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Current News
6/21/2010
Murray Scholarship Awarded to Isabelle Edwards '11
Isabelle Edwards of Cranston, RI has been named the 2010 Murray Scholar. Her achievement was announced on Awards Day by Susan Haberlandt and celebrated by members of the Murray family as well as the entire PCD faculty and student body. The Murray Scholarship is awarded in recognition of academic excellence, athletic and extra-curricular achievement and leadership in the Providence Country Day School community. Isabelle is a rising senior at PCD and the daughter of Ms. Roberta Edwards.
“The Murray Scholar is perhaps the most prestigious honor given to a PCD student,” noted Haberlandt. “The recipient is the student who our faculty truly feels exhibits excellence both in and out of the classroom. Isabelle has long set herself apart from the rest through her leadership in all aspects of the PCD community.”
The Murray Scholarship is generously given each year by Mr. Terry Murray, PCD ’58, his wife Suzanne and their family. The Scholarship provides full tuition and expenses for books and materials as well as a stipend for an opportunity to engage in a summer study/community service experience in the United States or abroad. During the summer of 2010, Isabelle will travel to Costa Rica, where she will participate in a two-week immersion program before living in the rain forest with an indigenous tribe and participating in a service project there.
A student at PCD since ninth grade, Isabelle’s many activities have included participation in the choir and chamber choir, student council, PeaceJam, and the admissions ambassador program. She is a three-season athlete, having distinguished herself in cross-country, basketball and track. Outside of school Isabelle helped start the Special Olympics Unified Bowling Team.
Isasbelle is PCD’s seventh Murray Scholar. Previous winners have attended Brown University (2), College of the Holy Cross, Tufts University, Middlebury College and Wellesley College.
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6/11/2010
Commencement 2010 Photos are Online
Check out photos from this year's Commencement ceremony. Stepping Up Day and "Beauty and the Beast" photos will be up soon. Visit the Media Gallery page to view a selection of photos.
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6/9/2010
Ms. Hughes' Commencement Address
In a ceremony befitting the occasion, the 47 members of the Class of 2010 received their diplomas today. The following address was delivered by English Department Chair Kathleen Hughes, who was nominated by the graduating class as its commencement speaker.
Good morning Mr. Bazar, Mrs. Haberlandt, Mr. McLaughlin, faculty, parents, students, and, of course, seniors. I am honored to speak to you today. Apparently the longest graduation speech in recent PCD history also occurred on the hottest graduation in recent PCD history. And while I wished I’d heard Peter McCalmont speak that day, I didn’t, because I was in the air conditioning at Nordstrom, doing what all women do in the early stages of labor - try on swimsuits with their sister. So yes, today is graduation day, and it’s also Ruby Wednesday. Hard to believe how fast six years go, let alone the eight since I started at PCD with Mr. Van Dervort and Mr. Shamgochian. I can imagine how the Class of 2010 parents must feel!At its last timing, this speech was 15 minutes long, which is about as long as “Gossip Girl” goes between commercials, right Mr. Dodd? So we should all be able to hang in.The word cairn comes from similar Welsh, Irish and Scots words. Cairns are used across Northern Europe and North America to mark burial sites, to help in hunting game, and to guide navigation. You will, I think, be relieved to know it is this third type—a cairn used for navigation—that draws our focus now. In the rocky, scrubby lakes landscape of northern Ontario, on the top of Mount Washington, in the Grand Canyon, and certainly elsewhere, hikers can see columns of flat stones, no more than a foot high, noticeable by their sitting atop a tree stump or bigger rock. These cairns mark a trail or an intersection of trails, and while they might have first been erected by a single hiker, they become, over time, collaborative. Hikers as they pass may add a stone or replace a stone that’s fallen. It’s a wordless, selfless gesture to set a cairn, and affirms nothing but human contact and a collective journey. With cairns, one hiker says to another, a complete stranger: I’ve been here. Go this way.Working in a high school keeps me in touch—for better or for worse—with my high school and college aged self, with my own memories of the challenges and joys of adolescence giving on to adulthood. I have a good memory and so, for instance, I can remember what I had for dessert at my graduation dinner before our ceremony—a butterscotch sundae in a tiny sherry glass, dubbed “the world’s smallest sundae,” and I remember who sat where at the table in “the River Room,” at my parents’ club, and I remember what the white polyester of my very shiny graduation gown and cap felt like as I sat on stage