Upper School Life

Dear Upper School Families,

It's been eight weeks since we were able to be on Penn Charter's campus with your children, our students, and we've just concluded week six of distance learning. With Governor Wolf's stay-at-home order now in effect through June 4 and the unemployment rate the worst it has been since the 2008 recession, I want to share George W. Bush's message of hope, which I have found especially moving and inspirational.

As President Bush says, "We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise."

We will rise. Our country, our community and our school.  

You are proof of that:  PC PROUD #1  PC PROUD #2.  

Our students are proof of that. See this PC student-led and student-produced song just released by The Oats, a small Upper School jazz group: "Sir Duke." The song was recorded and produced distance-learning style: each musician recorded the track at home and then the group spliced it together digitally.  

Looking Forward

Summer Courses: We have updated our offerings with Distance Learning Summer Courses. We will hold out hope that a couple might be able to take place on campus in July, but we are committed to running the courses, even virtually, if necessary. As always, we are offering courses that enable students to fulfill some graduation requirements over the summer in visual and performing art as well as religion.  

Summer course registration information is due next Friday, May 15. If you need an extension as you make summer plans, please let me know at ehughes@penncharter.com.

AP Exams: If you have a student enrolled in an AP class, please read details about the AP Exams, which start next week.

Cum Laude & Prize Assemblies: We will host a combined and virtual Cum Laude Assembly and Prize Assembly on Wednesday, May 27, from 7-8 p.m.  We will invite honorees and their families to attend via Zoom.

Important Dates for Seniors. Seniors conclude classes on Tuesday, May 12, have a grade meeting on Wednesday, May 13, and, after a few days off, start their Distance Learning SCP projects on Monday, May 18. Meanwhile, Darryl Ford has worked over recent weeks with a committee of about 20 seniors and a handful of faculty to determine plans for Commencement, the details of which Dr. Ford will share with families shortly.

Students in grades 9-11 have two weeks and two days of classes left, followed by five days of final assessments. See p. 3 of our Upper School Distance Learning Plan for details. Next Friday, May 15, department chairs will notify students about placement decisions for advanced and AP courses, and all teachers will share final assessment plans with students. The end of the school year is startlingly close.

In the meantime, I hope you are healthy and safe, and I wish you daily doses of happiness. We've played some Catan at my house, and tonight we are cracking open a new 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of South Dakota. (My grandparents grew up in the small town of Clear Lake, SD.)  Here is literally Some Good News. Host Jon Krasinski is eternally cheery and positive, and his weekly 15-minute shows on Sunday nights have been a source of spirited pep and bonding at my house, too.

Whatever brings you some joy and respite, I wish it for you this weekend. And happy, happy Mother's Day to everyone.

Erin

P.S. Like trucks and backhoes? Or just want to watch construction of Penn Charter's new Athletics and Wellness Center? Watch our live camera feed.

The following is shortened version of a speech Director of Upper School Erin Hughes delivered to an Upper School assembly explaining, in part, this year's all-school theme: Honoring the Light Within.

Erin & Cheryl:

Confirmation Bias and Honoring the Light

Cheryl Irving is a legend. She was a legendary English teacher in our Middle and Upper Schools; she started our Writing Center, the envy of and model for peer institutions; and with now Assistant Director of Upper School Lee Payton, she pioneered our American Studies class.

"I had to be the best," she would say. Only then did she stand a chance to escape scrutiny and, without question, to excel or succeed. Cheryl was driven and outstanding as a young adult, and she was equally so as an educator, when I met her in 1991. (Above, in her high school yearbook, Cheryl and two classmates are recognized as members of Quill and Scroll, a national honor society for high school journalists.)

Nearly 30 years ago, Cheryl once told me, "Erin, sometimes I have to ask myself if I really want to get out of bed today and be one of only a few black teachers at Penn Charter." Rise, she did. Always. Moreover, she was the director of the Multicultural Resource Center, an organization promoting justice and equity in area independent schools; in fact, many teachers and students now participate in diversity, equity and inclusion conferences named in Cheryl's memory. Toward the end of her career, for her teaching accolades and commitment to Penn Charter, Cheryl was awarded Penn Charter's Honorary 1689 diploma.  

Point #1

Driven from a young age to be exceptional, Cheryl was and remains a legend.

