more of Marky’s story, visit the Class of ‘96 group on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wheelerschool.)

“It seems like yesterday when we were marching down Angell Street side by side to the sound of bagpipes. . .”

ZACH SEELEY ‘01

10th Reunion

Spirit Color: Purple Life since Wheeler has been busy and diverse but rewarding and very, very fun. After graduation and traveling around Greece for the summer with Ari Berenson and Matt Eil, I attended Bates College with both Grant Brown and EJ Brin. At Bates, I played lacrosse for two years and continued my love of government and politics with an internship in Washington, DC. In 2005 I moved to New York City and began a job with Fox Sports Networks as an advertising sales associate. I stuck with sales when I moved to CNN International less than a year later. While I loved living in New York and had learned quite a bit about sales and media, I decided to take a job in Los Angeles for a brand new startup called Hulu in January 2008.

There, I worked in business development for Hulu’s content distribution group. Specifically I ran all of its relationships with other websites like AOL, Yahoo, IMDb and others. Being a part of Hulu so early and witnessing it grow so rapidly was an amazing experience that I’ll never forget. I realized how important it is to me to work where people have passion for what they are building as well as how liberating it can be to work for a truly flat organization. Despite knowing what a unique experience working for Hulu was, after two and half years I decided to move back east to Philadelphia and pursue my MBA. I have just wrapped up my first of two years at The Wharton School and am so happy to be back to being a student again. T here are so many amazing aspects of this experience, but it has been my classmates that have made this program the most interesting and exciting of my career. While I’m confident I’ll be back in media or a startup at some point in the near future, I’ve decided to try out something new this summer. Starting in June, I’ll be back in NYC working for McKinsey & Company in their business technology consulting practice advising company of all sizes on how to effectively solve problems through technology.

Thinking about reunion coming up, I’m excited to be back in Providence. I was there a few weeks ago and it seems like the East Side (including the Wheeler Campus) has changed so much. I remember walking to school every day, loading the busses on Brook Street for the Farm every afternoon and sitting out on the wall in back of Morgan when the sun finally appeared in late spring. Today, I’m fortunate to get to see Ari, Matt, Lily, Kennon, Tyler, Tara, and of course Pam in New York, DC, and Providence, often, but am looking forward to seeing everyone else at the reunion!

LARKIN BROWN ‘06

5th Reunion

Since graduating from Wheeler (as a Gold!), I spent four years getting my BA in Environmental Studies (policy) and Latin American History from Bowdoin College. I played for the Varsity Women’s soccer team and captained the team my senior year. I sang in an all-girls’ a cappella group called Bellamafia, worked in the dining hall as a display chef and coached local soccer teams. I spent my junior spring abroad in Chile learning about Chilean culture and social injustice.

I graduated in May 2010 and spent the summer fundraising for the 2010-2011 year. I’ve spent this past year working for Soccer Without Borders (SWB), a NGO that has sites in Uganda, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and various major cities in the U.S.A. including Oakland, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York. I moved to Nicaragua in August to promote SWB’s mission: implement soccer as a vehicle for change in the lives of marginalized youth. We aim to empower 100 girls in Granada, Nicaragua through sport, a method that has been proven to help foster confidence, self esteem, positive body image and teamwork. We offer them a safe space where they can translate these skills to real life situations.

Since leaving our small block in Providence, I’ve been lucky to stay in very good touch with a few people. Many of you will be surprised to hear that Kassie and I still talk constantly. I always get to see Robin and Eliza when we’re all home for Thanksgiving or December and usually see Anson and Bharat a couple times a year. Robin, Eliza, Kassie and I shared a brief stint as groupies for Anson and Alden’s Band back in College (Anson > Hanson). Kevin Korb is just as elusive as ever, but I’m lucky to hear about his wild adventures every now and again. Will Harrington was a Mule during college and therefore my rival, so it was very Montague and Capulet to stay in touch with him, but nobody died when we hooked up at Bowdoin and Colby athletic events.

I can’t wait to see how everyone is doing five years later, I’m sure our class is crushing life and having a great time. I know a lot of people have stayed in very good touch, which I’m sure will make for a great time. I also hear Jimmy Buffet might make an appearance... totally not trying to throw the reunion committee under the bus or anything.

“I also hear Jimmy Buffet might make an appearance (at Reunion) ... totally not trying to throw the reunion committee under the bus or anything.”

REUNION 2011 October 14-16 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14 — ALUMNI DAY All alumni from any class year, Reunion or not, are welcome to visit classes, tour campus and join us for the Alumni-Student Roundtable lunch where you can share your life and professional wisdom with today’s juniors and seniors. After, meet Head of School Dan Miller to hear about the campus today and our latest vision for the future. That evening, gather with faculty and all returning alumni for Alumni Night in Wheeler Hall. We’ll present one of our ‘reunioning’ alums with the Founder’s Award and honor our newest ‘honorary’ alum retired Kindergarten Teacher Tedd Merlan.

• 11 a.m. Alumni-Student Roundtable • 12:15 Lunch with Dan Miller • 2:15 Campus Tours • 3:00 Legacy Photo & Tea • 3:15 Go Back To School — handbells, chorale or book club • 6:00 - 8:00 Alumni Night @ Wheeler in Wheeler Hall • 5:30 - 9:30 Children’s programs for ages 3-11.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15 — FALL FEST @ THE FARM & PINGREE DAY! Bring your family to the Farm for free Fall Fest activities. See the two works of Public Art on display, the solar panels on the Field House roof, the Community Garden or hike back to find the Pond. Cheer Wheeler’s Warriors on against Pingree. Later that night, Reunion classes will gather back at 216 Hope Street for cocktails and class dinners and that all-important class photo!

• 10:30 - 1:00 • 11:00 - 2:00 • Noon

• 1:00

• 5:30 • 7:00

• 7:00

Alumni Welcome Tent Free Fall Fest Activities (bounce house, rock wall) Lunch and conversation at Columbine Hill House Pingree Games begin Reunion Cocktail Reception, Nulman Lewis Center Half-Century Club Dinner (Classes 1961 and prior) Reunion Class Dinners

Contact the Alumni Office for any information you may need.

Sloanedeangelis@wheelerschool.org or jennalaflamme@wheelerschool.org.

