Fall Brings a Flurry of Leaves and Activity
As the leaves begin to change color and float to the ground, fall semester is well underway. Our students are exploring essential questions across disciplines and pushing beyond limits of all sorts.
You can get an overview of the exceptional work across Principia during the past fiscal year in our most recent annual report, now available for viewing and downloading here.
We have enjoyed welcoming two distinguished guests to our campuses in the past few weeks:
- Oliver Herring, a contemporary, multimedia artist, was our first Annenberg Scholar for this year. He delivered a talk at the College and helped a group of self-selected students envision, plan, and execute an improvisational, innovative TASK event.
- Zuhal Sultan, founder of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, spoke to both the College and School communities just after her speech at the United Nations on the International Day of Peace. She also gave a piano concert at the College. At age 17—and in the midst of war—Sultan brought together young Iraqi musicians from all backgrounds to study and perform music together. She was recently named Visionary of the Year by the Euphrates Institute. Just this week, Sultan was featured on National Public Radio.
At the Lower and Middle School, parent-teacher conferences start today. We are in the process of introducing a new evaluation system at these levels that is based on frequent descriptive feedback. Research shows that descriptive feedback is one of the top 10 influences on student achievement, far more effective than evaluations showing only a letter grade or percentage. This approach focuses on the learning task and honors students’ strengths while creating opportunities to individualize and differentiate learning.
Next weekend, October 9–11, we look forward to welcoming Upper School parents from near and far for Family Weekend. Parents will be able to see their students in action—in the classroom, on the athletic fields, and on Ridgway Auditorium stage for a band and choir concert.
That same weekend, a community-wide event will take place to help landscape the newly renovated Lower School playground. Following the community work day, each class will have a dedicated bed that they will plant, care for, and observe all year long. It’s fun to see some of our youngest Principians taking ownership of their new, improved play space.
The College community enjoyed fall break this week, gaining a long weekend with no classes on Monday and Tuesday. On Saturday, I’m looking forward to opening the races at our annual Cardboard Canoe Regatta at Piasa Harbor. Every year, these (briefly) seaworthy craft are hand-built and captained by students who are extraordinarily creative with the simple materials of cardboard, packing tape, and paint.
The College mediation team recently traveled to Dallas for the Texas Peacemaker event at the University of Texas at Dallas. Their fifth place finish (out of 18 teams) was noteworthy because, instead of “stacking the deck” with more experienced team members, they purposely used the event to orient their newest members to competition. In November, the team will head to Drake University to defend Principia’s championship ranking at the 2015 International Intercollegiate Mediation Tournament.
The solar car team leaves for Australia next week to compete in the World Solar Challenge from October 18–24, racing from Darwin to Adelaide against top international teams.
Two College students who worked with a biology faculty member on a three-year National Science Foundation grant this summer presented some preliminary analyses last week at the St. Louis Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation conference at the Saint Louis Zoo. In addition, they have been invited to visit the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in London, during summer 2016.
On the Principia Lifelong Learning front, the second (of three) Alaska cruises took place last month, and the Mississippi River boat cruise is underway. Our Paris to Prague river cruise for this coming spring is already sold out. But upcoming trips to Peru and the Mediterranean still have spots available, and trips to Scotland, Maine, Ireland, and Cuba will open for registration soon.
We are excited to welcome 34 Principia Club representatives to the Principia Club Leadership Conference, starting tonight. The visitors will spend time on each campus, hearing updates from administrators and directly from students. In addition, they will learn what Principia Clubs are doing from coast to coast and plan for the future.
It was splendid to have Principians from near and far converge on the School campus for the Upper School reunion last month. Check out the video sharing highlights from the weekend. If you haven’t been back to Principia in a while, we hope you will consider a visit soon!