Abington Friends Schoolkanga newsin

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eMarch 2010

AFS Faculty at NAIS

Arts Day 2010

Parenting Conference

Swimming to Success

Inclines and Planes in EC

US Weighs Foreign Policy

Alumni Acorn Initiative

March Calendar

culture and prevailing ideas has shifted from a decadeor more to one to two years, leaving us continually off-balance as parents. Third, every child truly is differentfrom every other and, for better and worse, truly dif-ferent from who we are. It’s a lifelong journey comingto understand this profound truth for them and for us.

And so after several days of snowed-in family time,parenting is on my mind. As I sit down to write this, Ifind my heart full of compassion, humility, solidarityand a hope to be encouraging for fellow moms anddads. Here is what I am reminding myself of thesedays as a parent:

While the publishing industry would lead us to believeotherwise, psychologist Rob Evans tells us that parent-ing is not built on expertise that others have and wedon’t. No simple scheme or set of skills reduces thecomplexity and richness of day to day parenting. Hereand there we can pick up some useful perspective, butfor the most part we develop our own body of wis-dom and knowledge by parenting our own children.The true key is presence, whether that’s floor-timewith toddlers or late night kitchen talks with teenagers.In listening, in sharing our lives with our children, we

Is there any role in all of life with a wider spectrumof emotion and experience than that of being aparent? Our children elate us, bewilder, worry andinfuriate us. They inspire our deepest love and prideand amaze us at times with who they are and whatthey can do. Our hearts break when theirs do andwe suffer the pains of growing up with them. Theybring out the finest, and at times, the very worst inus. In all phases of their lives, our children chal-lenge us to grow as people, to grow in wisdom, togrow into the great love that we have for them. Parenting is the most profound set of experiencesmost of us will ever have.

Of course, with all of this, a major component ofparenting for most of us is self-doubt. There’splenty to engender anxiety for us as parents. First,it’s a complicated role with lots of micro-decisionmaking about how to respond to all that our chil-dren bring to us in a given day: when to support,when to push, when to negotiate, when to standfirm. Second, our children are growing up in a dif-ferent world than that in which we were children.There are few time-tested standards about growingup in a media and technology saturated age; thelength of generational change in technology, pop

Snowed-in Reflections on Lifelong Journey of Parenting Message from Rich Nourie, Head of School

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date March 2

Quakerism Evening

March 9Youth Athletic Information Night

March 11-12Pirates of PenzanceMiddle School Musical

March 20RooFest Sponsor-ship Dinner

March 25-April 6Spring Break

Continued on next page

Arts Day 2010 Engaged Students in all Divisions

Third graders Eli Toomer, Matthew Pieretti and MilesJones-Patton peruse the table settings at our students’homage to Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party installation.

Another key thought for me is a Quaker one: Let yourlife speak. Ultimately, the most important source of ourchildren’s future happiness, purpose and well-being willbe their values. The miracle of being human is that ourlives gradually fill with the things we most value andmost prize. Our children live in our homes and in ourlives which are filled with the things we love and cher-ish. To the degree that those things nurture the heartand spirit, we are laying a wonderful foundation for theexpectations our children will carry their whole lives.

Finally, I find it incredibly helpful to talk to other par-ents. The lives of others can appear far more polishedor sure-footed than our own, but real talk amongfriends shows how illusory this really is. Parents allshare the messiness, uncertainty, self-doubt and deepfrustrations of being a mom or dad. Not only is it fruit-less to hope to avoid all of this, it would be seriouslycounterproductive to the growth of our children. It isin the give and take, the figuring out, the mistakes andretractions, that so much important learning happens. The good news is that with all the wear and tear wepoor parents (and our kids) endure, the fact is that ourlives as parents truly are amazing, filled with grace andlove and worth every penny, tear and heart-ache. We areentwined in a lifelong journey with our children, blessedby the daily miracles of love, growth and deep friend-ship. I hear being a grandparent’s even better!

create the ongoing dialogue that is parenting. It’sour caring and honest, sometimes faltering andsometimes brilliant (really!) responses to our chil-dren over time that is of deepest value to them.

