Community Connections

Watch For More Lower School BLOGS!

You will notice that there are two new clickable links under the the Welcome to D-E graphic at the top of this page. These are blogs created by the kindergarten and the second grade teachers. A click will take you to their classroom blogs with more specific pictures and information about what is going on in their classes. More teachers are in the process of learning how to blog. When their blogs are ready, they will be added to the list.

Community Connections

Last Saturday the admissions office held an open house for families considering sending their children to the Lower School. When it was my turn to speak, I wanted to give a sense of what is most special about our school. There are so many things to talk about, our teachers, the way we engage our students, how we emphasize creativity and encourage risk taking. There is our emphasis on collaboration,problem-solving and empowering students to find their voice. Our graduates don’t hesitate to tell us about how well we have prepared them in all these areas and how they stand out compared to others they encounter beyond D-E. However, there was something else very special I wanted to say. It is that their children would enter a community filled with big brothers and big sisters.

It starts within the Lower School. Fifth graders have their preschool and kindergarten buddies. It is hard to tell who likes the relationship more, the fifth graders or the preschoolers and kindergarteners. On the days that they are going to meet, I hear equal excitement from our youngest and oldest Lower School students as I open car doors. They meet regularly, sit at assemblies together and spend special times together and share high fives and tender moments as they pass one another in the hall. First graders have fourth-grade partners. They visit one another’s classes and make several visits together to seniors at a nursing home. The time they spend reflecting together after each visit is priceless.

But this is only the beginning. For years some seventh graders have had third grade partners. Sometimes they meet in the Lower School and other times they take an on-campus field trip to the Middle School. Recently second graders have been added so that all seventh graders have Lower School partners. There are traditions that our seniors help our first graders carve their Halloween pumpkins and march with them through the Lower School as they visit in costume on Halloween. In several weeks the eight graders will visit our classes as the characters they have chosen to portray as part of their Wax Museum program. We just had a group of ninth graders interview Lower School students as they prepare to make a video about community. We have had Upper School students who volunteer to help out in the classrooms during their free periods or tutor individual Lower School students after classes. We have had a senior doing an independent study program that involves working with PE teacher, Kim Franco, during Lower School PE classes. We have had students who volunteer to help with teaching music and others who have helped out with the African drumming program for fifth graders. The whole school cheers the Lower School on during the annual Lower School Puppet Parade, and three times a year our entire school gets together to celebrate different holidays and events.

It is hard to tell who benefits the most, the younger or the older students in all these relationships. I honestly think that everybody wins, including our community as a whole. These experiences take children of all ages outside of simply satisfying their own needs. Younger child naturally look to older“brothers and sisters” as role models before they do to adults. The big brothers and sisters, somehow act differently and more responsibly when they know that someone younger is looking up to them. As our preschoolers become fourth- or fifth- grade buddies themselves, they will remember what the relationship meant to them. I know of many schools where students simply move from one division to another and never look back. This intentional reweaving of the fabric of our community is what makes it so strong and makes the experiences that our students have so special.