Check out your Reunion Class Group on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wheelerschool

Back to Campus

Mary C. Wheeler Archivist and Art Dept. head Bob Martin explains the tile project to Lees. photos by Laurie Flynn

Barbara Wheeler Lees, a descendent of the same Wheeler family as Wheeler School founder, Mary Wheeler, fulfilled a promise to return to visit campus and see the art tiles on the side of Wheeler Hall which depict Miss Wheeler’s painting class in France. While here, she toured the annual All-School Art Show, and met up with friend Marjorie Jenckes Fleischmann ‘52 to tour the Prescott Library and visit the Farm.

ALUMNAE MOTHERS & DAUGHTERS WITH VISITING AUTHOR Alumnae Current Parents Dana Salvadore-Cazzani ’82 and Etienne Granito Mechrefe ’95 coordinated the WSPA Celebration of Reading by bringing to campus author/storyteller Norah Dooley (pictured with Dana’s and Etienne’s 3rd grade “legacies”) to speak to grades N-7 last November. photo by Sloane DeAngelis Pilgrim ‘86

BACK TO HAMILTON Have YOU been to visit the new Hamilton classrooms in the Wharton Whitaker Building?

These alums did!

Jon Green & Andres Lester-Coll

Victoria Pagnozzi

Ben Taradash & Heidi Harris

Class Notes In Memoriam Dorothea Butts Simmering ‘35 12/27/2010 Hilda Zanzig Cole ‘38 5/7/2011 Polly Pratt Green O’Donoghue ‘38 6/17/2011 Jean Emmott Davis ‘40 3/21/2011 Elizabeth Wood Roorbach ‘44 3/21/2011 Katharine Makepeace Turner ‘45 1/4/2011 Mary Cummings Chatterton ‘46 3/2/2011 Anne Vogels Aller ‘47 2/8/2011 Hope Welch Slater ‘47 12/25/2010 Patricia Kaplan Bowen ‘85 2/15/2011

1941

Anna-Belle Koenig Nimmo writes, “Still inhibited with emphysema so travel is most difficult. Have to conserve my time. Seems like I go out only for plays and doctor visits. Broke a leg in 2009.

Still collect jewelry. Am on the local Park Foundation Board.”

1946

Martha Floyd Selke writes, “All is well – or was, until Bill and I were traveling in the Middle East and I suddenly had a hemorrhagic stroke in Luxor, Egypt! What a bummer!”

1951

Marjorie Reardon Hartnett writes, “Would love to hear from any classmates.”

36

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Jane Walker Kennedy writes, “Happily living in Maine year long.

Good health most of the time. Looking forward to the publication of our son David’s book in the fall: “Don’t Shoot!”

Two daughters living productive lives as well – two great grandsons. Hoping to join you in October.”

Ann Stewart Orth writes, “Although I have lived very happily in Nashville for many years, I always enjoy visits in Rhode Island in the summer. It’s been fun seeing Jean Haffenreffer Baker

‘51, Ann Haley Clark ‘50, and Jane Haley Belling ‘50 when I’m in the Northeast.

Anne Raymond Ricard writes, “Sorry I cannot make the reunion. I will be in the Mediterranean on a cruise. I just got back from Alaska and two weeks ago, I was in Holland. This past November, I was in Venice and broke my wrist crossing the Atlantic in a hurricane. I have retired from the college, but work every day at my store when I am not cruising. I have traveled all over the world. Say hello to everyone for me! “

1956

Patricia Jones McCree writes, “Don and I are happy and thankfully healthy. We love to travel and are going to the Canadian Rockies this summer and Bangkok and Vietnam in the fall. When we’re not traveling, we play golf, bridge, read and remain very active.”

Nancy Sanderson Wright writes, “I’m ready to really retire and hoping to return to Rhode Island, specifically Narragansett area. My sons and grandchildren are all over the world – Sweden (Matt and Anna Karin), Now & Then @ Wheeler

Cairo, Egypt (Dan and Jessica), and San Francisco (Greg and Valilee). I am hopefully going to attend the reunion in October.”

1960

Congratulations to Holly Adams, who is to become Senior Minister of the Congregational Church of Greenwich, Connecticut! What an achievement for Holly! And what good luck for the church! Second: Be sure to read (in this issue) about our pilgrimage to Concord, MA the weekend of May 20, 21, 22 (2011) to learn more about Mary C. Wheeler — a Transcendentalist and decidedly progressive educator friend of Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson – who knew?!?. -Third: Be sure to let us know all that you have been involved in and send your news along to yours truly, Nancy Anderson at nbandter1833@verizon.net (No computer? Then give me a call at 215 848-4623.)

1961

Harriet Fulton Dwyer writes, “Hard to believe its 50th Reunion time! After retiring in 2003, I returned home to Bristol to be near my dear aging mom for her remaining years. My husband Ned and I built a house and now live here in Bristol, where my son Todd and daughter Holly often visit. Am looking forward to catching up with lots of classmates in October!”

Joanna Frodin writes, “I retired from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia at the end of 2003. Apart from 4 years of parental care, I have enjoyed playing lots of tennis, skiing, paddling and gardening at our house in Vermont. It will be great fun to see all the changes at Wheeler and to catch up with classmates.”

Lily Brown ‘03 and Eric Palmieri ‘02 are engaged! Lily wrote in February: “As fun as it is that we are both alum, survivors and “fac-brats,” the part that has always amazed me most, despite being only a grade apart (and popping up in pictures together everywhere, school trip to Costa Rica, 2002 yearbook-gold/silver key art award recipient photo at left) we never got to know each other in our time at Wheeler!”

Carol Symonds Worthey writes, “Some happy news to share. I’m a grandma. A beautiful, 7 lb. 10 oz. healthy baby boy born March 23 to my wonderful daughter Megan --- the baby had a drug-free birth and I’m so proud of Megan! He’s my first grandchild and I’m smitten! I also will have two premieres of my music in Paris in May...and a cello/piano work (meant for healing closure) called “Elegy” will be performed in Manhattan on September 11th. Also in May, I will be collaborating in NYC with a Parisian sculptor called Anne Ferrer with my music accompanying her “Billowing Beauties,” joyous sculptures resembling hot air balloons. On July 15th, 12 choral works “A Choral Calendar” (portraits of the months based on my poetry) will premiere in San Diego by a great pro choir Cappella Gloriana. End of May, my woodwind trio “Sandcastles” will be performed at a convention for oboe & bassoon players in Arizona. Hugs!”

