David O'Halloran, Headmaster - Saint David's School, New York City

Character counts as much as achievement. This message resonated during Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Leymah Gbowee's inspiring talk with our sixth and seventh grade boys yesterday morning during a special assembly. Ms. Gbowee led a women's nonviolent peace movement that helped bring about the end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. She is founder of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, an organization committed to providing outstanding education and leadership opportunities to women, girls, and youth. For the past four years, Saint David's sixth graders have collaborated with Ms. Gbowee to raise money for the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa's Book Bag Drive, an initiative that provides book bags and supplies to high achieving students in Ms. Gbowee's native Liberia and in Ghana. Last year, through a bake sale that the boys organized and ran on their own, the class raised enough money to fund the purchase of 48 book bags. This year, the Gbowee Founda...

Motivated by mild temperatures and a gentle breeze, we took to Wollman Rink in loops and turns and runs: Saint David's community members--brothers, sisters, parents, faculty and staff--at our annual Family Skating Party on Monday eve. There's the food, the famous dessert selection, the mingling of adults, the laughter of children, the skating. It is a celebration of a true community that cares about each other like no other. Above, our eighth graders gathered for a shot before taking off for a group skate. Time spent together in shared experiences is the most precious gift. Thank you, to the Saint David's Parents Association and Skating Party Chairs Jaime Neary, Jeanine Salvatore, and Lisa Skipitaris for giving the Saint David's community such a beautiful night to remember.

Our seventh graders are in Cape Cod with their teachers and coaches for a full week of interdisciplinary, experiential learning in a beautiful, natural setting. Highlights include a marine life harbor cruise featuring the capture and release of sea creatures; lab sessions with research specialists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; visits to the Audubon Wellfleet Wildlife Sanctuary; and participation in beach hikes, nature walks, and a bicycle ride along the Cape Cod National Seashore. Throughout the trip, boys apply and further their observational drawing skills as they sketch natural scenes, seashells, and birds.  They also enjoy outdoor sports, and traditional camp activities. This decades-old tradition at Saint David's has evolved through the years, and it remains one of the highlights of the seventh grade experience. It is an opportunity for the boys to deepen learning that occurs in the classroom, to focus their attention on the importance of enviro...

As part of Saint David's exciting new collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, our fifth graders attended the final dress rehearsal for La Boheme at the opera house yesterday. For most, it was their first experience with grand opera. After Act II, during their lunch break, the boys engaged in a talk-back with composer and music educator Tom Cabaniss, who asked them what they found interesting about the opera and what they wanted to learn more about.  Boys were impressed by the complex staging and large cast, and expressed their curiosity about how different sounds are created. They also discussed how opera is a combination of a variety of art forms: architecture, lighting, visual arts, music, and poetry. Mr. Cabaniss will meet regularly with the class in January and February in our Otto-Bernstein Theatre, where he will lead workshop sessions with the boys as they compose a mini-production inspired by the Puccini opera. The arts (aesthetics) is one of the four pilla...

During two days at Frost Valley in Upstate New York last week with their teachers, our sixth graders enjoyed exploring the natural world, hiking to a 40-foot waterfall, and participating in a variety of outdoor challenges.  The activities pushed them beyond their comfort zones, required them to work collaboratively, and to lean on each other for support.  It is an experience that promotes leadership skills, teamwork, and respect, and strengthens our boy's ties with their fellow classmates.  We provide field trips like this throughout the program to build on and augment the learning that occurs in school. 

Saint David's is committed to facilitating our boys' development into good digital citizens who engage in appropriate, safe, and healthy online behavior.  In this effort, we partner with  Common Sense Media , the leading nonprofit dedicated to helping parents, teachers, and students navigate the world of media and technology. Friday morning, two experts from CSM spoke at our Parents Association Meeting. CSM New York Director Samira Sine (who is also a Saint David's current parent) and CSM Education Director Tali Horowitz presented the results of the latest research on technology use by children, and provided tips for cultivating good digital citizens. Takeaways included the importance of respect--thinking about the fact that there is a feeling person behind every screen and text message, making sure that children don't sleep with their devices in their rooms, the importance of parent involvement in setting and communicating rules and expectations, and modeling...

Our Pre-K boys' recent celebration of Farm Day was much more than a fun day of pumpkin picking and tractor driving in the back yard. Structured dramatic play is one of the ways that young boys learn best. It is active, hands-on, and engaging. Not only does it enable boys to understand a topic, it also cultivates respect, and builds vocabulary, social, and collaborative skills. It is a fundamental part of the learning process. Farm Day marks the start of a multi-faceted "Seeds to Supper" interdisciplinary study in which the boys learn about the origins of food, and the journey it takes from farm to table. Along the way, the boys interact with real farmers, watch chicks hatch in their classroom, and plant seeds in their class garden. They will harvest vegetables from their "garden farm" and bring them to the Pre-K Store where they will be purchased for the Pre-K Pizzeria. In exploring all of these areas, the boys learn more about themselves and the ...

Saint David's collaborates with leading institutions in the city and beyond for units of study. These partnerships, rooted in curricular goals and objectives, are long term, occurring over several sessions during a course of study. They augment and deepen boys' in-class learning. Yesterday, we kicked off one of these signature collaborations: our Grade Six partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. During their learning of American history, the sixth graders will visit the Gilder Lehrman Collection, housed at the New-York Historical Society. There, they will be able to closely examine artifacts and original sources from among the more than 70,000 important historical documents housed in the Collection. During yesterday morning's kick-off workshop for sixth graders and their parents, James Basker, President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University, led a di...

Mimi (Liana Guberman), Rodolfo (Victor Starsky), and Musetta (Kirsten Scott) sang for Saint David's fifth graders yesterday in the Otto-Bernstein Performing Arts Theatre, kicking off our school's one-of-a-kind collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera. As part of the Fifth Grade's year-long exploration of grand opera, the boys are partnering with artists and professionals from the Met to learn about the genre. This is the first-ever workshop style collaboration between the Met and a school, and it will occur over several months. Yesterday, the group of opera performers and Met professionals, including Director of Education Marsha Drummond, introduced the boys to the music of Puccini and the plot of  La Boheme , which will be the class's inspiration as our boys work over several sessions with Met educators and their Saint David's music teachers to compose their own original operatic work. In addition to the voice demonstrations of what an ope...