Remember always that it is not our job, in fact it’snot even possible, to turn our children into thepeople we want them to be. We’re an importantpiece of the journey, but there are other importantthings happening that account for powerful growthin our children. One is simply child and cognitivedevelopment. Over the course of time, our chil-dren undergo several transformations of how theymake sense of and experience the world. What maybe deeply vexing to us in one phase will take careof itself over time, often best if we don’t persever-ate on a particular trait or behavior. The abilities toshare, delay gratification, tell the truth, get organ-ized, be empathetic, all come with development.We play an important role in helping our childrenthink through their thoughts and provide somespace for reflection in which new perspectivesslowly come together, but a lot of the work is partof long arc of developmental growth and transfor-mation that unfolds over years and years. Keepingperspective, compassion and a sense of humor areall more helpful to you and your child than coerc-ing model behavior at all times (I know- I’ve tried!).

On February 16 after an almost weeklong breakfrom school thanks to copious snow and the Presi-dents Day holiday, we finally held our long awaitedArts Day 2010: Women in the Arts. This school-wide event involved students in every division, whohad spent weeks preparing for the day by creatingpieces of art inspired by noted female artists in-cluding Barbara Kruger, Holly Sigler and JennyHolzer. In the Stewart Lobby, a recreation of JudyChicago’s famous Dinner Party installation cap-tured the attention of every passerby. Fashionedlike the original piece, the Dinner Party consistedof three tables arranged in a triangular formationwith table runners and place settings representingnotable female artists. The settings were made bystudents in Early Childhood, Middle and UpperSchool. “I'm especially grateful for the opportunityto be connected across the school by the arts,” saidMiddle School Director Russell Shaw. “to witnessstudents from Early Childhood to seniors sharingexperiences and being transformed by the astonish-ing creativity of our arts department!”

Message from Rich NourieContinued

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otesHelping parents navigate our

resource rich world with theirchildren is a responsibiityAFS Technology DirectorJohn Rison is passionateabout. Together with MiddleSchool Director RussellShaw, he launched a series ofparent conversations at AFSabout technology last fall, fo-cused on managing risk andembracing possibility.

In late February, John andRussell took their messageon the road, presenting atthe National Association ofIndependent Schools Conference in San Francisco.

In their talk they used theanalogy of a fast moving busto describe where childrenand their parents often findthemselves in relation totechnology. The children areon the bus, in fact they’reoften driving it, while theirparents are sitting in theback seat or are behind thebus running desperately tocatch up. John and Russellargue that parents need tomake sure they get on thatbus and crawl their way up tothe front .

While our children may betech savvy, they are still developing wisdom andjudgment and inevitably theywill make mistakes. We canuse those as learning oppor-tunities and we can helpguide them with a road map,but we can’t stop the busand nor should we try to,since technology is revolu-tionizing learning in so manypowerful and positive ways.

John and Russell plan tooffer more workshops hereat AFS to help parents ridethe tech bus with increasingknowledge and confidence.

AFS Hosts Conference for Parents of Young Children

Parents with young children won’t want to miss our April 17 Parents as Educators Conference.

AFS’s Varsity Boys’ Swim team and the six swim-mers on the Varsity Girls’ team managed to recorda host of personal and team bests during the 2009-10 season highlighted by Kirwin’s dominant per-formance in League dual meets and at FSLchampionships.

Kirwin was undefeated in individual races in histhree-year career as an AFS swimmer, and helped,with significant support from classmate AndyZega, to lead the Kangaroos to 3rd and 4th placefinishes in the seven-team FSL in ’07-’08 and ’09-’10 despite competing against teams with rostersoften three or four times larger. He etched hisname in the FSL record books by besting the 100Meter Backstroke mark in a dual meet at Westtownon Jan. 26 before eclipsing the League’s 100-YardButterfly standard at the FSL championships. His58.87 and 54.68 respectively in the two eventstopped records that had stood for 12 and 16 years.

A year-round swimmer for the Lower MorelandLightning club team, Kirwin supplements his workwith the AFS squad with his club’s two-hour prac-tices six days a week. Not only has all of his workpropelled Kirwin to the top of the FriendsSchools League, it has also brought interest fromseveral NCAA Division I swim programs. Kirwincurrently has scholarship offers from Drexel Uni-versity and the University of Massachusetts, andwill be making an official recruiting visit to theUniversity of Minnesota in March. We congratu-late Sean Kirwin for a great athletic career at AFSthat passed almost undetected beneath the water.

in an Anxious World: Building a Base of Strength andResilience—in Ourselves and our Children.” Chansky isa psychologist and founder and director of the Children’s Center for OCD and Anxiety in PlymouthMeeting, Pa. She is the author of the popular parentingbooks Freeing Your Child From Negative Thinking and Free-ing Your Child From Anxiety. Dr. Chansky is regularlyfeatured in magazines and on TV and radio, includingNPR’s “Voices in the Family” with Dr. Dan Gottlieb.She is also the creator of the educational website worrywisekids.org.

