Giving Thanks and Giving Back

We truly are blessed at Friends School.  Every day we come to work or study in a caring community where we all have what we need to survive and thrive.  This is a week where we take time out to give thanks for our blessings and to give back to the larger community in service, sharing our good fortune, and thinking and acting beyond our own self-interest.

The core Quaker principles or “Testimonies” are sometimes referred to as “SPICES” because their first initials make this acronym.  They are: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Service or Stewardship.  Tomorrow we will come together as an entire student body, with our teachers, staff, and a number of parent volunteers, to share a meal of thanks together.  Before we gather to eat, our partner or buddy classes will meet together for about ½ hour, with older students reading stories to students in the younger grade.  These act of community have become important traditions at Friends School, and ways to celebrate our connections with each other and to reflect on how we care for each other before we head our separate ways for a week.

Besides celebrating community within our own school throughout the week students in different grades have also been engaging in service learning where they reach out to offer service to others.  On Wednesday Sixth Graders visited the Regional Day School to work with students with multiple disabilities or medical issues that make their quest for education more complex than for most of us.  Seventh Graders went to the ARC the same morning to engage with developmentally disabled adults and adolescents.  Besides touching on the chords of community and service, these activities also touch on equality where the core value is our equality in God’s eyes because there is “that of God within each of us.”  How can each of us learn to interact with others unlike ourselves, showing clear respect and empathy in ways that allow us to truly connect?

Other service learning this week included eighth graders clearing litter from an area road to benefit our neighbors and cleaning up the campus, despite a rainy day.  On Friday fifth graders will pack lunch boxes with donated food for the Box Lunch Project.  These boxed meals will be delivered to Food Pantry in Woodbury to be shared with local children who need the nutrition.  Finally on Friday, eighth graders will also volunteer in the afternoon to pack away what is left from the Ten Thousand Villages sale where our community has directed some of its holiday shopping to purchase handcrafted products purchased at fair rates from craftsmen in developing countries who are then able to pay for food, education, housing and healthcare.

As I look back over this week, and forward to next, I reflect on my own gratitude at being part of such an amazing community as Friends School, and being grateful for the opportunity to interact with each of you.   This is truly a place where the core values expressed in the “SPICES” come alive each day.

Civics from Start to Finish

Tuesday was Election Day.  Did you vote?  Not for the Republicans or the Democrats, but for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Mint Chocolate Chip or Chocolate, among other top favorites.  I’m talking about the Second Grade Ice Cream Election, an annual opportunity for our Second Grade Students to get hands-on experience setting up and running an election, and campaigning for a “candidate,” or in this case, for a flavor.  Research was performed, posters were designed and crafted and speeches were made.  In the end, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough was the winner, for, I think, the second year in a row.

At Friends School we emphasize engaged citizenship from Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth Grade.  The ice cream election is a second grade project-based opportunity for students to combine their written and oral language arts skills with their mathematical and artistic skills in the service of learning social studies.  If you are the parent of a second grade student ask them if anyone sang a jingle or used Spanish in their presentation.  I do know that some speeches did touch on science and the presence of particularly healthful ingredients in particular flavors.

On the other end of the spectrum Eighth Grade Civics is a capstone course in our curriculum.  It is a chance for 8^th graders to focus closely on the U.S. Constitution, U.S. History and what it means to be an engaged citizen researching issues, forming opinions and taking stands on a full range of social and political issues in the United State and abroad.  All of these experiences tie to the Quaker Testimony of Community.  What does it mean to be engaged and caring in your family, your school, your church, your town, your country, or as a citizen of the world?  How can you make a difference?  These lessons start early in life.  Taking your child into the voting booth with you, or voting in the Ice Cream Election are two great ways to get your child started.  Then celebrate with the ice cream flavor of your choice!

United Nations Indeed!

Not only were our Middle School students shining yesterday as they each presented their country at our annual World's Fair, but a group of parents were shining too at the Multi-Cultural Network’s first ever Cultural Cafe.

First the Middle School students were beaming, many in costume, many with multi-media presentations or authentic artifacts from their countries supplementing their poster board displays.  All were answering questions for younger students, parents and teachers.  It is a wonderful tradition to have students engage in this project-based learning, really digging into individual countries and then learning to share what they have discovered.

Across the hall a group of parents of truly diverse backgrounds met over coffee and doughnuts to share stories of their own cultural backgrounds.   The first thing that was evident was that everyone defies labels and stereotypes.  A parent who might be “labeled” African-American has a family tradition of an annual curry cook-off reflecting roots in Malaysia.  She did not share any specific traditions that relate to her also having Native American ancestors.  Another parent talked about a father-in-law whose medical studies were interrupted when he was held as a political prisoner for seven years in Romania.  We discussed the sensitivities of being Scotch-Irish, as compared to Irish and what that might mean if you were in Ireland.  Several parents present talked about being labeled Black or African-American regardless of background, and about ancestors who may have worked to “pass” as white.  If you are Brazilian, you may have roots in many countries, such has Syria or Italy, but you speak Portuguese as your native tongue so you are not really “Hispanic” although you might still identify yourself as Latino or Latina.

Before I lost count, I heard references to ancestral roots in Romania, Lebanon, Brazil, Italy, Lithuania, Ukraine, Malaysia, Ireland, Russia, Syria and the United States (Mississippi, the Navajo tribe and New Jersey).   I know there were more.  Each person had wonderful tales to tell.  At the end of the hour we each left with a better understanding of and a greater respect for the challenges that each speaker faced as they present themselves to the world.  At its core, the real questions were for each of us: “Who am I?”  “Where am I from?”  And, “What do I bring with me from my background?”  It was impressive to see parents model a deep, thoughtful and affirming dialogue about these topics, which are ones we challenge our students to explore throughout their years at Friends School.