1966

Nina BoghHenrikssen Campbell writes, “Living just outide Lexington, VA in beautiful country. Enjoying work and grandchildren. Stay in frequent contact with Sandy Ruisi Greenwood, Carol Searle and Jill Collinson.

Life is good.”

1968

Deborah Byrne Babel writes, “As soon as I was eligible, I retired last fall - taking early retirement from the state of NC. After 23 years in college and university libraries, I switched to school library work when we decided to live/ teach overseas. Ed was a high school English teacher at the time and I headed the libraries in the two overseas schools we worked at: one in El Salvador; the

other in Moscow, Russia. After 4 years of overseas work and seven in the US, it was time to call it quits. I enjoyed my library career but I have not regretted a single day of my “freedom.” Ed is a family nurse practitioner at a clinic in Wilmington, NC, that provides health services to the uninsured. He can’t stop just yet. We have two kids, both grown, one married; and a granddaughter, Salomé, who will be four in May. Our son, Daniel, is a network engineer for Cisco Systems in Raleigh, NC. Anna received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan in 2010.

She, her husband & daughter are in Germany for Anna’s post-doc at the University of Freiburg. Anyone who wants to visit, play, or just catch up, drop an email: debbabel@yahoo.com”

1971

Eliza Jewett Gray writes, “We’ve made the move to California! A new adventure!

Our daughters, Christina and Sarah are thriving, one on each coast. If you are near or in Half Moon Bay, give a shout!”

1992

Jennifer Lena writes, “Starting in August 2011, I will be spending the academic year as Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University.”

1994

Jeremy Isenberg is thrilled to welcome Lily Grace Isenberg to his family, born on December 10.

She joins big sister Sophie (5) and big brother Caleb (3).

Sophie will start kindergarten in the fall at Wheeler!

1995

Lauri and Michael Friedman are proud to announce the birth of their daughter Alexandra Wallace Friedman on December 29, 2010. Lexi was 6 lbs.

11 oz. and 19” long. Her big brothers Matthew (Class of 2023) and Eric (Class of 2025) are enjoying their new sister and keeping her entertained.

1986

Sarah Tuttle Upson writes, “I can’t wait to visit Wheeler again and see friends and faculty - Wheeler School is a very special place.”

1991

Ford Fuller graduated from University of Denver, moved to Seattle and then back to Denver where he was in Finance and then Real Estate. He then, with a few classmates from college, opened a marijuana store where they sell to people with medical conditions.

Now & Then @ Wheeler

1996

See next page for a feature article about Erin Healy’s work as the CEO of Youth L.E.A.D. Miami.

37

ERIN HEALY ‘96 Promoting Youth as the Change Agents of Society

By Elizabeth Gao ‘11

The most powerful lesson Erin Healy learned as a teenager at Wheeler was that she should never be afraid to question anything she read or heard about. Today, as both the founder and C.E.O. of her own nonprofit organization, Youth Leading Environmental Activism through Democracy, Healy has clearly come a long way from high school. Nonetheless, in a recent interview, she revealed that her journey might have just begun here at Wheeler, “Once you learn to critically analyze the world, you start to notice the issues around you. So, in a way, Wheeler planted the first seeds in my mind.”

Naturally, Healy’s inspiration to establish her own nonprofit organization stemmed from many other sources as well. After attending the University of Pennsylvania and acquiring a master’s degree in public health at Tulane University, Healy spent several years abroad contributing to various youth development programs. When she returned to the United States, she worked with a government-run children’s environmental health project, where she gained firsthand knowledge about the way socioeconomics affect both environmental health and access to healthy food. According to Healy, her first concrete plans to establish a nonprofit organization began to form during this period, citing that “it was a combination of life experiences, travels in other countries, my parents’ support, and knowing that I wanted to address issues concerning the environment, access to food and social justice” that gave her the final push to pursue her dream.

If you are interested in learning more about Erin Healy or would like to donate to Youth L.E.A.D., please visit http://www. youthleadmiami.org/.

Youth Leading Environmental Activism through Democracy, or Youth L.E.A.D. for short, is an organization dedicated to “educating and empowering young people to adopt healthy, sustainable behaviors and advocate for food and environmental justice in their schools and communities.” The very foundation of this nonprofit is based upon the concept that young people are the innovators and social change agents of society. While other organizations generally focus on teaching nutrition, Youth L.E.A.D. incorporates lessons about social justice, environmental injustice and health disparities in an attempt to encourage young adults to make changes in the community and take on leadership roles. From leading workshops and food demonstrations to offering afterschool classes and service learning projects, Healy and her associates at Youth L.E.A.D. have spent the last two years teaching local youth the skills necessary to diagnose and solve environmental and food justice problems in Miami-Dade County.

With regard to her long-term goals, Healy hopes that Youth L.E.A.D. will one day become a self-sustainable organization. Nevertheless, she admits that there are many hurdles, such as a dearth of funding opportunities, that she needs to overcome before she can focus her attentions elsewhere. Yet, despite the stark economic challenges, Healy remains hopeful and dedicated to her work. “We’re in a very scary time. There’s a lot of destruction in our environment and uncertainty about what the future holds, but it’s important that we all do what we can to protect our environment and communities.”

Mark your calendar for Alumni Day & Reunion Weekend 2011: October 14-16. All Alumni are invited with special celebrations for classes ending in 1’s and 6’s.

ALL alumni are invited to Alumni Night on the 14th when we will honor Tedd Merlan (shown with father/son former students Simon Lidofsky ‘03 and Simon’s son,Connor ‘22, at this past year’s Field Day).

1997

daughter,

Rachel Ann Aaronson, to

Alison Roth-Kerner writes, “Max Eli was born on December 14, 2010.

Currently weighing in at 13 lbs., he is a thriving and happy little guy.”

Brian Sousa writes, “I recently was lucky enough to win a scholarship for a short story I submitted. The scholarship is offered by Dzanc Books and the Luso-American Development Foundation. I’ll be attending the inaugural DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and I’ll be participating in Frank Gaspar’s workshop, as well as all other program events. Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz will also be among the writers featured. Also, my band Ocean*Transfer just released our debut EP -- you can listen at www. oceantransfermusic.com, and the album is now available on iTunes.”

To read more about the scholarship program, visit http://www.dzancbooks. org/storage/ilp/scholarships.html

James (Jamie) Michael Auslander.

A graduate of George Washington University, Rachel is currently the development director for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Bethesda, Maryland.