waiting, waiting, waiting. My graduation took place in a covered outdoor theatre in Indianapolis and it rained, loudly. I remember sitting in the car after the ceremony, windshield wipers going, music on; I was suddenly unsure what to do, despite having parties and a lock-in to go to back at the school. Something big had just finished, and the next big thing had yet to start. College was coming, the rest of my life was coming, but what was I supposed to do just then?As I pondered useful wisdom to pass along to you, seniors, on YOUR graduation day, I looked to moments of transition in my own life, and I thought about this metaphor I’m proposing—the cairn—and how it’s different from a map. Both give you a direction. But cairns you tend to find in places that might not be mapped well; they help you identify a trail where there seems to be none. As we all grow up, we become more advanced ‘hikers’, right? And our trails become more rugged. Increasingly, we rely on cairns—composed of stones we’ve been given throughout our lives—rather than on maps. Finally, remember the collaborative part of cairns. No one person is setting all the cairns; instead it’s friendly strangers like you and me. I’d argue that we were all given clear maps when we were young. For me, as a youngest child, my earliest desires were to keep up, to join in, to qualify. I grew up following the map that my two siblings had followed before me. They joined a swim team; I joined a swim team. My brother played baseball; I played baseball. My sister played the piano and violin; I played those instruments. They both went east for school; I followed them. I could also trace the maps my swim coaches laid out for me, and the map of trails to a selective college.Seniors, in the coming months and years, you will discover that you have lots of stones for cairns already. As a teacher, I have always felt that my job is to help you build your own understanding, your own set of skills, your own curiosity and confidence. It matters what I think is the point of the The Great Gatsby or Hamlet or Things Fall Apart or One Hundred Years of Solitude, but it matters more what you do in your own head with my lectures, and how you express your own thoughts and opinions, both now and long after you finish my class. In this way, I have aimed to be part of a cairn not a map, and my teaching has hopefully been but one stone in a whole collection of good, flat cairn stones collected in your PCD years. You might not know exactly what cairn stones you have, but you should enjoy discovering them—and you may be surprised. Your cairn stones might be from people you weren’t particularly friendly with, or people you didn’t know personally—as with characters from books, historical figures, or writers, musicians, artists, athletes, actors. I remember reading a paragraph of Annie Dillard’s American Childhood over and over and thinking, “I want to do this. I want to make people feel this way when they read something I write.” ee cummings made language seem like a playground. I knew I’d never be Faulkner, but I packed away one good stone with admiration for the scope of his drama, for his confounding and truthful blend of humor and pathos, for perhaps the most zany and honest chapter in American Literature “My mother is a fish.”As I’ve ‘become a more advanced hiker,’ I’ve discovered I have many smaller cairn stones, too, from people earlier in my life. I think about my best friend from the second grade who moved away in fourth grade and who was a good artist, very kind, and, well, to me, just ‘cool.’ I can’t even remember what kinds of games we played, or where she lived, or why she moved. I just remember a sense of her—her kindness, and her ability to draw rainbows. When she tracked me down through Google a couple years ago, I was and was not surprised to find that she is as cool an adult as she was a second grader. Which is to say—the kind of people we like as seven year olds tend to be the kind of people we like as grown-ups, and they frame the kind of people we want to be. I also think about the piano teacher I had in elementary school, and her emphasis on polishing the pieces I played, not just learning them. I remember how much work it took for me to sit still, to quiet my other energies and thoughts, and be present for practice. I went on to no music career, but the stillness, the focus that she insisted on, has served me well and often. Neither of these people made up my mind in the big deciding crossroads of life, but they were two among many who did influence my sense of how to be.So, to all of you, from the class of 2017 down to the class of 2010, you will someday, believe it or not, think back on moments in a PCD classroom, in the commons, or Metcalf hallway, in Corkery, or on a playing field, and you will realize their influence. Your family may have given you the best, most carefully drawn maps available, but I assure you that there are many other people who will help you build cairns in your lives, and, conversely, you will help others build a cairn by adding a stone and/or restacking ones that have fallen. As you sit there today, you should look