Back in 1991, when I was 24 years old, I arrived at Penn Charter to teach Upper School English with one year of teaching under my belt. The legendary "Mrs. Irving" (Cheryl) was already well established here, teaching Middle School English with aplomb. She was 20 years older than I, could talk grammar circles around me, was married with children, owned a home, coached varsity girls tennis . . . her legacy was a touch intimidating. In person, however, she was warm and friendly. She gave me teaching materials; she gave me tennis clothes (I was a beginner).

Still, my first two years teaching at Penn Charter were challenging. Cheryl and I were two of only three women in the English department; her daughter was in the first class of girls to graduate, in 1992 — in fact, her daughter was the only African American girl in her class. And I even had a sophomore class that was all-boys as we were still becoming truly coed.

A few years into my teaching, I was in the conference room, filing student comments by hand. I vaguely overheard a teacher talking to someone else about a student who was struggling. After some time, my ears tuned in more to the conversation, and I realized that Cheryl and a Penn Charter parent were in the room discussing what a difficult time a child was having in English class. My English class. Surprised, I looked up and asked the parent, "Are you talking about your daughter?" At that point, at least in my memory, Cheryl and the parent looked at me, wide-eyed, but did not respond.

I don't remember what happened next. I don't remember if they ever responded, if we had a conversation, if I kept filing. Cheryl and I never followed up with each other about that moment. For more than a decade, in fact, Cheryl and I did not discuss that moment.  

Point #2

At that moment, in the conference room, filing comments, as a new teacher, I decided that the legendary Mrs. Irving thought I was a rotten teacher.  

It could have been that the parent's child was generally struggling in my subject —not necessarily with my instruction. It could have been that Cheryl taught the child in Middle School and the parent and Cheryl were lamenting about how the child still struggled with a particular writing or reading skill. It could have been that the parent blind-sided Cheryl in a public space about her daughter and wanted to talk about me, a young teacher, and Cheryl was doing her best to navigate a tricky situation with grace. There could have been even more explanations; nevertheless, I decided, in that moment, that Mrs. Irving — my mentor — thought I didn't measure up.  

So, suddenly a woman I had been experiencing like this first picture I started to experience like this second picture.

Consequently, whenever Cheryl and I were in English department meetings, or faculty meetings or social settings, I began to view her through that lens — as the legend who thought less of me as a professional. And my thoughts and beliefs about her affected my judgment of her.  

If I was hosting the annual humanities potluck — a gathering of the Penn Charter's English and social studies departments — at my house, and Cheryl did not attend, I figured that her absence had something to do with the fact that I was hosting.  

In a department meeting, if Cheryl and I shared varying approaches to teaching The Scarlet Letter, I assumed she thought my approach was not only different but also inferior.

When Cheryl's husband, Jai, died in 2001, I offered to stay at school and cover for English teachers who wanted to attend his funeral because I assumed Cheryl wouldn't necessarily want me there.  

Point #3

I fell prey to confirmation bias. It's a sneaky, insidious brain snafu. Simply defined, confirmation bias is "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories" (dictionary.com). In other words, because I believed Cheryl didn't respect me as a teacher, I chose to notice "evidence" that I could use to confirm my pre-established belief — and I disregarded other evidence as well as other interpretations of the "evidence" I examined. (Perhaps Mrs. Irving didn't come to my house for the humanities potluck for reasons having nothing to do with me.)

For a period of time, while I worked in the College Counseling Office and wasn't teaching English, Cheryl and I actually didn't interact with each other very much. However, about a decade ago, when Head of School Darryl Ford called me into his office to offer me the position of pre-K to 12 English chair, he said, "Erin, you need to have a conversation with Cheryl. She's expecting you to reach out to her."  You see, Cheryl was feeling about me much the way I was feeling about her, and she had some reservations about my appointment as chair of the English Department.

Cheryl and I sat in an office for 90 minutes. We talked about that moment years ago in the conference room — from my perspective and from hers. We talked about how, generally, in the beginning of my career, she had been trying to mentor me, to take me under her wing, and she felt I had flat-out rejected her. Consider that: I thought the legendary Mrs. Irving had rejected me. And Cheryl thought I had rejected her. 

Point #4

One uncomfortable moment, left untended, grew into years of misunderstanding and misinterpretation.

That day, many years ago in the conference room, I got defensive and ran, and Cheryl got hurt and retreated. I developed a narrative in my head about her; she developed a narrative in her head about me.    