Jamie graduated from Ocean Township High School in New Jersey and Duke University before receiving a law degree from Harvard Law School. He is an attorney at Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. in Washington, D.C. Rachel and Jamie reside in Arlington, Virginia. A September 10, 2011 wedding is planned in Providence.

Adria Karlsson had a baby boy (Oliver!) on December 28th at 3:23pm, weighing in at 8lbs. 12 oz. and 20 inches long.

2002

Ethel Flynn Brown earned her Master

1999

See next page for a feature article on Ange Strom-Weber who has returned to Wheeler to teach a number of adjunct Aerie courses.

2001

Stuart J. Aaronson of North Providence and Lynn W. Aaronson of Warwick announce the engagement of their

of Arts in Education from Antioch University, Los Angeles this June. Ethel and her husband Dave live in Hermosa Beach, CA.

2003

SvenErik Karlsson and Amanda Green were married August 7th, 2010 in Sage Chapel at Cornell University.

Many members of the Wheeler community attended including Best Now & Then @ Wheeler

Man Aaron Beaudette ‘03 and his parents Paul and Elona, Nick Wall

‘03, Nick Curtin ‘05, Laura Healy ‘03, Zach Green ‘03 and his parents Diane and Jon, Jonah Gabry ‘03 and his parents Mark and Shelley, Wendy Pyper, Susan Clemens, Florence Davis, and SvenErik’s sister, Adria ‘01, and parents Kathryn and Bengt. SvenErik and Amanda met at Cornell University and currently reside in Manhattan.

2004

Ashley Ann Carlino of Lincoln and Jonathan Harold Andersen of Sudbury, Mass., were married March 26 in St. Joseph Memorial Chapel at College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass.

Amanda Carlino ‘11 was maid of honor for her sister. Steven Carlino Jr. ‘08, brother of the bride was an usher. The bride is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, and Harvard University School of Education in Cambridge.

She is employed by Alleghany High School in Covington, Va. and is a Knowles Science/ Math Fellow.

39

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: ANGE STROM-WEBER ‘99

By Margaret Hughes ‘12

As a senior at Wheeler, I like to think I have a broad worldview.

That said, I have relatively limited insight into the world of adults that I am gradually entering. In fact, my major contact with adults occurs at Wheeler, where I have a chance to interact daily with grown-ups I can look up to: my teachers.

I was excited, therefore, when interviewing young alums for the Now & Then gave me the opportunity to meet someone who bridges the world of Wheeler and the world outside, the world of students and teachers. I knew her as Ms. S; she had substituted for my history and science classes a few times before. What I did not know was that she is in her second career here at Wheeler, having once been in my place as a Wheeler Upper School student.

After Ange Strom-Weber ’99 (spirit color: purple) graduated from Wheeler, she attended Yale University, where she followed her love for linguistics and chose to major in the subject. Despite a definite passion for linguistics, Ms. Strom-Weber was still unsure as to the path she wanted to follow. She decided to go to graduate school at the University of California at Berkley, where she finished her master’s.

During her time at Berkeley, she made her first forays into teaching as she worked with undergraduates.

“That part was really fun,” Ms. Strom-Weber recalls. “But the other parts…” She had expected to become a linguistics professor, but, as she explains, “After being in this strongly academic setting for a long time, I started to realize that the thing that I liked the most was teaching, so I decided to regroup, move back home for a while, and figure out how to move into a teaching career, because that’s what I really loved.”

Ms. Strom Weber naturally turned to the place she had grown up as a student: “While I was still figuring out what I was going to do next, I got in

touch with Mark Harris and asked if there was anything I could do to help around Wheeler because I love Mr. Harris and he’d been such an inspiration to me while I was in high school. The first thing he offered me was two Japanese classes. As I help more and more, and get involved with new projects. I just try to be in the forefront of all teachers’ minds whenever they need a sub.”

Indeed, she is omnipresent in the Upper School, where we often see her in one classroom or another substituting for a teacher (she has subbed in all departments), teaching Aerie courses on History of Science or Japanese, helping with the Debate Club, or working in the library.

Ms. Strom-Weber’s connection with Mark Harris, Director of the Aerie program, goes back to her career as a student, when Mr. Harris played a major role in facilitating the diverse range of non-standard courses she wanted to take.

“Mr. Harris really helped me arrange the progression that I did in math,” she said. “There weren’t enough kids to offer BC calculus, so he arranged for me and my friend Dan to take BC calc at Brown University. Then my senior year, another friend and I started taking Ancient Greek for fun, and he helped with that…Also, I wanted to take Japanese because I had lived in Japan, so he found me a Japanese teacher. I applied to several schools, but I chose Wheeler because I was promised a Japanese tutor.”

And Ms. Strom-Weber not only remembers the three Aerie classes she took, but she also looks back with pride on her substantial involvement in Aerie extra-curricular activities.

“In terms of Aerie clubs, I did Academic Decathlon. AcDec was actually awesome. At the time it was like a religion, a cult: we came in fourth in the entire country. I also did what was called Speech and Debate back then—I only did the Debate half of it—and Mr. Harris organized all of that.”

Her ardor for competitive Aerie clubs manifests itself now in her work as Debate coach. Wheeler’s novice team, under her guidance, placed 5th out of 26 teams and won a trophy in the first debate of the year.

When I ask Ms. Strom-Weber about her favorite memories of Wheeler, she again turns to the opportunities both academic and social that Aerie afforded her, particularly Academic Decathlon. She says, “My favorite thing at Wheeler was that it was an island of stability and I had the best, greatest, most wonderful friends,” while prior to attending Wheeler, she switched through five schools in five years.

Of the friends she made through AcDec, she reminisces, “We were so awesome because we were so completely, unapologetically nerdy.

We would do crossword puzzles during lunch, we were all on AcDec. It was so much fun because there were no apologies or pretending.

That was the best part. We didn’t feel that we had to hide any of our smartness at a place like Wheeler.

Wheeler just attracted this crowd of people.”

That fervor for learning carries over into Ms. Strom-Weber’s current job. To me, she epitomizes the excitement about education and the sense of creativity that characterize the Aerie program. When Mr. Harris came to her with a request from senior Sam Kase for a course on the History of Science, Ms. Strom-Weber jumped at the opportunity, drawing on her own classroom experiences.

“I modeled it after a class I once took with a professor on a dialect of Cherokee,” she tells me. “The professor didn’t know anything about it either, but because of his being older and having a broader perspective, [he] was able to guide our discussion…Ultimately, it was a discovery seminar, an exploration.”