at your friends and teachers and fellow students all around and consider what kind of good smooth stone they’ve given you for your cairn. And what have you given them? Today, on what is, in a sense, my last day as a teacher, I’d like to build a complete cairn for you, with five pieces of advice. Read. Yes, really, that’s the first stone I’m giving you. Read. And not just because of the stories books have to tell or the language poems create to describe life to us, or because of how books have changed my own life and ambitions, but also because of what reading does to your brain. Maryanne Wolf, in a book called Proust and the Squid, describes how humans become fluent readers—through practice—and how important reading fluency is: “The efficient reading brain,” she writes, “quite literally has more time to think.”[1] Wolf is concerned that the skim-reading encouraged by the Internet may be destructive to our capacity for deep reading. “When we read online, she says, we tend to become ‘mere decoders of information’ rather than engaged, deep-thinking readers.Wolf writes that it’s remarkable we read at all, and that literacy changes the way people think, which is to say that the way one processes experience through written language produces a wholly separate set of abilities in logic and abstraction than that created through oral language alone. So reading is hard. But as Mrs. Gleeson used to tell you over and over, hard is good. The mountain of a Shakespeare play may be as daunting to climb as a 3-mile cross country course is for someone who’s never run more than 400 yards. But in both cases, success is a matter of work and persistence. I can tell you how terrified I was reading Julius Caesar as a freshman in high school. My ninth graders may not believe this—but I had absolutely no idea what was going on until my teacher, Mrs. Rose, told us, almost line by line, what was happening. To then take a Shakespeare survey course in college and read two plays a week—and find it no problem at all, cake— gave me enormous satisfaction. Maybe iPads will make plain old reading—books and newspapers, not just blogs or Facebook posts—cool again. Pay attention. Be interested. And while I do mean this to apply to your academic work, it’s AS important that you apply this to your life in general. Who wants to live as if each moment is background music? James Agee wrote Let Us Now Praise Famous Men about three Depression-era Alabama sharecropper families that he met during his WPA service with photographer Walker Evans. Agee wrote, “It was good to be doing the work we had come to do and to be seeing the things we cared most to see, and to be among the people we cared most to know, and to know these things not as a book looked into, a desk sat down to, a good show caught, but as a fact as large as the air; something absolute and true we were a part of and drew with every breath, and added to with every glance of the eye.” Keep in mind that Agee wrote this describing a night not in Rome or Paris, but on a porch in rural Alabama with a family who owned nothing, literally nothing, of their own. He was celebrating the value of purpose—having the privilege of crafting a purpose for himself, not ‘sitting down to a prepared desk,’ or ‘catching’ a show that had already started; but setting what he felt was a worthwhile agenda, embracing it wholly, and then relishing his day’s end satisfaction. “To know these things…as a fact as large as the air.”Be unsure, get lost, and make your own way back. Now this is a native Midwesterner telling you this, which means that it’s someone who used to believe that a good sense of east versus west, and north versus south, could get you through any city of nicely gridded streets, which is all cities, right? My first weekend in college, I led a running group down a street that I swore was the direction we needed to get home. When the New Haven police pulled over to take the four freshmen girls several miles back to campus, we were decidedly not going ‘in the right direction.’ Still, by running around without a map, I’d wager to say I knew more about my new city, not just my campus, than most other freshman did. More generally, I’d wager to say that people learn more from mistakes than from getting it right the first time. It’s the hardest thing to learn as a parent that you have to let your kids fall down and hurt themselves if you want them ever to learn to manage their own bodies and walk, then run, jump and even ski “pizza” style barely in control down a ski slope—just ask Mrs. Morris. Let’s think about great mistakes in history and what’s come of them: Christopher Columbus was headed for Southeast Asia when he landed in the Bahamas. Penicillin was an incidental discovery. How about the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? An accident, allegedly. As Wendell Berry advises us, “Ask the questions that have no answers…Be like a fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.” And here’s what I think: the ‘right’ answer, the right path, is only right if you find it and figure it out for yourself. Laugh, hard, and often. It’s good for your abs (and more fun than