In Quaker terms, I wasn't as attentive to the Light in Cheryl as early on or as much as I should or could have been. And she wasn't as attentive to the Light in me.  

When we sat down and had a talk — face to face — where we were more gentle to and vulnerable with each other in person than anyone (often) is online, we experienced a gift of understanding and connection. We shared our experiences and perspectives; we experienced empathy. We saw the Light in each other.

Subsequently, we became close friends. That was in 2008.  

Mark Your Calendar for This Saturday

Upper School students are enjoying Spirit Week in advance of Saturday's 133rd PC/GA Day: the halls are decorated, and today, Monochrome Day, the seniors are dressed in white, the juniors in pink, the sophomores in green and freshman in black. Wednesday is Jersey Day, Thursday is Pajama Day and Friday is Blue & Yellow Spirit Day.

Join us for PC/GA Day, in person or by livestream. Details. 

Happy Halloween!

Confident and caring, our costumed seniors did a fine job escorting more tentative Lower School students in PC's traditional Halloween Parade as they made their way through Middle School, Upper School and then on to the Field House for a photo opportunity. More photos.

It's Saturday, April 6, 4:29 p.m. I'm sitting at my desk at Penn Charter, watching the JV baseball game out my window, across the street, on the sparkling new Palaia Field. What fun the opening ceremony was! Talking with current students and parents, and reconnecting with OPCs and parents of OPCs, was so enjoyable that I was hard-pressed to grab some popcorn and tromp back inside to write this newsletter.

Finally, it feels like spring. Outside of my office window, the elm tree in the front circle is about to unfurl its leaves, and in my garden at home, the daffodils and grape hyacinths are brightly abloom. I remember clearly this time last year, April 2018: Darryl Ford asked me to serve as acting Upper School director. Devoted to the school and interested in being a school director, I excitedly agreed.

Darryl told me my job as acting Upper School director was to "keep the boat afloat" and "keep the trains running," and so I did, all the while musing about my own vision for the division, should I be fortunate enough to earn the permanent position. With two search firms aiding the school in a national search and 75 fellow applicants, I had no expectation that I would indeed become Penn Charter's next Upper School director. (To read my application materials, please see the links at the bottom of this column.)

Vision

From last April to this April, my life is both wildly different and very much this same. Officially ensconced as the Upper School director, I am now pivoting from keeping "the trains running" to advancing the vision. In many ways, that is easy — because I served on the committee that forged the 2013 Strategic Vision, and I believe in it.

Reflecting upon the seal every Thursday morning, I have been both heartened to work at a school whose values align so closely with mine and struck by the symmetry between the seal's symbolism and my vision for the Upper School:

• As the Greek words on the open book indicate, the Upper School must be a place where we "love one another," even those who are different and those with whom we feel ideologically opposed. Only by loving each other can we knit together a cohesive community.
• As the book itself symbolizes, we are committed to the life of the mind and scholarship, to inquiry and ideas and learning.
• To maximize learning, we place a premium on "good instruction," from hiring consummate instructors, to creating our own curricula, to offering a wealth of professional development opportunities.
• Finally, we are grounded in the vision of our founder and of our Quaker ideals, as Penn's coat of arms suggests. We prize integrity, equality, continuing revelation, silence and more.

It's Epic:  Honor the Spark and Spark the Mind

More specifically, my vision for the Upper School is that it be a loving and inclusive community, full of intellectual and cosmopolitan people. Given the school's philosophy, geography and egalitarianism, we are uniquely diverse, drawing from over a hundred zip codes, every major world religion, both political parties, and all levels of economic strata. As two OPCs from the class of 2017 just told me on the baseball field, they were well prepared for the wide range of people they encountered in college because they hailed from our Penn Charter heterogeneity.  

Last month, we had nationally recognized health educator Shafia Zaloom on campus to educate juniors and seniors about how personal values inform healthy relationships. I was struck by a simple exercise Zaloom did. "Think of a bear," she told us, giving us five seconds to picture a bear doing some particular action. So you do it now. Stop reading this, close your eyes, and for five seconds, think of a bear. Then Zaloom had people go around the room and describe the bears they were imagining and what they were doing. Here's a small sample of the bears people had in mind in one group: Yogi Bear trying to escape Jellystone Park. A light blue, well-loved teddy bear resting on a pillow. A huge black bear, hunting for salmon in an alpine stream. Zaloom's point was: even when we say "bear," it means different things to different people, so when people are trying to communicate with and understand each other, it's critical to make sure that they understand what the other person is thinking — and vice versa — and not to make assumptions.