For Ms. Strom-Weber, working with Aerie has been both a teaching and a learning experience: “When

Mr. Harris mentioned a class in history of science, I was thinking that that would be such a fun topic to explore, that I really wanted to know about the history of science.

I proposed a course where we would mostly read and discuss things together. If you don’t have something like Aerie, you can’t make classes like that.”

As I think forward to the notso-distant future in which I too will be a Wheeler alumna, I ask Ms. Strom-Weber what it is like to be back at Wheeler as an adult after a decade-long hiatus. The physical improvements to our landscape, I would think, must stand out.

Of the recent campus enhancements, she says, “If I could send a message to other alums, I would say: You have to come see Wheeler, it’s so beautiful now—you should see the Union. You wouldn’t even believe it; it’s so big and beautiful!”

Ms. Strom-Weber also speaks to the amusing difficulties of working alongside many of her former teachers.

“I’m 30,” she says. “When I meet people who are 30 or 40 or 50, I call them by their first names and there’s no problem.” She laughs.

“At Wheeler, I have to force myself.

Mrs. Nickerson—I cannot call her Betsy. She was my teacher!”

If I could send a message to other alums, I would say: You have to come see Wheeler, it’s so beautiful now—you should see the Union.

You wouldn’t even believe it; it’s so big and beautiful!”

Ange Strom-Weber ‘99

Class Notes 2006

Since graduating summa cum laude from Emerson College’s Writing, Literature, and Publishing program, Beth Semel has been working as a publicity assistant and ESL curriculum developer for WorldTeach, a nonprofit organization that partners with governments in developing countries to provide volunteer English teachers and meet local educational needs. Beth also works part-time as a substitute ESL instructor at Kaplan International Colleges, and will be pursuing an MA in Cultural Anthropology at Brandeis University in the fall.

See the next page for an alumna profile of Raya Gabry ‘06.

2007

Robert Elliott earned his degree in civil engineering this spring from Lafayette College and will attend Columbia University to focus on converting unused flat roofs into comfortable roof gardens, having received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, which provides $30,000 annual stipends for a maximum of three years. Recipients are selected based on overall abilities and accomplishments, as well as potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the United States science and engineering industries.

2009

Caity Sprague ‘09, Emma Sherer ‘09, and Lindsey Stokes ‘10 row for the Connecticut College Women’s crew team. At the New England Rowing Championships this April, Sprague, competing in the women’s second varsity four event, placed first with a time of 7:58. Stokes won the bronze medal in the women’s novice four event with a time of 8:10.6.

Bergina Francois ‘11 and Head Dan Miller at The Founder’s Society event where she spoke last fall.

Alumni Class Agents Wanted Wheeler School Class Agents are responsible for: • Serving as a liaison between Wheeler and your class • Promoting regional gatherings • Identifying classmates who are interested in participating in the Mentor Program, hosting gatherings, coming back to campus, etc.

• Maintaining contact information for classmates in order to update our new mobile alumni directory.

• Submitting class notes for the Summer and Winter Now and Then magazine.

• Attending and promoting Reunions.

• Using Facebook as a means of keeping classmates connected to Wheeler (via the Wheeler page) and gathering classnotes, updated information, etc.

Stay connected like Bergina and nominate yourself and/or a classmate (we are happy to have Class Agent Teams)!

Sloane DeAngelis Pilgrim ‘86

RAYA GABRY ‘06 Breaking Gender Barriers in Math & Science

By Cybele Greenberg ‘12

Sitting in a restaurant wrestling with her father’s challenge to calculate the tip, ten year-old Raya Gabry could not have predicted that a simple calculation like this would spark her love of math and lead her to a career in computer science.

A former class valedictorian at Bowdoin College, Raya currently works for Capital Software, a company that deals with computer technology. “My job is to figure out what’s wrong with a specific program, what caused the problem, and how to avoid it in the future,” Raya recalled in a recent interview. “Every day I get to use the analytical problem-solving skills that I’ve acquired throughout my high school and college math classes.”

Before entering Wheeler Middle School, Raya was always bored in math class. “At Wheeler,” she said, “I was ready to take full advantage of the advanced math track and extra-curricular opportunities.” In high school, Raya doubled-up in math classes her senior year, taking Mr. George Lewis’ Statistics and AP Calculus classes. She also joined the 18 Wheelers (directed by Kristin Sprague) and explored the links between music and math.

Many teachers at Wheeler inspired Raya. Mr. Lewis’ love of math was infectious. “During a math class,” Raya remembers, “he wrote an equation on the board and then stepped back, pausing for a second before exclaiming ‘Wow! It’s so beautiful!’” Mr. Chris Perkins, her 10th grade Chemistry teacher, also helped Raya discover her love for science and math and was the first person to predict she would be a physics major in college.

When looking at colleges, Raya sought places where she could develop the close student-faculty relationships she had grown used to at Wheeler. After choosing to attend Bowdoin, Raya found many of the classes easy, thanks to the academic experience and time-management skills she had acquired at Wheeler. At first, Raya planned to be a math major.

During her sophomore year, however, Raya discovered that applied, rather than theoretical, math was what truly interested her; she wanted to study how math affected the world around her, how easily it could solve and explain simple everyday problems.

So, she decided to change her major to physics.

To Raya, the most challenging part about pursing a hard science major was the lack of female peers. “In general, there are a lot less women in math classes in college,” she said.

However, this did not intimidate Raya: “Because I played so many sports in high school, I had always

had many guy friends, so in college I never shied away from being the only girl in class.”

Raya recalls that the Bowdoin professors, especially her advisor’s wife, also made a big effort to encourage and be supportive of her interest in math and science.

During Raya’s senior year, she thought she would pursue a career studying the physics of baseball.

However, life took her in a different direction. The Bowdoin career office helped her find a job at Capital Software. “I was especially drawn to the human aspect of the job,” Raya recalled. “Although I was required to work one year in software development, it was worth struggling with computers to then be able to

work more directly with the clients.”

The culture of the company is especially appealing to her as well. Most of the people working there have a similar profile: they are young, and just out of college.

Thus, Raya has found the best of both worlds: at Capital Software, she can use her physics problem solving skills (especially in economic analysis) while also enjoying the opportunity to form close ties with her colleagues and clients.

When asked what advice she would pass on to Wheeler students, Raya recommended being wellrounded and taking advantage of every opportunity offered to you.

