Class of , we are the future. We will bring light to a darkened world. On May 11, the hallways and classrooms of the GDS LMS buzzed with laughter, hugs, and fun as our visiting grandparents and special friends had the opportunity to experience a day in the life of their lower or middle schooler. Please join us on Friday, May 10, Our country Market Day volunteer chairs Al Moseley and Victoria Quint assembled and coordinated an outstanding team of parent volunteers who delivered some new, instant classics and your old CMD favorites, including the Haunted House, Book Fair, Sweet Shop, and, of course, flu shots with school nurse Elizabeth McDermott!
Thanks to Book Fair chair Christopher Sperl, children relaxed from their browsing in a new, cozy reading nook. First grade teacher Paula Young-Shelton took several plunges in the dunk tank as did new Lower School Principal Kimberly Beck, whose husband and father both did the dunking honors. The new, physical layout seemed to embrace our joyful community, held between the Lower and Middle School wings.
Country Market Day served as yet another reminder that even with a venue change, GDS traditions stay strong. While the interesting, attention-grabbing melodies go to the sopranos, she explained, the altos often sing tedious, repetitive fragments that are ultimately essential to sustaining a piece of music. She was able to actually apply everything she was taught. She never saw herself as a soloist but rather as a member of the ensemble.
But I was hooked! Eliza counts herself lucky to have taken Honors A Cappella during her sophomore year to learn basic theory and stylistic skills. She spent hours listening to successful a cappella groups and toiled still more hours.
The program promises to be a springboard for Middle School singers in an area of music that affords them autonomy and creative choice.
Eliza has promised that students will learn harmonizing, vocal independence, familiarization with the a cappella genre, and general singing and performance techniques. In truth, Eliza has partnered with auxiliary programs in the Middle School to provide structured exposure to a type of musical engagement she herself did not find until High School.
I remember I was hesitant about singing solos, but she helped me become more confident in my singing abilities. I definitely think that if I had been exposed to a cappella earlier, I would have jumped right into the music program at the High School. Students——not only of music but also from all disciplines——will have the chance to learn from, teach, and mentor and provide feedback to their counterparts in other divisions.
On their recent trip to the National Museum of the American Indian to see the Americans exhibit, students returned feeling overwhelmed, but unsurprised by what they saw. Their set design, modeled on an ant farm, allowed viewers to see all of the action: Floyd trapped, the underground warren to get to him, and all of the action occurring above ground.
While they joyfully skip, sway like a tree in the wind, or hop like a bunny, Joan thoughtfully incorporates work that helps students focus on body awareness, locomotor skills, and understanding the basic principles of dance. As students grow through our program, they will learn how to translate their personal joy into a joyful experience for an audience.
Georgetown Day School will celebrate our 75th Anniversary in ! The chance to share your story is also a chance to ask someone you know about their experiences. Email Director of Communications Alison Grasheim at agrasheim gds. In Fall , fifth-grade classes were in the process of creating paintings based on the artistic movement Cubism using the work of the most wellknown Cubist painter, Pablo Picasso, as inspiration. Cubist art analyzes objects, deconstructs them, and then reassembles them.
The cubist artist takes into consideration multiple viewpoints of the same subject and tries to create various perspectives in one cohesive piece. Students began with two observational drawings of a few objects from two vantage points. They then enlarged the images on the copier and divided a blank piece of paper into 15 sections. Next they traced their enlarged image on their divided paper, aided with a lightbox, drawing only a part of their still-life in each section.
Finally, the fifth-grade artists painted the piece with a limited palette of either cool or warm colors. The artistic journey through cubism has been both challenging, as well as rewarding, for the students and me. Due to the various steps of the process, the use of different mediums, and the demonstration of specific skill sets, students had to balance creative freedom with aesthetic restrictions.