While many people think of "cosmopolitan" as being synonymous with "sophisticated" or "well-traveled," I am using the word in this sense:  Cosmopolitan contains the root polit-, from the Greek word for "citizen," meaning someone who is cosmopolitan is a "citizen of the world." Hence, people who are cosmopolitan are "familiar with and at ease in many different countries and cultures" (Google.com). To be cosmopolitan, then, is to have a wide worldview, to be open-minded, well versed in difference, eager to meet new people and embrace new experiences. Cosmopolitan is decidedly the opposite of narrow, closed, parochial, provincial.  

Though humans are 99.9 percent genetically similar, we often focus on and fear the .1 percent of others that is different from us. When I was in sixth grade, and I'd just moved from Denver to Philadelphia, I was put off when a classmate asked me if I rode a horse to school in Colorado. I'd never eaten a bagel in my life, which a friend found mind-boggling, and I'd never heard about a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah before. No doubt, my world view was small. Over the years at PC, many students have told me that they had never met [fill-in-the-blank with a particular kind of person] before coming to Penn Charter. I love that about this school. I want students to actively honor and welcome the spark of others, which will not only open hearts but also help open minds.

In addition to fostering an inclusive, cosmopolitan Upper School, I envision an Upper School that sparks the intellect, trains the mind and fuels the fire of of the adolescent brain. Psychologist Steven Pinker has a new book out, "Enlightenment Now:  The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress." In this TED Talk, he presents the thesis of the book, which is essentially that the quality of human life is better now than it has ever been, and with the power of reason and science, we can problem solve and improve the world ever more. It's a tremendously optimistic book, completely supported by data. I am moved especially by this passage:  

"We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one.

But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing . . . [this endeavor] belongs not to any tribe but to all of humanity — to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist."

I want the Upper School to spark in students the desire to learn and to cultivate in them the "power to reason."  Good instruction can indeed fire students up to question, hypothesize and problem-solve, inspiring them transform their minds . . . and the world. Penn Charter's vision is to educate students to "live lives that make a difference," and as Pinker points out, using the intellect to "enhance human flourishing" is "heroic."  Learning to reason and to be a citizen of the world, then, is epic.

Update on Work Diversity, Inclusion and Equity  

Darryl Ford invited a group of about a dozen juniors and seniors to work with Erin Hughes, Assistant Director of Upper School Lee Payton and Director of Diversity and Inclusion Antonio Williams to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the division.

The group has meet three times to consider practical measures to improve school culture. Presently, the group is planning a two-day retreat to develop a Code of Conduct for Upper School and to think about ways to redesign student orientation in September. One goal of the retreat is to create an orientation that will help incoming students understand the culture of and diversity at Penn Charter. During orientation, we hope to engage students in work around cultural competency, privilege, social justice and Quakerism.

The planning group will work with Leon Caldwell OPC '87 and Penn Charter Overseer Terry Nance to find the best approach and practices to achieving our objective.

Upper School students Ainyae Holmes and Pierce Hodges, pictured below with Director of Diversity and Inclusion Antonio Williams, organized a successful diversity conference for area students. More here.

Upper School Life

February 2019

FMCD: Poet for a President

Conceived in Cuba, born in Spain and raised in Miami, poet Richard Blanco says that his central obsession in life has been the concept of "home."  All of his work, all of his poetry, all of his exploration of self and family has led him on a search for identity, for belonging, for what it means to be American and for how to define . . . home.

On Thursday, Feb. 14, Blanco was our keynote speaker for Friends Multicultural Day, a yearly tradition celebrating all forms of diversity and featuring guest speakers, student-led workshops, musical performances and more.

Blanco kicked off the day with his keynote, and Upper School students and faculty were rapt as he told stories and read poetry about his Cuban exiled parents, his beloved and homophobic abuela (grandmother), the Miss America pageant, his family vacations and more, all of which culminated in a 500-person standing ovation for his performance.

Blanco recounted how his mother left her parents and eight brothers and sisters in Cuba to come to the U.S. and what such a move says about the faith that immigrants have in American values. He implored the Upper School: "Imagine having someone tell you suddenly to 'pack your bag' . . . then leaving everything else behind." Imagine having the faith in the U.S. to do that.