The conference will take place at AFS on Saturday,April 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The conference fee is$12, which includes childcare for those who register inadvance (at www.abingtonfriends.net). The registrationdeadline is April 3.

For the second year, AFS is presenting Parents asEducators, a conference for parents of early child-hood and elementary age children.

This is a wonderful opportunity for families ofyoung children to network with other families andhear experts, including members of our own fac-ulty, presenting on topics including “Should I?Homework and Parental Involvement,” “StayingPlugged In: Tech Applications for Parents,”“Guiding Your Child Along the Social and Emo-tional Spectrum” and “Hands-On Engagement inYour Child’s Math World.”

This year, our conference will be further enrichedby the presence of a keynote speaker, TamarChansky, whose presentation is entitled “Parenting

Senior Sean Kirwin, shown here with AFS Athletic Director Jeff Bond, has been undefeated in individualraces in his three-year career as an AFS swimmer.

Foundationsfor AthleticDevelopment

Family Night

March 96:30-8 p.m.

Lower School families, joinCrissy Cáceres, members ofthe AFS Athletic Depart-ment and some of our ownbudding student athletes fora fun and informativeevening. Learn the “what,when and how” of youthathletic development. Hearmore about athletic opportunities and resourcesboth at AFS and in the surrounding communities.

Shattering a 16-year old Friends Schools Leaguerecord at the Friends Schools League Swim Cham-pionships on Saturday, Feb. 13, senior Sean Kirwinprovided an emphatic cap on what has been anoutstanding career in the pool for AFS.

The unassuming Kirwin, who hails from northeastPhiladelphia and transferred to AFS after his 9thgrade year at Father Judge, swims largely under theradar in AFS’s winter athletic program for severalreasons. Not only do years of success by theSchool’s basketball teams cast a long shadow, butKirwin and his teammates have no “home” pool inwhich to ply their trade. Instead of being cheeredon by an enthusiastic band of classmates as occursat AFS basketball games in Hallowell Gym, AFSswimmers face a schedule of all road meets andthrice-weekly pre-dawn training sessions in the an-tiquated 25-yard pool at the Abington Club. Unde-terred by these daunting odds, the six members of

Athletics: Senior Swims into FSL Record Booksby: Jeff Bond

RSVP by email to: amccormick@abingtonfriends.net

Encouraging Exploration

Upper School Students Weigh Opposing Viewpoints

Toni’s Toppage-turners

Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace withBooks, not Bombs, inAfghanistan and Pakistanby Greg MortensonHigh School and Adult

Greg Mortenson’s new accountof what happened to his NGO,Central Asian Institute, after theevents described in his firstbook, Three Cups of Tea is fasci-nating. Though I haven’t readThreeCups of Tea, I had noproblem reading this book.Stones into Schools startswith apromise to build a school in themost remote area of Afghan-istan. The only way into and outof the Wakhanis is on horsebackor other animal, and it cannotbe reached in the winter atall. This poses many problemsfor building a school, least of allgetting building materials to aplace with few trees and noroads. The book chronicles theCAI’s journey to build thatschool while building manyother schools in Afghanistanand Pakistan. Not a high pieceof literature, but a good readwith a great message. I foundmyself crying at the end, a firstfor me with a non-fiction book.

Toni VahlsingDirector of Librairies

on Learning Together with Young Children. “The kernel that I have taken from that work is the idea oflearning about learning with young children. We arevery good at producing documentation of the chil-dren’s learning (documentation as a noun), and thisworkshop introduced me to the idea of documenta-tion as a verb. When I observe Ellis at work, and talkto him about what he is learning, about how he is get-ting smarter, I am engaging in documentation as averb. A further step may be to have him draw his ideas,or dictate an instructions book so that someone elsecould replicate his learning. It is exciting work!”

Every year in Upper School the History Departmentbrings in two experts with differing viewpoints to dis-cuss a foreign policy issue with each other and anUpper School audience at a special assembly. This year,the topic was the War on Terror, and the invited guestson February 19 were Michael Sullivan, a professor ofPolitical Science at Drexel University (and father oftwo AFS alums) and Alan Luxenberg, Vice Presidentof the Foreign Policy Research Institute and founderand director of its Wachman Center. Sullivan’s stancewas strongly anti-war while Luxenberg argued for theuse of force in the face of evil. Sophomore ZachAtkins and senior Saroja Schwager served as modera-tors for the discussion. “One of our goals is to alwayslook at different perspectives,” says History TeacherJanet Frazer. “It was good to have an issue that was sorelevant and timely,” noted Saroja, who has been ac-cepted into the Global Studies Program at New YorkUniversity. “Having experts come in helps us have abetter understanding of world events, and it’s good tohave opposing points of view to encourage us to askquestions.” For Zach, whose interests also includemath, science and astronomy, hearing two sides wasalso important: “Even for people who are up to dateon current affairs, which I try to be, you need to hearthe entire story before you can make conclusions.”