One Dream. The team was so close the previous season by making it to the final game. They knew they had the skill but just needed to put the pieces together. Donna has coached many of the players since their middle school years. According to Donna, the team was characterized by a relentless, eager, and unified spirit, coupled with a drive to succeed. She also ended the season as the second leader in RBIs. After an outstanding overall season standing of 12 -2 in regular season play and in tournament season , the team successfully saw their dreams through to fruition.
The Championship Varsity Softball team above was a young team with just one graduating senior. Then, like many new freshman, she learned her closest middle school friends were all going to different schools.
Within days though, she found her first real opportunity to be part of a team. It was a fresh start for Ziyah pronounced with a long i.
But that changes when you come here because everyone is just so supportive of you. You feel the need to give that energy back. Notably, Ziyah posted these top times at the biggest, toughest meets. And the school record? They hold that, too.
The better her competition, the better she races. A winning day from Hopper Athletics! Our High School cheering section was decked out in fan t-shirts courtesy of High School athletic director Kathy Hudson. Our youngest Hopper fans cheered their hearts out. Young fans showed up to support the Mighty Hoppers. The team played a great game and came up just short, losing They fought hard and it was exciting to the end. Congratulations on an excellent season. New Lower School Principal Kimberly Beck had planned on being a fighter pilot in the Navy—Navy pilot, and then commercial pilot afterward.
As a three-sport athlete in high school with a particular interest in graphic arts, she had no thoughts of being an educator. Then, a trio of forces launched her in a new direction. First, her mother pointed out that her tendency to question everything might conflict with the duty to follow military orders unquestioningly. And third, around that same time, young Kimberly had begun as a religion instructor, as well as started coaching soccer and basketball with elementary-aged players.
I was overseeing teaching and learning, curriculum, and professional development for faculty and 5, children. I needed to be close to the kids again. She and her husband Marek Beck, also an. And in our quest, we happened upon a school whose mission spoke to us of integrity, worth, diversity, challenge, wonder, self-reliance, and, above all, a love a learning. A school that described being on a journey toward the remarkable So like many of you, I found GDS as a parent first.
When three 2nd grade poets visited her office recently to share a collaborative—hilarious—poem they had written about their love of trees, Kimberly was inspired by their creativity and their tenacity.
It meant so much to them. They all returned to the classroom with stars in their eyes. Kimberly made them all feel seen and known in such a short period of time in what is often a chaotic time of year. I see. As Kimberly works to prepare the LS for the big move to Davenport Street in , she remains focused on the dayto-day experience of our LS students. We are the foundation for all that is to come.
It is an awesome responsibility and one that I take very seriously. United in a common goal, they were using their shared experience as math teachers to tackle an issue of great weight: how to ensure all of our students— especially girls and students of color—are thriving in math.
Guest speakers present specialized content, for instance, on implicit bias, followed by workshops and brainstorming sessions on ways teachers can make strategic changes in the classroom. Teams from each school set goals for their own progress in building strong math communities and supporting girls and students of color.
At the most recent meeting, educators discussed math identities, and how to help students build self-esteem around math, push them outside of their comfort zones, and build resilience. I feel, even as I describe what it meant to me, the strong parallel with what happens here at GDS. Each of us is wrapping ourselves around one another and seeing each other through our differences, ensuring a sense of belonging for all members of our community.
In addition to her time at Roland Park, Marlo brings nine years experience as Director at Good Shepherd Services in Baltimore, supervising programs for and working directly with marginalized adolescents and those with special needs. Marlo is quick to remind us what is at stake should we conflate DEI work with programs for marginalized groups. So many individuals within our faculty, parent, and student constituencies stand out as especially passionate about this work. We are creating the physical spaces that embrace students and allow them to be connected.
For me, as an educator of color, it was the first thing that spoke to me and told me this is a school that was living its mission, certainly about academic rigor and also the connection to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.
I hope that faculty, parents, and students see me not only as a resource but also a partner in furthering their professional, personal, and familial development as it relates to this journey.
She models what diversity work is really about—generosity of heart, willingness to remain curious, and an unfailing commitment to creating a more equitable community. We raised a concern that two restrooms had been overlooked when GDS changed all our restrooms over from single-gender to all-gender. Marlo made sure they were changed by the end of the week.