situps), it feels better than screaming, and as we see with King Lear’s Fool, people listen to you more if you’re making them laugh rather than making them mad.And finally, worry about what’s next, rather than about the future. I can’t tell you exactly how I got from sitting alone in my car in the rain after my high school graduation, to some prime point in my college life; I can’t really tell you, with any direct logic, how I got from Indiana to Rhode Island, with Connecticut, London, Iowa, and New York in between. But I can tell you what I did in the car that night: I backed out of my parking space and lined up with everyone else to leave the parking lot. I met my friends at the lock-in. A week later I started a job as a lifeguard. Several steps farther on, I left for college. You know this from sports: after a good or bad play, what you do next is simple—you run the next play. After Michael Phelps won his 100 butterfly race at the Beijing Olympics, he did the exact same thing he would have done if he’d lost: he got in the warm-down pool. As human animals, we put one foot forward, and then the other. So don’t worry about the future. Just focus on what’s next.With credit to Mrs. Gleeson for the hiding-something-under-your-chair trick, you’ll each find a nice small cairn stone that my three-year-old, George, and I found for you in Narragansett yesterday. Please don’t treat them like bubbles and make them airborne at any point during or after this ceremony.Make your own path, seniors, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be alone. Pack the maps your parents gave you. And when you find yourself somewhat off that map, or venturing into territory for which you have no map, look for a small stack of stones left by another hiker. When you decide which way you’re going, lay down a stone or two that helped determine your path. It will be your chance to say, I was here once. You could go this way.[1] Crain, Caleb. “Twilight of the Books: What will life be like if people stop reading?” The New Yorker. 24 & 31 December 2007. p. 134-139.
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5/28/2010
Indelible Moments
Senior year is filled with many indelible moments: the last second of the final varsity game played on the home field; the curtain closing on the stage of the spring play after four years and eight shows; getting back an AP Calculus test with a perfect grade after months of toil. But for many PCD seniors, the finest hour comes right at the end of the year, during their Senior Project internships.
Sometimes, those memorable moments were life changing. Darlington James ’10 had the privilege of being at the airport to greet the refugees from Burma minutes after they touched down in Providence. He accompanied them to the home that he and other volunteers from the International Institute had set up for them and watched their previously anxious expressions transform into broad smiles of joy. “Most of the refugees have been through very tough situations in their home countries, especially in a place like Burma where human rights abuses are commonplace,” said James. “They are so appreciative not only to have a home, but one that is completely ready for them when they arrive here.”
For James, the welcoming was especially poignant, because it mirrored his own when he came to the United States from the Ivory Coast in 2002. “I could completely relate to the refugees because I am one myself,” he said. “It was amazing to be able to give back to the International Institute, because it was a place that gave me so much.”
A notable moment can also open one’s mind. For instance, Anna Pet ’10 will always remember when she realized that the basis for song inspiration is not always serious, and that music can come from any source. Indeed, the irreverent lyrics of the songs she wrote during her senior project with an independent musician owe inspiration to a lecture she attended about the Japanese art of Ikebana and a painting of a dead fish that hangs in a coffee shop she frequented. No matter how whimsical the words and music, taking a song from start to finish through the complicated steps of recording and remixing revealed to Pet just how serious a project it is to create a polished sound. “There is a lot of tweaking that goes into make a song sound exactly like we hear it on a recording,” she said.
Erik Allamby ’10 will always remember the eye-opening moment of witnessing a dog completely covered by acupuncture needles transform an animal from illness to health. As an intern at Harbor Animal Hospital, he learned how to combine traditional Eastern healing techniques with the most sophisticated level of veterinary medicine. “The acupuncture is extremely effective for animals with chronic illness, such as allergies, and it can prevent illness from developing in the future,” he said. Allamby was equally impressed by the hospital’s electronic medical records program, partnership with an advanced laboratory in Texas, and refined surgical techniques. “This internship convinced me that veterinary work can be very exciting, and I am definitely interested in pursuing it in the future,” he said.
