From the director:

On Wednesday morning of this week, I spent a couple of hours at school. What a joy! After so much time away I was longing to see the children and staff, and it was every bit as good as I had imagined. I was so happy to be there! I caught a glimpse of several parents as well, and hope to see the rest of you on Saturday. My brother and I are planning to come to the Spring Fling for a little while (mornings, not evenings, are my high energy time—so I won’t last long) and I’m excited to see you there.

During my visit I interrupted the 8th grade humanities class, back from Costa Rica. They were generous enough to share some of their poetry and journal entries, and I sat there feeling blessed and proud. Their insights, honesty, humor, and affection for each other was palpable and heartening. They are a wonderful group.

As I think about schools in general, I’m aware that there are so many ways in which their basis structure has changed very little in the past 50 or 100 years, especially when compared to other aspects of our daily lives such as banking, transportation, communication, medicine, music . . . the list goes on. Children still come to school, sit in classrooms with teachers, play outside, learn to read and count and reason, and make friends. Yet Billy Collins’ memories of his childhood and school tell us that, at least for students at PHS, the experience of school has changed quite a lot. (Of course, PHS has always been ahead of the curve: had Collins been here in the 1950’s, he and his classmates would not have been sitting “alphabetical ourselves in the rows of classroom desks”!) While there are certainly schools where the modern equivalent of Dick and Jane still rule the educational roost, let’s rejoice that at PHS, our teachers continually urge your children to read AND to look.

First Reader
Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate 2001-02

I can see them standing politely on the wide pages
that I was still learning to turn,
Jane in a blue jumper, Dick with his crayon-brown hair,
playing with a ball or exploring the cosmos
of the backyard, unaware they are the first characters,
the boy and girl who begin fiction.

Beyond the simple illustration of their neighborhood
the other protagonists were waiting in a huddle:
frightening Heathcliff, frightened Pip, Nick Adams
carrying a fishing rod. Emma Bovary riding into Rouen.

But I would read about the perfect boy and his sister
even before I would read about Adam and Eve,
garden and gate,
and before I heard the name Gutenberg, the type
of their simple talk was moving into my focusing eyes.

It was always Saturday and he and she
were always pointing at something and shouting “Look!”
pointing at the dog, the bicycle, or at their father
as he pushed a hand mower over the lawn,
waving at aproned mother framed in the kitchen doorway,
pointing toward the sky, pointing at each other.

They wanted us to look but we had looked already
and seen the shaded lawn, the wagon, the postman.
We had seen the dog, walked, watered and fed the animal,
and now it was time to discover the infinite, clicking
permutations of the alphabet’s small and capital letters.
Alphabetical ourselves in the rows of classroom desks,
we were forgetting how to look, learning how to read.

From The Deans

I’m writing to you today as the Learning Specialist. (I’m getting good at putting on and taking off my various hats!) I recently received a booklet entitled “Life Success for Children with Learning Disabilities” describing research conducted at the Frostig Center, a well known institution serving children with learning difficulties. The research focused on identifying factors that contribute to success for individuals with learning disabilities. Success in this case is defined as having good friends, positive family relations, being loved, self-approval, job satisfaction, physical and mental health, financial comfort, spiritual contentment and an over all sense of meaning in one’s life.

Reading through a list of a number of attributes that promote success, I was struck by their universality. The qualities, skills, and approaches discussed in the booklet apply to all of us; those with learning differences, those who learn conventionally, those learning in a formal school setting, and those learning life’s lessons in the “real world”.

First on the list is self-awareness; having a good sense about our own likes and dislikes, strengths and challenges. Helping children recognize their talents and accept their limitations is an important step towards this self understanding. Pro-activity is the next quality discussed. “Successful adults… are generally actively engaged in the world around them – politically, economically, and socially. They participate in community activities and take an active role in their families, neighborhoods, and friendship groups.” This pro-active stance leads to self-advocacy, initiative and a generalized belief that individuals have some power to control their own destiny and affect the their lives. Perseverance and goal setting are two other critical aspects of success. The ability to adapt and be flexible in setting and achieving goals is something that can be modeled and taught. And finally, effective support systems and emotional coping strategies are seen as key elements of a successful person. I suspect that is something we have all had direct experience with.

As I write, I am struck with how deeply these qualities run through our teaching and interacting with the kids. These are characteristics and skills we hope to foster in all our students.

Ann Meissner
Acting Director, Lower School Dean, Learning Specialist