If Ellis was an adult, we’d say he was experiencing“flow.” For more than an hour, recalls Early Child-hood Teacher Tamara Clark, “Ellis was completelyengrossed in his work, his brow furrowed, histongue stuck out the side of his mouth as he triedto make it work. Many many times, the woodpieces would slide apart, and he would re-alignthem.” Ellis, a student in Tamara’s Turtles class-room, was figuring out how incline planes work,putting together two-foot lengths of cove moldingto create the longest marble run possible. “Ellisstarted on the table top,” says Tamara, “and built itacross several chairs to a shelf. Then he switchedto floor level to try to make it even longer. Hebuilt a run from one shelf, under the table, to theother shelf. I asked him what he was learning andhe said, ‘They can go really fast. You just connectthe two pieces. You can connect them flat, or youcan make them jump. You just put one on top ofthe other and then it jumps. If there is a hole, themarble can just go right over it.’ ”

Tamara was inspired to introduce this project by atwo-day institute she recently attended in Atlanta

Zach Atkins and Saroja Schwager set the stage for a foreign policy assembly with invited speakers.

Ellis learns about planes and inclines by creating a spectacularly longmarble run with lengths of cove molding in the Turtles classroom.

AFS OpenHouseTuesday March 16 8:30 a.m.

A Call for Volunteers!

The Parents Committee forthe Annual Fund will be hosting Annual Fund CallingNights on March 16 and April13 from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Making calls to build partici-pation in the Annual Fund isa great way to support AFS.Join the fun and experiencethe camaraderie of workingside by side with other parentvolunteers and our amazingUpper School student callers!Training, dinner and lots ofchocolate are provided.

Please contact Gabrielle Giddings, Director of AnnualGiving at 215-576-3957 or ggiddings@abingtonfriends.netfor more information.

afs calendar March 1

5 6

11 1387 9 10 12

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Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

Middle SchoolSpring SportsBegin

Mold Symposium at PlymouthMeetingFriends

CandlelightDinner

Pirates of Penzance7 p.m.

“Kicks forCancer” Charity SoccerTournament5-10 p.m.

Pirates of Penzance7 p.m.

ECGame/PotluckNight

RooFest Sponsorship Dinner

Director ofStudies CoffeeCurrent 9th and10th Parents 8-9:30 a.m.

AnnualFund

Spring Break

SSATs 8:15 a.m.

LanguageMovie Night5-9 p.m..

4321Forum onQuakerism forAFS Families7 p.m.

5th Grade Poetry Night 7 p.m.

Phila. AlumniReception 7-9 p.m.

Follow us on

Director ofStudies Coffee8th Parents 8-9:30 a.m.

“Beginning Athletics” Family Night in LS

Open HouseRegistration8:45 a.m.US Informa-tion Night 8th Parents7 p.m.

Spring Break Spring Break

Spring Break

575 Washington LaneJenkintown, PA 19046

215-886-4350www.abingtonfriends.net

Do you have another specialtalent? If you have everthought about performing inpublic – singing, playingmusic, dancing, juggling,doing magic, telling jokes,reading poetry – here’s yourchance! You need not be aprofessional. All we ask isthat you be willing to shareyour talents with the AFScommunity.

This year’s AFS CommunityTalent Show is set for Satur-

Editor: Judy Hill, jhill@abingtonfriends.netDesign: Peapod Design, New Canaan, CT

Non-Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDJenkintown, PA

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ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

Our goal: to contact every sin-gle alumnus/a by phone.That’s about 2,100 people. Andwe’ve already begun.

Why? AFS is a lifelong resource for its community: socially, academically and pro-fessionally. The more we knowabout our alumni, the easier itis to make connections totoday’s AFS and broaden net-working opportunities. We ask3 simple questions:1. How was your AFS experi-ence?2. What did you do after AFS?3. How do you feel abouttoday’s AFS?

Would you like to help contactalumni? We welcome volun-teers! Director of Alumni Affairs Jenny Hammond '86jhammond@abingtonfriends.net215-576-3966