Many students found moments of inspiration. When Allie Gnys ’10 was given the breathtaking opportunity to hold a baby seconds after its birth, she was astonished at the manner in which physicians literally hold lives in their hands. “Nothing is as simple as it seems in the hospital,” Gnys said. “Something can always go wrong and you must be prepared for that.” While the wonder of delivering babies and precision of gynecology appealed to her, Gnys’s internship in those wards enabled her to understand that she craves more variety in her career. “I think a specialty with many different challenges and situations, such as Emergency Medicine, would appeal to me more,” she said. No matter what specialty she ultimately chooses, Gnys’s month at Kent Hospital boosted her confidence in her ability to pursue an M.D.
“The Senior Project requires students to explore their talents and interests in ways that they had not previously imagined, and it is a truly memorable way to end senior year,” says Upper School teacher Nancy Gelardi, who oversees the internships. “Many of these projects lead into life-long passions and careers.” Photo: Anna Pet '10 plays the melodica, a wind instrument with keys.
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5/10/2010
Choir Coasts to the Top
The Upper School Choir and Chamber Choir were recognized for their performances at the Music in the Parks Adjudication, held in Holyoke, Massachusetts, on May 8. The Chamber Choir won 1st place in the competition with a superior rating, and the full Choir earned 1st place with an excellent rating. The singers were joined by Middlers Amalia Amburn '14 and Esty Bharier '14, who contributed their talents to the competition.
Each year, the PCD Choir competes against high school choirs throughout New England at the Music in the Parks Adjudication, which is sponsored in part by Six Flags New England. After a morning that required them to be on their toes, the singers celebrated their success at the amusement park in the afternoon.
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5/6/2010
Scheduled for Success
 A typical day for Kevin Lingard ’10 goes something like this: wake early to drive from Attleboro to East Providence and get to school in time to study with friends before Homeroom. Spend the morning experimenting in Advanced Physics, conversing in Spanish IV Honors, and solving problems in AP Calculus BC. Break for lunch before an afternoon of lively discussions in AP English and AP Government before singing with the Choir. Race from Corkery to the Field House for a distance run with the Cross Country team, then race back to Corkery in time for dinner and rehearsal with the PCD Players. Get home around 9 pm and begin studying. Find time to sleep. Repeat five times, add two or three trips to the karate studio and volunteer at church on Sundays, and you get one busy week, except for Saturdays. “Saturdays are my day off,” Lingard laughs.
What seems like a packed schedule to many has become routine for Lingard, who will enroll at Washington University in St. Louis this fall. His four years at PCD have been marked by sustained commitment to academics, arts, and athletics and a work ethic that has propelled him to the top in all three areas and earned him Cum Laude recognition this spring. In his time at PCD, Lingard has taken six AP courses, maintained a near-perfect GPA, performed in eight school plays, and run with the Cross Country, Indoor Track, and Track and Field teams every season. He joined Modern Language Department Chair Sarah Garcia-Mata on a trip to Spain to hone his language skills, and he was a writer in the Page to Stage summer program for four years.
Lingard insists that his schedule is manageable and fun. “I love my classes, especially Physics and Calculus, and Choir is always a great way to end the day. My favorite class is definitely Calculus with Mr. Ossman. For the past two years I have been impressed with his different and effective teaching method and his ability to pass along his knowledge. He has a great sense of humor and really understands teenagers.”
Participating in PCD’s performing arts program has also brought Lingard much joy. “I’ve made so many friends through Page to Stage and performing in the plays. It’s great to be able to express myself in a different way when I am on stage. Playing the role of Mr. Muchnik in Little Shop of Horrors this year was probably the most memorable. The cast got along very well and we were always able to have a good time, even during the stresses of production week.”
