Moving Day

The past month has been a very exciting time for PCD. Last Friday we launched a new website, which has been in the works for months. In addition to looking great, the new website—which can still be found at the same address (www.providencecountryday.org)—offers a whole range of new features. One of them, we are tremendously excited to say, will be the @PCD blog!

Accordingly, this is our last post at this address. You can visit us at our new home: find our most recent post on the front page of the PCD website or find the whole blog at http://www.providencecountryday.org/about-pcd/school-blog/index.aspx?pageaction=ViewPublic&ModuleID=59.

Thank you for coming to this site for the past several months to read about what is going on on campus. We've had over 4500 visits to this blog since we launched in September. We will use the new blog just as we did this one (and hopefully more often) to complement the news portion of the website. Check us out for more information on what is going on in the school building under the radar.

Thanks!
@PCD

After Two Busy Days in DC...

After two full days in Close Up of walking around, exploring DC, meeting people from across the country, and learning about the city and the national government, students are pretty tired as we head to the Kennedy Center to see a play. As a quick dispatch we are putting up some photos of our past couple days.

Close Up trip, day 1

18 PCD students and two teachers are in Washington DC attending Close Up, a hands-on educational experience in politics. We will be posting all week from DC, but the crew landed today and spent the afternoon at Arlington Cemetary, seeing the eternal flame, tomb of the unknown soldier, and views of downtown DC. We're posting some photos of the afternoon. 

Knit One, Purl Two: Knights Knit!

Art classes offer students a change of scenery, so to speak, from their standard academic courses, a chance for students to explore interests and talents beyond math or history or science. For a small school, PCD offers a wide array of arts options for students. From sculpture to choir, jazz band to digital photo, acting to printmaking, students are exposed to an array of fields over their time at the school.

Unsatisfied still, the art department has in recent years offered a winter arts session, in which students can switch out of their normal art electives and into one of a number of choices for either two or three days each week. The session effectively doubles the number of art offerings at the school and allows students a great opportunity to broaden their experiences. Over the coming few weeks we will take a look at several of the offerings.

One of the most popular — and least conventional — choices is knitting. Led by Upper School History Teacher Alanna Morris and Middle School Dean Sharon Hanover, ten students have been knitting three days each week. Several are experienced knitters, looking for an opportunity to hone their skills. But many others are new, and some admitted that had it not been for the winter session there is little chance they would be knitting any time soon. "I am usually in choir, but I decided to take knitting because I wanted a change of scene," said Harrison Igoe '15, amidst a room of students creating scarfs of all sizes. "After doing it for a couple weeks it's definitely different! But I really like it."

Class of 2012 Returns to PCD to Speak with Current Seniors

On Wednesday, January 9, five members of the Class of 2012 met with the entire class of 2013 to talk about the realities of college life. The five alumni hailed from an impressive array of schools: Boston College, College of Holy Cross, Emerson College, George Washington University, and Trinity College. They were quite honest about the various challenges of college life, from dealing with roommates to taking advantage of the great amount of "free" time at their disposal to participating in the life of the college.
  

Meet a Knight: Glass Master Mike Fradin

Our ongoing series Meet a Knight features discussions with members of the PCD community about what they do on and off campus. We began the year by having conversations with two new faculty members, and today we present our first chat with a current student, junior Mike Fradin. Mike is well known around campus as a student and an athlete. What most Knights don't know, however, is that Mike has also been creating glass artwork outside of school for years. @PCD caught up with Mike to talk about his art, a sample of which can currently be seen in a display in Lund Hall.

@PCD: I don't know that I've ever met a student who was also a glass blower. Can you tell me how you got into it?

MF: I started around 12 or 13, so I've been doing it now for four or five years. It's a class through RISD - my mom was the one who found the class and asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said, "sure!" and I've stuck with it ever since. 

@PCD: Do you still take the class?

Mike Fradin's glass is on display in Lund Hall. 

MF: In the beginning years it was really a class and I got a lot of directions from the guys who run the studio and have been blowing glass for a while. But after a while they lay off the directions and just let you do it. So I do still go to the class, but it's pretty informal. I go in for about three hours one day a week and take turns blowing with whoever else is there.

@PCD: I know almost nothing about blowing glass other than that it looks pretty intimidating. Can you explain the process of going from nothing to having one of your beautiful pieces of glass? I assume there is a lot of fire involved!