This fall, she helped the 6th grade team plan a lesson about appropriate—not appropriating—Halloween costumes. Collaborating with PSA and parent affinity group leadership, she played an integral role in facilitating the restructuring of parent affinity groups, whose membership is now growing. She has also led the DEI in planning a very exciting lineup of events that specifically aim to engage parents. She is helping parents to learn about some of the most cuttingedge studies, vocabulary, and practices, allowing us to gain experience and knowledge akin to those that our children are getting at GDS.
Marlo is one of four siblings, and working in DC has brought Marlo closer to one of her sisters. Staff left the afternoon session with tools for supporting our LGBTQ students and families on their individual journeys by first learning the most up-to-date policies and best practices for schools and then by role-playing through various scenarios.
In the two years it took to schedule her time as artist in residence at Borgo Santo Pietro, she could not have anticipated that Italy would bake its way through the hottest July in years. For 12 hours each day, she worked——especially beside a Giverny-inspired lily pond——honing her craft. I missed having other artists to talk to. Still it was a truly productive and inspiring experience. In month-long residencies, a selected artist who is put-up in a small apartment in a neighboring town paints on the grounds of the luxury villa and gardens, while also teaching occasional painting classes to guests.
Each morning, Michelle woke early, practiced yoga, rode her bike to the villa gardens, and began painting by a. Once the sun set and Michelle had to call it a day, she spent more hours researching and studying techniques of the old masters. And for the new technology? Michelle shared some dialogue with Georgetown Day School students and alumni about her work in-progress through her posts on Instagram. The beautiful landscapes her residency afforded invited challenge and plenty of opportunities to explore those techniques.
Still her teacher brain remained alert. Not only was the lavender in bloom, but she was often working on two or three paintings at once because she needed to move as the sun moved. In most positions, she was able to get about three hours of shade. It was critical that she be able to move to the shade without disturbing the perspective of a particular scene.
The final two challenges were on the teaching side of the time at Borgo Santo Pietro: the duration of instruction and the language. During my residency, I had to to make the sessions fun and teach them something valuable in just a single two-hour session. She was not able to rely upon language or her writings. Instead, she had to rely much more upon demonstration and an occasional Google Translate lifeline. An award-winning master in her own right, Michelle is currently teaching weekend courses in plein air painting through the Smithsonian.
We are pleased to announce the addition of three new Board members for the school year. Each spring, trustees are elected for a regular term of three years. Board members may serve two consecutive full or partial terms up to a maximum of six years.
These individuals join an active Board focused on strategic planning, campus planning, and financial goal-setting. For more information about other members of our board, go to www. I believe the most important work is to retain our core values and beliefs while reframing the models and methods within which we thrive.
After majoring in political science at Spelman College with a focus on civil unrest in southern African countries, Aisha continued to concentrate on international business law and alternative dispute resolution at Georgetown University Law Center.
She has clerked in the D. Superior Court under Judge Kaye K. Clark School of Law. She is also the co-founder of the Lotus Institute of Law, a nonprofit focused on restoring public faith in the court system and governance. Department of Justice, combatting discrimination against people with opioid use disorder who are in treatment or recovery. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Elizabeth directed the voter protection program at Advancement Project.
Elizabeth started her legal career as an associate at the law firm now known as WilmerHale. Elizabeth serves on the Diversity Committee and Governance Committee. One attracted bright students who knew the value of working with others. Simon currently serves as the Ronald A.
He is also a member of the independent Systemic Risk Council. He was previously chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Any article about Georgetown Day School, though, needs to start with an explanation of our name and how it is that a school called Georgetown Day School has, in fact, never been located in Georgetown.
Back in when the school opened, some of our founding parents lived in Georgetown and thought they had a lease on some property there, so when the time came to sign the papers incorporating the School, they chose the name Georgetown Day School.