In "Betting on America," Blanco recounted his befuddlement about the Miss American Pageant, which was a party-worthy ritual for the Blanco family, complete with $2 bets on contestants and confusion about how to pronounce Connecticut and where in the world Ohio was. Trained as a civil engineer, Blanco spoke about physical bridges as metaphors for language and relationships, as he tenderly spoke about his ailing and complicated father in "Papa's Bridge."  

A Quest for Home

The Gulf Motel is, or was, Blanco's personal "special, happy place," but instead of finding the motel, the adult Blanco finds that everything has changed since he was young. Consequently, he cannot share The Gulf Motel of his childhood with Mark. Memory foils us. "You can't go back home because it is no longer the same," Blanco expounded. He writes:

The legendary Cuba of the 1950s and '60s, Blanco learns, is his parents' own elusive "Gulf Motel." They can't go back, or if and when they do, it's not the same, not as magical and idealized as they remember. That makes it harder to have a foot in both worlds and both homes, as at least one proves ephemeral.

2013 Inauguration

Following in the footsteps of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, Blanco is the fifth poet to compose and read poems for a Presidential inauguration.

When President Obama asked Blanco to be the Inaugural Poet in 2013, Blanco found himself mulling over questions like, "Am I American?"  "Do I love my country?" "Does my country love me back?"

Blanco was tasked with writing three poems in three weeks, and while Blanco was partial to the third, "Mother Country" President Obama chose the second, "One Day," for the inauguration.

After reading the poem to us last Thursday, Blanco asserted that "each one of our stories is a part of the American story."  We Americans are engaged in "cathedral building," he explained, and we don't know what the final construct will be, but "we each have a paragraph, a chapter, a story to contribute to the American narrative."

A Cuban-American, son of exiles and immigrants, gay man born of "machismo" culture, engineer and poet, Miami native and Maine resident, Blanco concluded his thoughts on home with this: Intrepid as she was in 1968 and thereafter, Blanco's mother (pictured above) grieved the loss of her native Cuba and the family members she left behind, and not until 2013 did she tell her son:

FMCD: Student Workshops

Following Richard Blanco's rousing performance, the Upper School continued with in our annual Friends Multicultural Day (FMCD) traditions, which include student-led workshops, worship sharing and, to end the day, student performances.

Ninth graders attended a workshop on managing racial stress and then joined 10th, 11th and 12th graders for workshops. Students chose which workshops to attend from a list of more than 20 different topics. Here is a sampling:

• Jews in Popular Culture
• Parkland Shooting: One Year Later
• Service Abroad: Thailand
• Representation of Women in Media
• Where Soul Food Really Came From
• French Culture and the U.S. Influences on France
• Diverse Thinking: How Language and Culture Wire Our Brains
• The N-word in Hip-Hop Culture
• Yoga: Minding Your Thoughts
• What's Going On in Virginia?
• Environmentalism in Social Justice

After lunch, students and faculty participated in mixed grade-level threshing sessions to discuss the query: "What are your experiences (personal and witness) around injustices at PC? (racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, etc.)"  

We then broke down into mixed grade-level worship sharing groups by advisories and reflected upon the following prompts:

• "Share the idea or describe the experience that was most interesting or meaningful to you today."  
• "What changes would you like to envision for Penn Charter in the next five years?"
• "What actions can we take to make those visions a reality?"  
  Finally, we punctuated the day with a rip-roaring set of student performances. 

Words Matter

On Wednesday, Feb. 13, the day before Friends Multicultural Day, Head of School Darryl J. Ford gathered the Upper School students and faculty to share several messages. 

Dr. Ford reminded us that "words matter" and "behavior matters."  Even in our toughest moments, he reminded us, Penn Charter is a great and privileged community. At the same time, we can — individually and collectively — make the community better by seeing that of God in those we like as well as in those we don't like or don't know. As a Quaker community, the "muscle we need to develop" is the one that calls us to see the spark in those who are different, who make us uncomfortable, who test our values.

People are complex, and adolescents, in particular, are growing and learning, so we need to hold folks in the light as Richard Blanco did his xenophobic and homophobic Abuela and see the good in them, forgive them, help them and accept them.

Dr. Ford extended interested students an invitation to lunch in the Gummere Library today if they are interested in the ongoing work of making our community more diverse and inclusive. The library was standing-room-only for today's conversation.