She also said that getting to know professors at college was key to succeeding academically.

Where does she see herself ten years from now? “Honestly I have no idea,” says Raya. “But I definitively want to go back to grad school for science since I already miss its intellectual challenge.”

Spoken like a true Wheeler student.

“During a math class, he (teacher George Lewis) wrote an equation on the board and then stepped back, pausing for a second before exclaiming ‘Wow! It’s so beautiful!’”

Raya Gabry ‘06

Alumni In The Science Classroom

Students in Upper School science classes benefit from meeting Wheeler alumni in the sciences who return to campus to talk to classes and spend time with students. Among the many alums who’ve returned this school year are three above.

Top: Ben Chan ‘01 (at left in photo); Middle: Elizabeth Mermel ‘04 with teacher Sharon Tatulli and BioMed Club President Madi Litwin ‘11 and bottom: Mary Beth Woodcome Gordon ‘91 at left).

WHERE ELSE BUT WHEELER IS FORENSIC SCIENCE MORE THAN A TELEVISION GENRE? Shows like CSI have made forensic science part of our culture, but Bob Schmidt brings the science aspects alive. He took his students to URI to visit the Anatomy and Kinesiology Labs. Wheeler alum and URI grad student Leah Dorfman ’05 (left) hosted Mr. Schmidt and his class. After a visit to the cadaver lab, the students tried out equipment in the Kinesiology lab including a V max test. Noah Fox ‘11 is on a treadmill exercising to see how efficiently blood was carrying oxygen through his body.

New Book by Wheeler Alumna

Debra Aaronson Lawless ‘77 has written an entertaining and informative non-fiction account of the history of Provincetown, MA, and the artists and “renegades” (as the title explains) who made it their destination. A writer for the Cape Cod Chronicle, Lawless has also written Chatham in the Jazz Age and Chatham: From the Second World War to the Age of Aquarius, all for The History Press.

ALUMNA RETURNS TO WHEELER TO CREATE AN ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM FOR PROVIDENCE SUMMERBRIDGE AT WHEELER It was ten years ago this summer, when Dacia Read ’04, spent her first (of four) summers working at Providence Summerbridge. This year, after going off to college and working for two years in New York City, Dacia returned to campus as Providence Summerbridge’s first Alumni Engagement Coordinator.

“The Providence Summerbridge family has always been an extension of my own,” she says, “it’s a true pleasure to be back and able to build Summerbridge’s capacity to reengage and be a resource to nearly 20 years of outstanding alumni students and teachers.”

This year, Dacia’s work has been two-fold: 1) to find and track nearly 1,500 Providence Summerbridge alumni and 2) to develop ways to support and engage these alumni in Providence Summerbridge’s dual mission. “Its fantastic!” she says, “there isn’t one SB alum who hasn’t told me about the transformative effect Summerbridge has had on their lives. I am increasingly awed by the generational impact this program has made on our community and the City of Providence. Our alumni family really is a remarkable reflection of our dual mission in action.”

If YOU worked at Providence Summerbridge while you were at Wheeler, please send us our email address. We will keep you updated on SB’s alumni engagement events and resources. While you’re at it, check out SB’s website (www.wheelerschool. org/providencesummerbridge) and “Like” SB on facebook (www.facebook.com/ providencebreakthrough).

Dacia reconnects with SB and Wheeler Alum, Irvin Adu-Gyamfi ’09, at the 2010 Providence Summerbridge Senior Dinner.

TWO ANNUAL EVENTS SPOTLIGHT ALUMNI CONNECTION

Left: Wheeler alumni ‘legacy’ graduates from the Class of 2011 pose with their Wheeler laundry bags given to all graduating seniors. Legacies are students with a parent or grandparent who are also Wheeler alumnae/i. Posing from left are Abby Zwetchkenbaum, Meghan Killian, Rosa Congdon, Dylan Igoe, Priscilla Tyler and Samantha Leach. Absent were Zach Ardente and Daniel Tripp.

Right: The Wheeler Alumni Board and alumni gathered on Field Day at Columbine Hill House at the Farm for their annual meeting. Present were Trudy Coxe ‘67, incoming president Geoff O’Hara ‘87, Stacy Kaufman Emanuel ‘87, Miriam Graves Kenney ‘53, Alumni Director Sloane DeAngelis Pilgrim ‘87, Nicole Brissette Jennings ‘99, outgoing President Kim Chazan Zwetchkenbaum ‘83, Etienne Granito Mechrefe ‘95 and Alex Boeglin ‘03.

44

Now & Then @ Wheeler

Wheeler Where YOU Are New mobile apps bring Wheeler to you!

This fall, Wheeler is adding two tools to make connecting to Wheeler and your Wheeler friends easier.

Two mobile apps have been developed — a web app (at left) from website provider Whipple Hill that will appeal to current parents, faculty, staff and students, plus a native app for alumni that is being developed in partnership with Whipple Hill and EverTrue and will come out this fall.

Take the Wheeler website with you via smartphone.

Visit this URL on your phone’s browser and then save it to your homescreen: https://www.wheelerschool.org/mobile/

Both apps are free and will feature access to calendars, athletic schedules, news, and password-protected links to directories and, in the case of the alumni app, ways to upload photos and class news.

Following Founder’s Footsteps

Class of 1960 Visit Concord Birthplace of School Founder Following a discussion begun during their 50th Reunion Weekend last fall about School Founder Mary Wheeler, nine members of the Class of 1960 made plans to visit Concord, Massachusetts, to learn more about the woman who created their alma mater. We share the report of their trip

by Faith McClellan LeBaron as a model for other groups who want to visit the area.

On the weekend of May 20-22, 2011, nine of our classmates along with five of our husbands met in Concord, MA, to review some Wheeler history and especially to renew old friendships. We had a wonderful time. I think we can declare the weekend a great success.