And all that running? “I just really like it,” says Lingard. “The team is great and we’ve seen a lot of success during the last four years with Coach Andruchow as we’ve extended our program.” Lingard has finished close to the top of a number of races and hopes to continue running in college.
Finally, Lingard’s life outside of PCD gives him the opportunity to release his abundant energy. A black belt in the Shotokan practice of karate, he practices for two hours two to three times a week. “Shotokan is more about personal growth than competition,” Lingard says. Organizing youth retreats with his church, All Saints Episcopal in Attleboro, also provides Lingard with time for reflection.
It is Lingard’s diverse interests, paired with his passion for math, science, and engineering that motivated him to choose Washington University. “Wash U’s engineering facilities and well-known program drew me there in the first place. I am interested in chemical engineering with a focus on alternative and renewable energy sources, which is a strong area of study there,” Lingard says. “But I also wanted to seize the opportunity to live in and explore another part of the country and experience something new and different for the next four years. St. Louis seems like a vibrant place to live. The pace of life is a bit slower than on the East Coast, and people are very friendly,” he says. Lingard hopes to continue his favorite extracurricular activities in college, and plans to audition for productions and ensembles and try out for the cross-country team. “At some point I would also like to study abroad in Australia or China,” he adds.
At this point in the year, Lingard is glad to be finishing his courses and embarking on his Senior Project at Teknor Apex, an engineering firm. He is also looking forward to spending time with his friends before everyone parts ways for college. “I have met amazing people at PCD through all of the things I’ve done, and for that I am very thankful.”
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4/20/2010
Cum Laude Honors Ten Seniors
In a ceremony befitting the significance of the occasion, ten Providence Country Day School students were honored with admission to the International Cum Laude Society on April 20. The Society, founded in 1906, recognizes academic achievement in secondary schools for the purpose of promoting excellence, justice and honor. The Society was modeled after Phi Beta Kappa and includes 350 chapters in public and independent schools throughout the U. S., Canada, England, France, Spain and the Philippines.
The Providence Country Day School Chapter was accepted into the Society in 1952, and each year the school may elect up to 20% of the members of the Senior Class who have maintained an honor record. With an emphasis on academic excellence, the Society’s Regents also specify that membership should require demonstration of good character, honor and integrity in all aspects of school life.
In her introductory remarks, Head of School Susan Haberlandt advised the gathering of Upper School students, faculty, and proud parents to focus on hard work and reap its benefits. “Hard work is central to this honor,” she said. “Preparation, practice, repetition, and more preparation must be a guide for all students. To paraphrase Aristotle, excellence is a habit.”
English teacher and Cum Laude Chapter President David Cashman introduced keynote speaker Amelia “Mel” Plante ‘06, who clearly has followed Ms. Haberlandt’s advice. “Mel was a superior student at PCD who took advantage of the widest possible range of activities. She is large minded in just the way the school supports,” commented Mr. Cashman.
Ms. Plante, who will be graduating from Brown University in May with a major in International Relations, reflected on her experiences at both PCD and Brown. “PCD gives you all of the tools you need to succeed in college, and PCD teachers truly assist you in achieving your life’s goals,” she told seniors. “I had teachers at PCD who encouraged rigorous intellectual pursuit unlike any I have known.” Ms. Plante encouraged students to “pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” noting that some of her favorite classes, including Classic Maya Civilization and Introduction to Oceanography, were not a part of her degree program. “You will miss a real opportunity to work with experts in their fields if you don’t take classes outside your major,” she warned. Plante also stressed the important role that extracurricular activities have played in her life choices. Through her experiences with the PCD Players, Mock Trial and Model UN, she decided to pursue an International Relations degree and study abroad in Berlin, Germany. She continues to participate in Model UN at Brown, an activity that has taken her to Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, and China. For her Senior Honors Thesis, Ms. Plante is writing about the inclusion of rape as an international war crime. Her interest in international women’s rights will bring her to Asia next year, where she will volunteer with the Peace Corps with a focus on health and human rights. “Use your time at PCD to the fullest,” she urged students. “Something that you love outside of class may become the basis for a career.”