Aggie gaily announced that she was opening a new school and calling it Georgetown Day School. I thought this was great, you know that someone would have the courage to do a school there. Not everyone was thrilled with the idea of an integrated school opening up in what was then a segregated city, controlled by the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, which was overseen by Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, an avowed white supremacist and proud member of the KKK.
But when the inspector came and he looked all over and the kindergarten kids were lying on just blankets on the floor instead of cots, and a few other things that were obviously violations, he overlooked them all. Russell likes to tell the story of the first day Philleo and Aggie went to visit the building, only to discover that they were locked out and the realtor had forgotten to leave a key.
Never one to be daunted, Aggie just looked the building over, until she found a window she could jimmy open. For those first students, Grasslands was truly magical. For ceramics classes, the kids could go outside and dig clay from the ground and bring it back to the art room.
Kline Price, an African-American student, remembered his time at Grasslands fondly. It was a really warm and wonderful relationship. Completely different from the outside, it was a protective environment.
Once you walked down that road [to the school], you were in another world. It was marvelous for fire drills. We could empty that building in 20 seconds. At , we had a separate building for the kindergarteners, presided over by the inimitable Mrs. We were always willing to try new methods and new ways to reach all the children. She pioneered split scheduling so you could work with a small group while the others went to art, sports, music, and drama.
At this point, GDS was still an elementary and middle school, plus a very small 9th grade. The Washington Post reported: The. This idea in reflected in the informal, almost residential, character of the school. There is a complete absence of self-consciousness among the children. The atmosphere is exciting. The playgrounds, for example, are much improved. In my Lower School office, I have a picture of the original structure, a house of sorts to the left , on which the kids used to play.
Luckily no one was hurt, very much; it made for a good story, and opened up space for our first Big Toy. Over time we added the Middle School wing and the gymnasium and retrofitted the Big Room. As well as has served us, designwise the essential structure is very much a product of its time. Small rooms are located on either side of long corridors— corridors which have no utilitarian value except to serve as passageways to the rooms. Our 10th grade classes took place in the gym.
They divided the gym into several rooms by hanging these really long, dark, and heavy curtains from the rafters in order to create classrooms. The following year, the school rented space from what was once a hardware store several blocks up the street. We attended literature class next to where the hammers and wrenches used to be. The funny thing about Mount Vernon Junior College for Women was that we never seemed to see any college students.
Our building was in a corner of the property, surrounded by extremely large playing fields, and we were as isolated as if we had been surrounded by a fence. We had fun because we had free rein—neither the teachers nor the administrators seemed to have much of an idea of how we should behave. We were the inaugural class with no upperclassmen to lead the way.
After a few years, the High School found a more secure location and moved back to MacArthur Boulevard to , the site now occupied by the River School. It is at this point in the GDS story that yours truly enters the picture. Those of us who spent our formative years at , both the staff and the students alike, remember the building with great fondness. The building and what went on in it were very much a product of their time. We had a smoking room, which was mostly, but not exclusively, used by the students.
There was also something known fondly as the trench that lined the student lounge. The trench was about two feet deep and two feet wide. The older boys thought it was fun to stuff trash and freshmen in said trench.
Eventually we acquired the apartment building next door and built a glassed-in bridge to connect the two buildings. We also built a gym at the back end of the original building, which was not exactly regulation size. In a nod towards good health, we moved the smoking room to the outdoors where students and Frank Loennig, the then High School principal, would take their daily smoke.
There was a Senior Studies Department headed up by founding teacher and universal heartthrob Mike Kirchberg. Seniors spent the last six weeks of their senior year pursuing an activity or internship that spoke to them. Students worked on reservations, built and learned how to play a guitar, and one even managed to get a placement with the Merchant Marines.
At the end of the six weeks, the seniors returned to tell the tale of their adventures. The student population had more than doubled since moving into To say the High School was bursting at the seams would be an understatement, and the hunt was on once again for a new home. For those Hoppers who had spent time at , the idea that we would find ourselves on a five-acre campus with more than enough room for an actual playing field, space for a regulation-sized gym, and a Black Box, to say nothing of adequate classroom space, seemed a dream come true.