In attendance: May Vaughan from Washington, DC Nancy Anderson from Philadelphia, PA Betsy Quigley from Rumford, RI Susan Mungar from New London, CT Deamie (Claire) Senecal Cabot and her husband Sam from Beverly, MA Suki (Sharp) Starns and her husband Colin from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Alex Eames and her husband Chris Leonard from Sag Harbor, Long Island, NY Judy( Valcourt) Thibodeau and her husband Fred from Cumberland, RI Faith (McClellan) LeBaron and her husband John from Cullowhee, NC, and North Hatley Quebec, Canada Everyone stayed at the Colonial Inn in Concord Center, where we met for meals and for planned activities. The first night, however, we drove to an Italian restaurant for a delicious dinner and a first chance to get acquainted around a long table. (Our challenge was to hear each other, entirely due to a crowded restaurant, certainly nothing to do with our hearing loss and age!) Some of us had been together for the 50th Reunion at Wheeler last October, 2010, but this gathering brought May Vaughan and Suki Starnes as well as the five spouses into the group. Some of us had not seen

May or Suki for 51 years, so it was great to hear about their lives and see them looking well. The men were gracious participants in all the conversations during the weekend and very gallant drivers, taxiing our group to historic sites, as well as faithful photographic recorders of the weekend.

Saturday was packed with opportunities

to learn about Mary C. (Colman) Wheeler’s origins and family. We started by visiting a great-great etc. nephew, Rick Wheeler and his wife (his “dearly beloved bride”) Betty Ann at their historic home in Concord Center. The Wheelers are both in their 80’s and live in a Wheeler family house that they have preserved faithfully and added some of

Classmates pose outside the birthplace of Mary Wheeler on Sudbury Rd. in Concord, MA. photo by John LeBaron their own touches with art from their lives in Japan and other eastern countries. They welcomed us warmly and gave us a very personal glimpse into the history of the family. Portraits, painted by Mary, of her mother and father hung in the Wheeler’s dining room, and documents about the ancestry were displayed on the dining table for our examination. Mr. Wheeler is modestly but enthusiastically proud of the long history of his Concord family, originally farmers who were successful enough to send Mary off to Paris to become a painter. He took us to the nearby house and farm property where Mary was born and raised, a house that was built because Mary’s mother would not live in the original house which smelled of spirits!

Next Mr. Wheeler (whom we addressed as “Rick” from time to time, but somehow it seemed less suitable than Mr. Wheeler) escorted us to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where the “Authors Ridge” is located. This is the burial ground of the Thoreaus, Emersons, Alcotts and other literary luminaries, as well as the Wheelers. Mr. Wheeler had planted impatiens in the Wheeler plot especially for our visit, and the men snapped many photos of us Wheeler girls at Mary’s grave site with Mr. Wheeler Because Mary was a close friend of May Alcott, Louisa’s younger sister, Mr. Wheeler arranged a private tour of the Alcott house, “Orchard House.” We saw evidence of May’s emerging talent as an artist from her childhood, preserved on the window frames and walls of a room their parents had established as a studio for May’s work.

(These days, aren’t we inclined to admonish our children NOT to draw and paint on

their walls!? Not so, the free thinking Transcendentalists…..) We said our heartfelt thank yous to Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler for their generous and thoughtful introduction to Mary C. Wheeler’s roots. I think our time with them may have been the most special part of the weekend. (And Deamie figured out that Mr. Wheeler was her first husband’s boss in a bank during their time overseas!)

After a rest and lunch at the Inn, several of us continued our education about Concord with a walking tour of the Center.

Our guide, Dr. Joel Andrews, is the founder of Walking Tours, an author of Concord history, as well as a lecturer of medicine at Tufts and Harvard, and he is a descendent of an early Jewish family who came to Concord in Colonial times. He gave us a Socratic tour of some of the original houses, cemeteries, battle sites and natural history by prodding us, not so much with lecture as with questions like: “If you, as a small group of higgledy piggledy Minutemen/boys, were faced with a battalion of armed British Red Coats marching in formation along the main road into Concord, what would you do? Attack? Retreat? Another plan?” We scratched our head and took a stab at some ideas, and learned that the Minutemen called the bluff of the British by forming and leading a musical parade through town, much to the surprise and dismay of the British. So the British turned and retreated!

(A participatory style of learning may or may not have been part of our Wheeler education in the 1950’s, but we learned at Reunion it surely is at Wheeler today in the 21st century.)

On to The North Bridge where it is claimed that “The shot that was heard around the world” was fired to launch the American Revolution. (In fact, the first battle was on Lexington Green just a few miles east in Lexington, MA.) We lingered at this historic and natural site before returning for more conversation at the Colonial Inn. For our “main event,” we gathered in a private room at the Inn, we’d reserved especially for our evening. While Sam arranged for wine to sip, we listened to John Hanson Mitchell, local author and raconteur, describe his theory of “place,” starting from his book, Walking Towards Walden. His book recounts a ramble he took with friends several years ago to discover the natural and personal places from Westford to Concord. His ramble was based on the hero’s pilgrimage to a place of importance, in this case, Concord, one of the starting points in American political and literary history. Best of all was when he read

amusing vignettes from his book, encounters between the walkers and children along the way.

After our dinner filled with convivial conversation, Judy’s husband, Fred, showed us a slide show of photos of Wheeler events taken by Judy’s father during the 1950’s.

Lots of the Purple and Gold teams, marching in formation in our athletic uniforms, some of the pageants, and ending with our graduation day in the courtyard.

We called out names as the slides went by, but Nancy was especially good at recognizing and naming several classmates from over 50 years ago!

To end the evening, John Mitchell signed copies of his book, and two authors among our classmates brought their books for us to buy signed copies. Susan Munger is author of a beautiful book, Common to This Country; Botanical Discoveries of Lewis and Clark, illustrated by Charlotte Staub Thomas. Susan’s career has been in publishing and she is a master gardener.

Deamie/Claire Cabot is co-author of a very entertaining psychological mystery, Write is Wrong, based on her work in handwriting analysis.

It was wonderful to see that we have all grown but stayed the same, are generally healthy and in good form, and have many life stories to share. We now have happy memories of our friends from long ago and today. Everyone agreed that Alex looks exactly, and incredibly, the same as her 15

“Judy’s husband, Fred, showed us a slide show of photos of Wheeler events taken by Judy’s father during the 1950’s. Lots of the Purple and Gold teams, marching in formation in our athletic uniforms, some of the pageants, and ending with our graduation day in the courtyard.”

Faith McClellan LeBaron ‘60 year old self, and the rest of us are certainly recognizable as soon as we talk or laugh or walk….the kernel of our youth remains, even as life’s stories may have added layers to our appearances! It was really nice to have the husbands of five of us join the gathering to add to the picture of our lives.

Because I stayed at a friend’s house, my husband and I missed Sunday morning breakfast with everyone and all the farewells.

I am sure there were promises to meet again.