Students Learn about the Humanitarian Crisis in Burma

Myra Dahgaypaw addresses an Upper School assembly.

For several years, PCD's student-run Peace Jam club has been supporting the U.S. Campaign for Burma, an organization that provides aid to refugees from the ongoing humanitarian crisis in that country. Part of the club's ongoing effort includes this Friday evening's Burma benefit concert in Corkery Hall. A variety of students and faculty will be performing at the event, which begins at 6 on Friday evening. We will bring you more on the concert next week.

In preparation for the concert, the Peace Jam club brought Myra Dahgaypaw to an Upper School assembly Friday morning to teach students about the Burma crisis. In an engaging lecture, replete with statistics and photos, Ms. Dahgaypaw eloquently demonstrated the extent to which the ethnic minorities in the country have been persecuted for over 50 years.

School Comes Together to Clear a Trail

Ask any alum about what made PCD a great school while he or she was here and you'll get the same answer: the people, the relationships, the community. Ask around the campus today and the answer hasn't changed much. People love the school because they love its people. Take it from us: we here at @PCD speak with a lot of community members and the degree to which they echo the same thoughts about the power of PCD relationships is unusual for a school.

So perhaps it should have come as no surprise that 84 people would turn out for a morning of work along the nature trail behind Lund Hall. It was an event celebrating the power of the school's community to positively shape its physical campus. Those 84 participants wanted to show that they wanted to personally help the school grow. And yet, no one involved in the event really anticipated such a turnout. The event took place on a Saturday morning at 9 AM, an early time indeed for the 41 PCD Middle and Upper Schoolers who showed up on Saturday. The weather was cold and, at the outset, gray. The project was indeed work, involving lifting, removing rocks, raking, and picking up trash. Outside of the promise of coffee and cider donuts, and a couple of community service hours, there was no incentive for any individual to show up.

Click "read more" below to see the rest of the story and a whole lot more photos.

Political Songster Brian Dewan's Visit

Last Friday musician Brian Dewan visited PCD as the first in a series of visiting artists. It was a really great day--Dewan visited Upper and Lower School assemblies as well as six different classes. The PCD website has the story on the visit, which you can read here. We do have some pictures of him from one of the classes that did not make the website story, so we are posting them here. We're also working to track down some video--if we can, we will post it here as well.




 

Revolutionary! The Seventh Grade Visits Lexington and Concord

Mr. Andruchow and Mr. McLaughlin took the 7th Grade Civics class to Lexington & Concord, Massachusetts on Friday, October 26. The class first visited Lexington (pictured), taking in the historic sites of Battle Green, the statue of Captain John Parker, and Buckman Tavern. They then went up the road to North Bridge, seeing Paul Revere's capture point and Meriam Corner along the way. Once they were at the bridge, the 7th graders hiked up to the Militia's vantage point atop Punkatasset Hill and reflected on what it would have been like to be at that very spot on that fateful day of April 19, 1775.

Campus Looking Good!

 We're working on three stories revolving around what students are doing this week, all three of which will be up in the next week and a half. In the meantime, we'd point your attention to a story that ran last Friday on the PCD website. The story covered the recent updates to the PCD campus and served as an update to a story we posted earlier about the summer's Lund renovations. The new campus updates include the brand new fitness center, which opened today, and a preview of the community service day for cleaning up the new nature trail behind Lund. In addition to the first link above, you can also take a look at some pictures from the fitness center below. 

About Alumni: Soccer Star Allie Gnys

Allie Gnys '10 being launched at
an incoming ball.

After they graduate, Knights frequently continue their athletic pursuits. Many play in college and afterward, whether on varsity, club, or recreational teams. Alumni frequently cite the desire to play the game in any capacity as one of the school's culture's great gifts. A PCD baseball career, for instance, might be followed by four years on a college team and later in a local rec league.

Occasionally, however, alumni jump to new sports entirely. In the case of Allison Gnys '10, currently a junior in the nursing program at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT, college presented an opportunity to try something she had never previously considered. Allie, as she is known to her friends, is in her second year as a starting lock on Quinnipiac’s NCAA Division I Rugby Team. She is a grizzled veteran on the Bobcats, which, in only its second year of existence, has relied on athletes converting from other sports.



 

In (or Out) of the Classroom: Microarthropods!!

