Skip to main content

Special Sessions with Experts Close Out Year


To mark the closing weeks of a most unusual year, we have been fortunate to provide mission-focused virtual sessions for the Class of 2020 with Rob Sgarlata and Dr. Rita Kalyani, leaders in the sports and medical fields.

Last week, Rob Sgarlata, the head football coach of Georgetown University inspired our boys the Hoyas' way. Engaging each boy with animation, he counseled them on continuous improvement and how to deal with adversity or challenging situations. He advised boys to keep the numbers 1, 10, and 90 in mind: "Every morning you wake up, you want to get 1 percent better, every day." To be better today than you were yesterday and better still tomorrow, is something we reflect on often at Saint David's with our boys. He also reminded them that when adversity strikes, life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react.

Sgarlata drew parallels between Georgetown's Jesuit philosophy and the mission of Saint David's, stressing the importance of  being a "man or woman for others."  Georgetown's embrace of the student-athlete, someone who appreciates the balance among athletics and academics, and who lives his life with integrity and concern for others, resonated deeply with our eighth graders as they follow our mission's call for balance in all things, to "be good men."

Today, the boys were visited virtually by Dr. Rita Kalyani, a doctor and medical researcher at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Her message centered on the importance of knowing the facts about the fast-moving COVID-19 pandemic in the face of so much misinformation that has been spread about the disease.

Dr. Kalyani showed how effective masks were in preventing transmission of coronavirus, discussed herd immunity and epidemic curves, and noted promising research being conducted at Johns Hopkins into vaccines and clinical treatments.

The hospital's Senior Communications Specialist, Patrick Smith, joined Dr. Kalyani to talk to the boys about the ways in which Johns Hopkins works with the local and national media in order to share accurate, data-driven information--the impartial voice of science--with the general public.

The messages that both Sgarlata and Kalyani brought to our soon-to-be graduates reinforced mission-driven values our school holds dear: balance, rigorous academic pursuit, deliberate moral introspection, and critical analysis of ideas and issues. Thank you to our class parents for helping to arrange these exceptional experiences for our boys.


Popular posts from this blog

"The Wisdom Within" - The Superpower of Performance

In the following entry of our Teaching Boys Initiative blog series, Saint David's Director of Music and Master Teacher Jeffrey Moore explores how participating in performances and productions build transformative competencies, transmit values, and inspire boys to excel. Jose Antonio Abreu, one of the leading educators in classical music and the founder of El Sistema said this: “Music has to be recognized as an agent of social development in the highest sense, because it transmits the highest values  — solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it can unite an entire community and express sublime feelings.”¹ At Saint David’s School, performance begins in the very first years. Each class, from Pre-K through Eighth Grade, presents their work to an audience of peers and parents, whether it is a story, a skit, a play, a lecture, or a musical presentation. But the increasing complexity and demands on our boys to push themselves to another level is the key to their development and succes...
Read more

"The Wisdom Within" - Writing and Thinking

In our continuing efforts through the Teaching Boys Initiative at Saint David's School ™ , one of our visiting scholars, Dr. Ric Campbell, engages in ongoing reflective practice with our faculty. Below, Dr. Campbell shares an example of a freewriting initiative that was born from the collaboration between literature teacher Jamie MacNeille and history teacher Drew Burton, who sought to address forms of student engagement in their respective disciplines.  WRITING and THINKING:  A Learning Community Engaged in the Knowledge-Making Practices of the Disciplines “Whoa, this freewriting is really helpful !” The above quote by a sixth-grade literature student captures a revelatory moment; he has discovered the wealth of ideas at the end of his pen as he writes to describe what he is noticing in the novel the class is reading and discovers that what he notices leads to questions, and that those questions, in turn, lead to bigger ideas. “All there is to thinking is seeing something not...
Read more

"The Wisdom Within" - Learning as Deliberate Practice

In the following  Wisdom Within post, Visiting TBI Scholar Dr. Ric Campbell continues his blog series on our faculty’s reflective practice program. This entry explores how three Saint David's teachers collaborated to build "self regulated" students: "expert learners who take increasing control over their learning while participating as respectful, caring members of their classroom learning community." LEARNING AS DELIBERATE PRACTICE “If schools are going to help all students become expert learners, the metacognitive capabilities of learners must be acknowledged, cultivated, and exploited. Students must be actively engaged in their own learning and knowledge building; they must be able to effectively direct their personal quest for knowledge and skills, to judge for themselves whether they understand, and to know what to do when they need more information.”  [1] Perhaps the two most important outcomes of learning across the rich and varied curriculum at Saint Dav...
Read more