This year’s ten inductees into the Cum Laude Society are pictured as follows:
Nicholas S. Sienkiewicz of Cranston Jordan N. Nissensohn of Barrington
Matthew J. Cloherty of North Attleboro Kyla M. Mor of Seekonk Lydia M. Mozzone of Rehoboth Kevin A. Lingard of Attleboro Abby E. Kaye-Phillips of Providence
Nathaniel W. Hughes of Providence
Shelby N. Hunt of Bristol William A. Douglass of Rehoboth
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4/19/2010
National Latin Award Winners
The following students were award winners in the 2010 National Latin Exam:
LATIN I Silver Medal: Callan McCarthy '14 Cum Laude: Sarah Benjamin '14, Charles Dudzik '13, and Charles Rego '14
LATIN IIGold Medal: Cullen Kornhauser '13
Cum Laude: Jonathan Anderson '13 and Christopher Pratt '12
LATIN III Gold Medal: Emma Maier '12 and Alexa Stergios '11
Cum Laude: Connor Pirruccello McClellan '12 and Alexander Schwartz '12
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4/16/2010
Inspiring Peace
Austin O’Neil ’10 was painting a panel for a quilt when he sensed a presence nearby. He looked up, and Nobel Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel had taken a seat beside him. Without a word, Esquivel selected his own panel and a paintbrush and joined O’Neil. The two worked side by side to help create a quilt to represent sheltering people from violence, one of the many activities in which PCD students participated during the PeaceJam Northeast Regional Conference in late March. “It was an amazing moment,” says O’Neil. “We sometimes communicated with gestures and expressions, but mostly we just painted.”
The type of interaction O’Neil describes – bringing together young people and Nobel Laureates to inspire a new generation to make a difference – is a hallmark of the Peace Jam experience. Over the weekend of March 27-28, O’Neil and Chelsea Gelardi ’09, Alexandra Prentice ’11, and Leah Siegel-Reamer ’11 joined students from schools throughout the Northeast at the University of Hartford to answer the “call to action” to promote peace within and outside of their communities. The conference schedule included a keynote address by Esquivel, team-building activities, community service projects, and planning for the upcoming school year.
PCD students have seized the opportunity to meet and collaborate with Nobel Laureates since the founding of the Northeast Affiliate in 2007. Since then, students have worked with Betty Williams, Jody Williams, and Rigoberta Menchu Tum. A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980, Esquivel was a well-known artist and educator in Argentina before becoming an outspoken activist in 1974. He was named secretary-general of the newly formed Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ), a group that coordinates nonviolent movements in the region.
Because of his work, Esquivel became a target of the military dictatorship. In 1977, he “disappeared” and was imprisoned and tortured by the Argentinean military for 14 months. He was released after being named Amnesty International’s Political Prisoner of the Year in 1978, which led to thousands of letters being written to the Argentinean government demanding his release. Upon his release, Esquivel continued his work leading SERPAJ. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his advocacy for human rights and true democracy for the people of Latin America. Today, his efforts continue to advance those causes.
Esquivel not only spoke to the PeaceJam participants about his experiences and opened up the floor for questions, but joined students in their activities. He helped paint the quilt to promote breaking the cycle of violence and participated in other community service projects. He joined students in “Family Groups,” in which students from different schools collaborated in team-building activities to increase their comfort with each other and learn how to quickly build alliances with individuals they have only just met. He helped brainstorm ways that the affiliate could continue to promote its “Free Burma” campaign. Most importantly, he joined students during the open-mic “Ceremony of Inspiration,” in which everyone was welcome to share their own experiences with violence and visions of promoting peace. “The Ceremony of Inspiration really made me think about how important our work is,” says O’Neil. “So many people had heart-wrenching stories that made us realize that promoting peace can be done on so many levels.”
For instance, over the past two years, the PCD Peace Jam Club has run awareness-raising assemblies about the situation in Burma. Ma Thida, a Burmese activist and physician, visited PCD last year to speak to students about her years as a political prisoner. Currently, the group is undertaking a project to raise money for an orphanage on the Thai-Burma border that can become a safe haven for children and families.
