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Joyful Collaborations

Providing our boys with opportunities to engage in meaningful projects with their peers from neighboring girls' schools engenders interpersonal competencies of collaboration, communication, and respect. 

Last year, our eighth graders joined with their eighth-grade peers from Marymount School for an inaugural series of performance-oriented workshops on the iconic Shakespearean love story Romeo and Juliet, conducted by professional teaching artists and English and Drama faculty from both schools. 

We also launched a new weekly theatre arts class for the schools' seventh and eighth graders, which has proven very popular and culminates in a co-production of one-act plays. In addition, both schools participated in a special project with Disney Theatricals to present the first reading of a new concert in development for licensing. 

New this year is a collaboration with girls from The Spence School. When our Music Director Jeffrey Moore was asked to reach out to a girls' school to perform with our Philharmonic Ensemble, he immediately thought of Spence. A number of years ago, third-grade Saint David’s boys collaborated with their Spence counterparts for a program we called “The Greatest Hits.” This time, the partnership would be between the two schools' orchestras.  

Last week, the 13 members of Spence's Middle School Orchestra and the 17 Saint David's Philharmonic Ensemble musicians embarked on a series of early morning rehearsals, led by Philharmonic Ensemble Director Philip Hough, that will culminate in a joint performance at Saint David’s annual Winter Concert this January in our school's Otto-Bernstein Theatre. The plan is to continue the collaboration and for the groups to play together at Spence in the spring. 

At their initial meeting during these collaborations, the boys and girls may at first seem a bit nervous. In no time at all, however, uncertain quiet turns into animated discussion as they flesh out an idea, scene, or musical phrase. There is joy in the theatre, in these social and learning exchanges. In fact, the ways in which the boys and girls interact during these sessions point to the confidence they have gained, in large part, from being in single-gender schools. The students present with a strong sense of self knowledge fostered in their individual schools, so that when they come together, they quickly feel comfortable, confident, and capable. 


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