Skip to main content

Raising Sails


On Friday, parents, faculty, and staff came together some 620 strong for a magical, festive, sold-out PA Benefit --"Raising Sails"-- in celebration of our mission and one another.

As benefit chairs Caroline Bouckaert and Maria Welch reminded us, ours is a community that appreciates that raising "good men" goes beyond academics, to "harnessing each boy's will to do good." The Saint David's bond is formed through our shared values; paramount among those is kindness.

Inspired by their loving parents and caring teachers, our boys set sail each day at 12 East 89th Street to learn and to live lives of purpose, led always by our gentle guidance in kindness and the call to be good. The good lies at the heart of all that we do in our four pillars, whether the academic, arts, athletics or spirituality. It has been said that a sailor cannot see north, but knows the needle can. The metaphorical sails we raise within our boys capture the winds of time and allow their moral compass to guide them.

From the moment that the doors of Cipriani 42nd Street opened, to the final call of the after party, Friday evening was a joyful embrace of kindness. We are deeply grateful for the leadership and creativity of Caroline and Maria, all their committee chairs, our PA President Cricket Diaz and her team, and the cast of thousands who made the event possible. There's no community like Saint David's!

Ut viri boni sint. 

Enjoy viewing the video:



Popular posts from this blog

"The Wisdom Within" - Building Student Motivation Through Choice

In the third entry of our Teaching Boys Initiative quarterly blog series, Master Teacher Jim Barbieri explores how providing boys with agency to choose builds motivation and enhances learning. BUILDING STUDENT MOTIVATION THROUGH CHOICE By the time I was eight years old, I had become completely absorbed in all things baseball. Living in New York was perfect for a baseball fan; although I was a Mets fan thanks to my idol, Tom Seaver, I was also interested in learning about all the amazing Yankees stars of yore. How could I call myself a baseball fan if I didn’t know the history and records of stars like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Yogi Berra? I loved collecting baseball cards and reading the career statistics of each player on the back. Looking through my collection one day, I discovered that I shared a birthday with the legendary Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente. At eight years old, I was crushed to hear the news that he had died tragically in a plane crash while trying to ...
Read more

"The Wisdom Within" - Bringing Sound to Space

In the second entry of our Teaching Boys Initiative's quarterly blog series, "The Wisdom Within," Saint David's reflective practitioner and Master Teacher Cathy O'Neill explores the pedagogical power of play in the education of young boys. BRINGING SOUND TO SPACE It began with a mound of mangled metal and the vapor of a vision gleaned from recent comments and random fact-dropping by the Pre-K boys. Unsure of what exactly I was looking for, but fueled by the idea of a makeshift rocket to dovetail with our upcoming space unit, I gingerly picked through the scrap pile until my hands grazed an old VW control panel devoid of its dashboard. Eureka! An array of knobs, dials, and buttons - while in reality, dead as doornails - in the right small hands, would become the epicenter of our NASA-inspired dramatic play corner. With a couple of lawn chairs and some old CB radio microphones to round out the set, engines would be ignited by the power of imagination. All systems go...
Read more

"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