PCD seniors investigating the woods behind Lund

One of the ongoing projects at Providence Country Day is to make great use of the outdoor space. The school sits on a beautiful campus, offering opportunities to athletes and nature lovers alike. Of course, it is also a great spot to learn about the natural world and humans' impact on it. One group investigating just that is Ms. Hanover's Environmental Science class. The class, open to seniors, provides a rigorous study of the science of the natural world.

They scanned the forest floor for microarthropods

Recently, the class has been outside in the area behind Lund Hall, which is also the site of a future nature trail. The students have been conducting a biodiversity study of microarthropods on the forest floor. Arthropods, for those whose grasp of zoology isn't quite what it used to be, are invertebrate animals with exoskeletons, segmented bodies, and jointed appendages. We see them all the time: insects, arachnids, and crustaceans are all arthropods. But they are not limited to mosquitoes, spiders, and lobster. As the Environmental Science class has learned, they can be quite small and live in great numbers on the forest floor.

They bagged their findings, bringing it back to the lab for
further research

Although the woods might have at first appeared uninteresting to the group of seniors that have spent years looking at them, there is no doubt that PCD's natural area is home to a wide array of wildlife. And the activity served as a powerful reminder to the students that, sometimes, the learning inside the classroom is no more important than the learning outside of it.  

Meet a Knight: Photographer Jo Sittenfeld

Ms. Sittenfeld snapping a photo.

Our series "Meet a Knight" features discussions with members of the PCD community. We are beginning the year by speaking with the faculty and staff who are new to the school this year. After starting with college counselor Terry Ward last week, today's chat is with Art Teacher Jo Sittenfeld.

Ms. Sittenfeld actually joined PCD last spring, so this marks her first full school year at 660 Waterman Ave. She is a woman who wears many hats. At PCD she teaches photography and digital media. She also works as an adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she currently teaches a range of photography classes and in RISD's "Project Open Door," an after-school program aimed at getting high school students interested in art. She somehow manages to take photographs for her own work, which she has exhibited all over the country. You can find her around PCD every day, either teaching a class or shooting photos of our busy students.

@PCD: Hi Jo, thank you so much for talking with us. How did you get into photography?

JS: Well I feel like my mom actually steered me--she would always get me these biographies of Margaret Bourque-White and all these pioneering women photographers when I was around eight. But when I was in college I took a photo class. I'd always loved art and art history, and thought it was this side thing I would do, and that I would be an English major or a science major or something like that. But during my sophomore year I took a photo class and it sort of changed my world and my life, and ever since then I have been doing photography steadily. I was an Art and Art History major and got my teaching certification, and from there taught high school art before I came to RISD and got my MFA in photography. It's always been this balance between making art and teaching it, which for me is a really good balance.

Señora Garcia-Mata's Easter Island Travels

Over the summer, three PCD faculty took advantage of E.E. Ford Summer Travel Grants to broaden their horizons. The grants, which support enrichment opportunities for full-time teaching faculty at the Providence Country Day School, are designed to enable teachers and their families to travel. Though the destinations and programs need not relate specifically to a teacher’s classroom curriculum, the broadened perspectives and ignited imaginations that only travel can inspire inevitably make their way into the classroom and the PCD community at large. One of the three recipients, Spanish Teacher Sarah Garcia-Mata, fulfilled a long-time goal of traveling to Easter Island, a small island in the South Pacific famous for the moai, or monolithic statues that dot the island's coast. We caught up with Señora Garcia-Mata and asked her to tell us a little bit about her experience and why she caught the travel bug.

Señora Garcia-Mata in front of moai on Easter Island

I love to travel! It is the only way to know cultures, peoples, languages and learn history without studying. For me it reaffirms the solidarity of humankind and the innate goodness of people. So funding for travel is paramount to me. In my language classes students have trouble remembering verb forms, but they do not forget my stories about adventures I had traveling, or some interesting factoid that I picked up somewhere along the way. Photos of pre-Incan salt mines in Peru necessitate a large amount of historical knowledge that the student would probably not remember if not seeing the pictures and figuring out (without realize their brain was doing it) all the ramifications of what pre-Incan means, the location, the history, etc., etc. My experience and personal photos of the many different Hispanic countries that I have visited make a big difference in my classes (at least I believe that). So I was incredibly fortunate to travel on an EE Ford grant this summer!