In addition, the group also discussed problems that take place closer to home. They spoke about the ways in which online social media such as Facebook can promote cyber-bullying that is particularly painful. “Bullying has changed,” says O’Neil. “You can’t simply say to your kids, ‘Oh, just avoid those kids who are bothering you.’ Now a bully can make a fake page in a victim’s name and upload his or her picture, pretend to be him or her and post horrible messages, and there are no immediate consequences.” The participants made the connection between verbal violence that takes place among classmates and the widespread violence that occurs among nations. “We’re interested in breaking the cycle of violence no matter where it takes place,” says O’Neil.
PCD’s PeaceJam club will continue its Free Burma campaign and look for other ways to promote nonviolence in the community. All students are welcome to join the efforts to promote peace.
Photo: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel paints a quilt square next to Austin O'Neil '10 at the PeaceJam Northeast Regional Conference.
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4/15/2010
Ecology is Focus of Spring Break Trip
Ten days in the Virgin Islands over Spring Break sounds like a relaxing vacation, but for the 18 students who participated in the Environmental Studies trip to St. John, the week was much more than just fun in the sun. As visiting students at the Virgin Island Environmental Research Station (VIERS), a working biology field station in St. John, students explored the many facets of ecology while literally immersing themselves in nature. They learned from scientists and experts in the fields of marine biology and tropical ecology. They went on guided trail hikes, seashore explorations, mangrove walks, plant and wildlife identification excursions and snorkeling outings to identify marine life. Further, they toured the VIERS compound itself and neighboring eco-resorts to study green design. In a nutshell, students learned how to protect an entire ecosystem.
After a long journey from Boston to St. John on Tuesday, March 16, the group arrived to their rustic cabins at VIERS. Although the accommodations were clean and comfortable, the students had to adjust to living without electronics and other “conveniences.” The eleven girls shared one cabin, while the eight boys slept in a second cabin. “It was amazing that eleven girls slept in one cabin for nine nights and nobody fought,” laughs Caroline Dylag ’10. Perhaps it was the hospitality and the delicious food that kept moods elevated, but more likely the packed schedules kept the students too tired to do anything but sleep at night. Right away, they began exploring a mangrove swamp, where they examined the sediment and water quality. Each day included a new scientific adventure: water labs on Wednesday, a hike to ancient petroglyphs on Thursday, a marine biology lesson on Friday, snorkeling in coral reefs and a botany lecture on Saturday, green building design on Sunday, and so on.
“We learned so much that one week felt like an entire course in Environmental Studies,” says Andrew Potter ’10. Indeed, the trip was conceived as a complement to the Environmental Science class taught by Bill Jones at PCD. “I wanted us to be able to study an entire ecosystem by immersing ourselves in it, and that’s hard to do in New England in the late winter,” says Jones. “Partnering with VIERS was the perfect opportunity for us to see how what we have learned in the course applies to the real world.”
The students were enthusiastic about their lessons, particularly about the lecture on folk medicine led by a native Islander. “He focused not only on the scientific aspects of the flora and fauna of the region, but also their cultural significance,” says Potter. “We were able to see the connections between certain plants, their medicinal uses, and their value in the local culture.” Potter was also intrigued by VIERS’s green building design and use of photovoltaic systems.
By the end of the week, their continued engagement with the natural world helped students deepen their appreciation for the fragility of ecosystems. “I really got a sense of how tourism impacts the environment in Caribbean,” says Dylag. “From cruise ships dumping gallons of oil into the oceans to high rise hotels on beaches, the Caribbean ecosystem is constantly threatened. We were able to see how everything fit together, and that was fascinating,” says Dylag.
Another unexpected result of the trip was the way that it deepened friendships among the 18 seniors who will be graduating in a few short weeks. Towards the end of the trip, they spontaneously began dancing in a drumming circle, and were soon joined by their chaperones. “I think the dancing represented how connected we all felt to each other and the world around us,” says Dylag.
Potter concurs. “Not only did we get to strengthen our friendships, but we also learned so much. It was an incredible trip.”
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