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Restoring Education in Tigray, Ethiopia

More than a decade ago, as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, Saint David’s committed to supporting the building of schools in Ethiopian villages. On two separate occasions, we were invited to the country to open the two schools we are supporting —Al’asa (Muslim) and Kalina (Orthodox Christian), which are located outside of Mekelle in the northern province of Tigray. On both occasions—June of 2014 and February 2020—I was joined by student council presidents (who were then in high school) and their families, along with faculty members, to officiate at the schools' openings. I am excited to share progress from Save the Children on our work to restore the schools and the health posts damaged by the country's recent civil war.  Save the Children recently provided an update on all nine schools and activities in their Ethiopia schools program. There’s been good news for our schools, Al’asa and Kalina, in particular.  Highlights: Rapid progress has been made following the end
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Recent posts

Bees and Oysters

  "The hive is like a body," the visiting beekeeper tells his rapt audience, holding up a honeycomb for all to see. "The queen is the heart." During sessions with our kindergartners and second graders, the beekeeper introduces the boys to the important roles that bees play as pollinators.  The boys are surprised to learn that a bee sting can have medicinal properties.  They then practice separating wax from the honey of the honeycomb, make candles with the beeswax, and taste the fresh honey. Meanwhile, seventh graders are at the East 90th Street Pier Oyster Restoration site. Monitoring oyster cages can be messy work. Mud, water, and wind converge as the boys move the cages, mount and measure the oysters, survey biodiversity, and test the East River water from which the oysters are drawn.  But the boys couldn't be more focused or engaged. They are at that exciting intersection of science learning, real life experience, and purpose. After working to restore endang
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Second Grade Engineers

There's a buzz in the classroom, a steady purr that revs every few minutes with excitement. "We're making a chair we can actually sit on; and they're going to build a vehicle!" one second grader jumps up to explain to a visitor.  He points to a group of three boys huddled together working furiously on the carpet at the front of the classroom. "And they're making a mansion." All out of recycled cardboard, fasteners, and tape. The boys are working through the engineering cycle to build their own large-scale cardboard projects, collaborating in teams to create a functional structure. Active learning, motor activity, making products, teamwork and competition, all of these elements, called transitive factors, are at play in this science unit. At Saint David's, through our Teaching Boys Initiative, faculty are partnering with our resident visiting scholar Dr. Michael Reichert, renowned researcher in boys' education. Dr. Reichert and his co-research
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Promoting Curiosity in Math

Saint David's prioritizes faculty development through research-informed programming. Our teachers are supported to continually learn and grow in their professions, allowing us to stay abreast of and advance best practices in teaching and learning for boys. During the last school year, we awarded 53 research grants, and this summer alone 20 faculty members enrolled in one or more of our new professional development opportunities.  Below, from our current issue of Saint David's Magazine, Upper School Mathematics Teacher David Lane shares what he learned from his 2023 summer study grant about harnessing curiosity for learning as it emerges in the mathematics classroom.  If you add an infinite number of positive numbers together, will the sum always be infinitely large? Is the number 0.999… (repeating) less than 1? Can all numbers be organized from least to greatest? To the surprise, confusion, and fascination of many of my students, the answer to these three questions is no! I lo
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Strong Values

You can feel it in the air: the indescribable yet readily recognizable excitement of the start of a new school year - in our boys, teachers, families, administrators, and staff. Below, I share excerpts from my opening letter that speak to our 2024-25 school-wide theme, "Strong Values:" "To-morrow I cease to be a puppet, and I become a boy like you and all the other boys."* We teach boys. That’s what we do. And we want our boys to think for themselves. And we want that thinking to be rooted in and guided by “strong values”—our school-wide theme this year, found in the last line of the mission’s second paragraph. In keeping with the school’s classical tradition, these strong values are shaped at Saint David’s by the cardinal and theological virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage, along with faith, hope, and charity. To many Western philosophers, possession of these virtues makes a person good, happy, and thriving. Something we want for all of our sons. 
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Commitment to Advancing Education in Ethiopia

 “We want to rebuild, and to do it with your help.” ~ Aaron Fossi, representative from Save the Children, Saint David's partner in our Ethiopia Schools Initiative Ten summers ago in June of 2014, I traveled with three young alumni who had served as Student Council Presidents (Colin Johnson ’11, Jack Mullin ’12, and Skakel McCooey ’13) to Tigray, Ethiopia, for the official opening of the Saint David's Kalina School. All of the money raised to build the new elementary school for Muslim boys and girls had come from the planning and fundraising conducted by our boys over three years, led by the eighth-grade student council under the guidance of their teacher, Tom Ryan. The boys conceptualized and ran a cornucopia of activities and events: walk-a-thons, pay-to-play sports, ice cream and t-shirt sales, and a not-to-be-missed trivia quiz show that pit teams of students against faculty and parents. The Ethiopia Schools initiative was the culmination of one of two major sixtieth-anniver
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Shared Values and Community--Horizons at Saint David's

Recently, a large group of Horizons at Saint David's supporters gathered in the backyard for the program's annual spring party. The weather was sunny and warm, and everyone's spirits, high. As I spoke with the various attendees, the Saint David's alumni, parents of alumni, volunteers, teachers, and administrators, what struck me most was the sense of community, enthusiasm, and shared values. The Horizons six-week summer program, now in its twelfth year, provides academic support, arts, music, sports, swimming instruction, and field trips to boys in rising first through ninth grades from schools in Saint David's neighborhood, who otherwise wouldn't have these kinds of opportunities in the summer. As Horizons at Saint David’s Executive Director Nicole Ransone succinctly expressed in her welcoming remarks, “Our mission remains the same: to eradicate summer slide and have boys feel successful and prepared for school in September. Our vision is a future where every c
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