Class members pose with Rick Wheeler at Author’s Ridge, where the Wheeler Family plot — and Miss Wheeler’s grave — is located in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. photo by Sam Cabot

Wheeler parent Susan Esposito shared with the School the notes alumnus Sam Coale ‘00 used to craft the eulogy he gave at his mother Gray Coale’s funeral last March. Susan wrote to us, “Gray Coale was a very special person and will certainly be missed by all who knew her. Sam’s reference to Wheeler’s motto was special to many of us who were there.” We agree.

C

EULOGY NOTES - SC

ple – Think companies have them, Ap m, the ve ha ols ho Sc s. tto the high • I’d like to talk about mo lar from Wheeler School, cu rti pa in tto mo e on veth Life. focus on tto was this: The Spirit Gi mo Different. I would like to eir Th of. are aw are many of you school I attended which h Life. ond: The Spirit . . . Givet sec se questions than Think about that for a who better to answer the ll, We ? life is at wh r, tte t ma • What is a spirit? For tha tion. e Arts … in Film Produc Fin of r elo ch at life is either. It’s very a guy with a Ba spirit is. I don’t know wh a at wh ow kn n’t do I , • In all seriousness . e you and say I don’t know e a life and comforting to stand befor a person’s spirit can exud t tha s an me e’ Lif h vet Gi t iri A spirit • I think that that ‘The Sp t there is something more. bu e, su tis d an ns ga or n. We are energy entirely of its ow r was ce. en ess King Arthur: When Arthu of d within – a soul. An en leg the ke Ta nt. s its environme kingdom. When • The spirit in fact affect g existed throughout the rin sp al rn ete , ed ish ur flo d be kind, young and happy, the lan solate. A person’s spirit can de d an n rre ba ld, co w land gre he was old and frail, the dy is licious . . . even pure evil. ma s, ou se though her mortal bo cau be s, devious, adventur wa t no is, say I . ’s, spirit is divine s room – all of you • My mother, Gray Coale ok at all the people in thi Lo . us gst on am d an e fre t exists in all of in death, her spirit is now by friendship – her spiri me so , od blo by ly ect dir some are affected by her spirit, tly that rmth and radiance. wa a es ud ther, told me a story recen mo you. Her spirit ex r he r, the mo nd gra of nature. My the most was the • She is also a true spirit thing that fascinated her the er, oll str a in by ba a as r se things. Trees, when she was pushing he s lit up when she saw the eye r he es, sh bu ss, gra that they Trees, I would go as far as to say environment around her: bly ua arg r, he to ly ect EES in spoke dir int out there are TWO TR po the forest, the green earth, to e lik uld wo I , me don’t believe spoke through her. If you u, I could this room right now. ther. Unfortunately for yo mo my t ou ab s rie sto ul come a nderf r recent passing, I have be he • I could tell you many wo of se cau Be s: thi say ll ysical omise. I wi are sad to have lost her ph We go on all day. I won’t. I pr ce. en ist ex of ins pla ere are many oice in her soul, let more spiritual person. Th spirit is eternal, let us rej r he t Bu . eve gri to us s of life with presense, it is natural for , look upon the mysterie ren ild ch e lik , us let d an nor, us remember her with ho wonder and awe. is no doubt a difficult • I miss you Mom. This ain your physical presence ag transition. I will not see n n that one day I will joi in this life, but I am certai st well, Godspeed your you on the other side. Re journey.

The Spirit… Giveth Life.

The Heritage Society: Wheeler’s Legacy Gift Society Rob Glancy ‘01

you are never too young (or too old) to plan for your future or your legacy.

Rob Glancy ’01 took this advice to heart and recently included Wheeler as a beneficiary of his estate plan. His gift will support the arts, a program that first brought Rob to Wheeler as a ninth grader and still remains important to him today. As he plans for his 10th Reunion, here are some excerpts from a conversation with Rob about his motivation to make a gift to Wheeler.

How did you come to consider creating a will?

My financial advisor recommended that I have a will. My initial reaction was ‘of course, why hadn’t I thought of that before.’ But who really thinks about it and especially at my age (28)? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should write my ambitions and wishes down so they would be followed. Even though my family knows generally what my wishes are, it needs to be in a will so it will happen.

How did you ultimately decide on Wheeler as a primary beneficiary of your legacy gift?

Even before the conversation with my advisor, I always intended to support Wheeler. I support the school as much as I can through volunteer work and gifts to the Wheeler Fund. (Rob is on the Wheeler Alumni Board.)

And this legacy gift was a good extension of that, for down the road. I feel so strongly about education. I learned to be a life-long learner at Wheeler. This curiosity was critical to my success in college and later. High school is a big part of the formative years, where you get on ‘your road’.

I want to support the kind of environment that really gets you on your path, helps open your eyes, gives you courage to try new interests, and to be proactive about your own education. Wheeler taught me that. It’s where I defined what my interests are.

“Think about what Wheeler has meant or still means to you, and maybe, say ‘thank you’ in the same way.” Rob Glancy ‘01 Have you included Wheeler in your will or are you considering such a gift? If so, we would love to hear from you and ask that you contact Michele Sczerbinski Diaz ’86 in the school’s Planned Giving office at (401)528-2132 or michelediaz@ wheelerschool.org. For bequest language or to learn more about other legacy gifts please visit us at www.wheelerschool.org/ heritagesociety.

Who or what inspires you to be philanthropic?

Definitely my parents and grandparents, although they are quite private about their philanthropy; I wanted to be more public to hopefully encourage other alumni to make similar choices.

What would you say to other alumni about leaving a legacy gift to Wheeler?

First, it is never too early, or late, to set your priorities in writing. Alumni support shows how enduring the Wheeler spirit is. The (Wheeler) experience, although it has changed over the years, is vibrant and integral to every child’s success. There are alumni, who came before each of us, who helped make our experience what it was by being generous. Hopefully my gift will inspire others, young alumni in particular, to make a bequest to Wheeler or further motivate others who are able to make a financial contribution today. Also, I think it is important for all alumni to know that even younger alums want to make a difference through their philanthropy.

Parents of Alumni: If this publication is addressed to your son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address with you, please notify the Alumni Office of the new mailing address.

Office of Institutional Advancement The Wheeler School 216 Hope Street Providence, Rhode Island 02906-2246

Junior Allie Chernick, a RI Scholastic Art gold award winner this year in photography, captures classmate Jon Snider at the Spring Jazz Concert.

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