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

On a recent Friday morning at the NY Hilton, three Saint David's boys participated on the keynote address panel for the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The panel gave each student a chance to share about an innovative, globally minded languages project or learning that they are doing with a teacher.  In front of more than 1,000 educators in attendance, our boys, who were the only elementary school-age presenters, spoke knowledgeably about their projects and confidently answered questions that had been gathered from the audience.   A third grader presented Mi Mascota:  “Our next unit is on pets, and we will be creating books on how to care for different types of pets to share with the animal shelter in Spanish Harlem,” he said. “We hope our directions will help families adopting a pet to take good care of them.” A sixth grader presented Siu Mai Peruano, sharing a Peruvian unit and cooking project from his Spanish class:  “In this project we ...

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...

It has been reported that even elite college students are unable to handle assignments that involve reading large amounts of text. The average adult human attention span is said to have decreased. We are constantly multi-tasking, scrolling through social media feeds, contending with distractions that beckon us. Much praise is often given to multitaskers, but science tells us that the human brain cannot focus effectively on two things at once. While social media's algorithms may hook us into spending extended periods of time on a particular feed, we are losing our ability to devote time to deep thought, critical analysis, problem-solving, and the encoding and decoding associated with person-to-person communication—all essential to securing and maintaining high level employment and leading a meaningful, purposeful life. So what to do? Great schools often need to be countercultural. At Saint David's, we stand committed to the written word and the book. Reading asks us to engage in...

We are now officially a quarter into the 21st century -- living in a fast-paced, always-changing and complex world. It is also an age of ubiquitous distractions, with information, messaging, and stimuli coming at us seemingly nonstop by byte and swipe. Great schools however, are often counter-cultural. The shared strong values our school community celebrates this school year spring from the classical and theological virtues -- prudence, temperance, courage, justice, faith, hope, and charity -- which all require us to slow down and fully engage in order to lead productive and fulfilling lives. Throughout our program, we seek for our boys to discover the necessity and reward of focusing, close looking, and contemplation. Three recent examples come to mind. " How does this painting make you feel?"  This question was asked by a second grader about Sonia Delaunay's orphism piece  Prismes Electriques  during a recent culminating event for parents and faculty at the Gu...

  To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals, that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him. “These words encapsulate the essence of moral introspection and can be a key to the transition from boyhood to manhood," said Rohan Bhatia '16 at the beginning of the Alumni Chapel talk he delivered on Friday, December 13 to this year's seventh and eighth graders. The quote he referenced was from my opening letter for the 2015-2016 school year when "Deliberate Moral Introspection" was our school-wide theme. Rohan was in the eighth grade at the time. During his Chapel, he used it as a foundation when speaking to our boys about harnessing moral introspection to build a life of character and purpose. Rohan's talk featured so many valuable messages around this theme. Excerpted, below, are some of his words of wisdom: "The goal of successful deliberate moral in...

The Teaching Boys Initiative (TBI) is a cornerstone of Saint David’s School’s strategic vision, aimed at developing a robust framework of evidence-based best practices in boys’ education. The initiative’s primary goal is to empower educators with the knowledge, skills, habits, and dispositions of reflective practitioners, enhancing their professional growth and the overall quality of teaching and learning for boys.  In TBI's new quarterly blog series, "The Wisdom Within," our faculty share stories that inform, inspire, and encourage reflective practice using evidence-based approaches in teaching and learning for boys.  The following inaugural entry, "A Matter of Trust," was written by reflective practitioner and Master Teacher Tom Ryan, who has been inspiring generations of Saint David's boys for more than 53 years. A MATTER OF TRUST …but, I digress. I cannot possibly begin any writing piece, and/or class, without some digression that, as I have said to my s...

In spring of 2023, we partnered with Dr. Ric Campbell, founder and former Dean of the teacher-education program (Master of Arts) at Bard College, for our new Teacher Collaborative Research Program. A graduate of the Harvard University School of Education, Doctor of Education (Ed.D) program in Teaching and Learning, Ric brings a wealth of experience as a curriculum developer, classroom teacher, and instructional coach to our Teaching Boys Initiative.  Last year, Dr. Campbell, led a group of reflective practitioners, embarking on a Teaching Boys Curriculum project. The five areas that the teachers worked on throughout the year included The Self Directed Learner, The Confident Learner, The Effective Efficient Classroom, Learning as Play , and Students Learning From Students .  This year, Dr. Campbell continues his ongoing professional development work with our faculty, incorporating reflective practice into our mentoring program for teachers new to the school. The goal of Saint D...