The design of the new High School, however, was not without controversy. An article in The Washington Post noted:. The new high school of the Georgetown Day School, besides being a splendid facility for its fortunate students, is a hard, invigorating addition to area architecture. The pattern is a weave of square bricks, tan with white intervals, that begins at the base of the building along 42nd Street NW—unmistakably its rear end—and continues along the sides before erupting with optical pop on the bowed front facade.
This is a fine building. The front, once one gets to it, works splendidly. From the public point of view, however, the best thing about this building is that decisive patterning of the main facade—it makes something special out of nothing much.
He just grunted. In when Peter Branch became the fourth Head of School, he was handed a list of 27 goals. At the High School, Peter doubled the footprint.
For a time, the two-story hole which was dug beneath the field at the High School was the deepest construction hole in DC. Yet, here we are! Peter expanded both buildings with a keen eye to the need to have spaces that fulfilled their educational purposes, even while working within the constraints of already established structures.
When we open the combined campus in , it will be a celebration not just of a building, but of an idea. One GDS. The belief that all children deserve the best possible education regardless of their race, their religion, their country of origin, their family structure, or their economic status and that those very attributes are the ground out of which deep and complex learning grows remains as vital and as necessary today as it did in Seventy-five years in the making, our students—in Lower, Middle, and High School—will share more than a plot of land.
The entirety of GDS will share one experience, with opportunities for mentorship, shared use of new spaces, greater crossdivisional support, and more frequent and accessible all-school celebrations.
Making a difference will require engaging with a multicultural society and a globalized world. Using extensive research and harnessing the latest academic findings, we have designed innovative curriculum and classrooms that nurture collaborators and that teach the art of collective problem solving. The center of daily life will be our Academies—classrooms that have porous borders and are clustered by grade to foster collaboration. Over a space of a day, students will shift from the Academies to Learning Commons—a place for collaboration, for conversation, for community—and back again.
Students will move fluidly between highly-integrated indoor and outdoor learning spaces. There will be 41, square feet of outdoor learning space—a model of clever, subtle design—devoted to environmental education and collaborative learning experiences. Through purposeful design, the new campus will deepen the connections between families, faculty, alumni, and students— celebrating our vibrant and diverse community.
In addition to the Commons, there are multiple purposeful spaces for gathering, including the sun-filled welcome lobby, which is adjacent to the library. The library will be more than 1, square feet larger than the existing LMS library, with thousands of books and interactive spaces. Community extends outside the classroom. Our new dining hall, for grades , will provide a central mid-day gathering point focused on breaking bread together. Our kitchens and dining hall will tend with care to the nutritional and food safety needs of our students and staff.
We look forward to the many opportunities to connect that will come with shared mealtimes. Changes will abound. A science teacher! You and Laura together are a huge reason I had the courage to become an actor — that I even had the courage to acquire the skills to become an actor!
He backs up the van, then pummels the sportscar again. And again. We see Kelly raging and laughing delightedly from inside the minivan. He flips off cast member Stephen Kunken who screams helplessly from the curb. Camera follows Kelly who pulls off his light jacket as he walks offset, revealing a long-sleeved Portland Trail Blazers jersey. He tosses the jacket as he exits the soundstage door into…. The highly anticipated annual tradition was born from tragedy.
The university originally created Georgetown Day to lift campus spirits after the death of a student in a drunken brawl in Planners on the Georgetown Program Board found it difficult to garner the same level of enthusiasm for the virtual event, according to Arnett. Just over students tuned into the Zoom call, according to Arnett. Because students were coming and going, however, it was hard to tell how many students attended the event in total. The event succeeded in enlivening an otherwise bleak circumstance, even though it differed from past Georgetown Days, according to professor of economics Carol Rogers, who read some of her student reviews at the Zoom event.
But there was a wonderful spirit, and I am happy that it was offered online, because of its importance to the community. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
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