The Griffin: A Monthly Newsletter from the Head of School

Dear Garden Community,

Over the last three months we have been renewing our strategic plans for the future – The Garden Road to 100. I enjoy a good plan and was motivated to begin the process of co-creating this list of priorities for the years ahead. It is obviously helpful to have direction from the community on the collective to-do list for where we go next and I knew crafting this plan as a community-wide endeavor would provide a special window into the school.

Through this process, I have learned much about this community’s foundational values. When we started coding responses from the initial surveys, the words “family”, “warm”, and “community” showed up three times as often as any other terms. That Garden cherishes the nurturing school environment and close familiar connections it promotes was clear.

Garden has been a home away from home for so many students, alumni, families, and staff for almost 100 years. I felt that on my first visit here and it was what drew me in as well. The depth and commitment of our community is not necessarily commonplace in every school and I feel fortunate to be a part of a place with an ethic of devotion and compassion that one typically only finds with family.

There is also a deep and abiding love for Garden’s history. Looking to the future there are many opportunities, and there also is a prevailing priority of remembering our roots. This is how tight families evolve – never forgetting where they came from and finding ways to honor their past, while welcoming new members and setting ambitious goals for the benefit of the next generation.

The energy, enthusiasm, and sense of urgency with which committees worked has been impressive. We now have concluded the third phase of our process and move into the final stages of developing The Garden Road to 100. Over the next few weeks we will align the work of our 50 committee members and the volumes of notes, recommendations, and priorities that have percolated over four weeks of meetings and rich discussion.

We remain on target to publish The Garden Road to 100 Strategic Plan this winter and, again, thank all of our committee volunteers and everyone who has provided valuable input. Especially under the challenging days we face now, envisioning the future has been a true gift.

Very best,
Chris

In a typical year, we hold a winter show, gather as a community, and dismiss children early the day before December break. However, this year, we are moving winter performances to later in the season and obviously gathering is not possible at this time. That, in tandem with the fact that we hope to preserve every moment of instructional time this year, December 18th will now be a regular full day of school. We apologize for any inconvenience that may result from this change.

Senior Cailee M. was selected as a QuestBridge Scholarship Winner earlier this week, earning her a full-ride to attend Boston College as a member of the class of 2025! Over 20,000 students across the country apply to the highly competitive QuestBridge program annually with just a fraction winning the prestigious award of a full scholarship to one of 42 members colleges. An outstanding student, Cailee is now poised to begin her studies focusing on Psychology next fall at BC. Garden School congratulates Cailee and her entire family for this tremendous achievement. It is well-deserved!

Incorporating tech tools, like those found in Google Suites, reimagines what instruction can be and how students can participate in their learning. The tools enable students to demonstrate their learning through new modalities. Using Google tools, each sixth grader was able to create a short presentation that highlighted achievements of the Ancient Egyptians including the 365-day calendar, wigs, papyrus, and the ox-drawn plow. This was a fantastic alternative to worksheets or graphic organizers and allowed on-site and remote students to collaborate and share a learning experience.

As one of our culminating events for Disability Awareness, many lower school students are eagerly anticipating the upcoming visit from the New York City Kids Project. The NYC Kids Project is an award-winning artist and education company that incorporates puppetry and theatre to teach students of all abilities to embrace differences and foster inclusion. Our students will have the opportunity to virtually interact with large theatrical puppets and examine perceptions to create awareness and understanding of differences that make us unique.

December brought a new Pre-K unit on holidays and traditions. Children focused on learning the value of respect and appreciation of diversity by studying celebrations, customs, and traditions around the world through reading, language, and art. Children brought in items symbolizing a holiday from their family to share with classmates at a holiday show and tell. In conjunction, this week began a study of one of India’s biggest festivals, Diwali, a Hindu festival of lights. During Diwali, which is celebrated in the fall, people light up homes and shops with oil lamps made of clay and decorate with colorful rangoli art works. Students created their own rangoli art and their beautiful creations will hang at school throughout the season.

As the weather gets colder, it is harder for thermometers to read accurately outside. So we wall mounted more sensitive thermometers inside. However, cold foreheads are also resulting in temperature readings that are probably not perfect. This makes at home temperature screenings more critical than ever. Please be sure to continue this important step in the daily COVID self-screening. We will also begin random mid-morning checks after foreheads have warmed and would hate to call you back to bring your child home if you could have caught an elevated temperature before walking out the door.

Michèle Vice-Maslin (Weiss), Class of 1979
After Garden, Michèle moved to LA and became an Emmy winning music producer, songwriter, and music publisher with major hits and over 5000 music in media placements worldwide. Among her achievements, her hit song “Get Over Yourself” by Eden’s Crush landed on Billboard’s top 100 Girl Group Songs of All Time, she was on the music team of Guiding Light for 18 years, and her newest single "Our Voices Matter" by Jonathan Butler was ‘most added’ to the smooth jazz BDS radio chart. Michèle’s recent work includes 2020 & 2019 Hollywood Music In Media Award nominations, a song for Disney’s Bring on the Sunshine, songs from her new Phenomenal Women series project, a song in Dumplin’ starring Dolly Parton & Jennifer Aniston, pieces for shows Orange is the New Black, Mayans, High School Musical, The Romanoffs, Blue Bloods, Matt Damon’s Downsizing, and hundreds more. She has co-written a new song with Bob Dylan. http://www.sweetersongs.com

Barbara Li Santi, Garden student September 1959 – June 1970
Barbara’s mother, Betty, never completed high school. Because she believed education was vitally important for Barbara, Betty took out loans annually to pay Garden’s tuition. Barbara went on to earn degrees in mathematics: B.A. Vassar 1974, M.A. UC Santa Barbara 1975, and Ph.D. UC Santa Barbara 1978. Her publications include two computer science textbooks: Algorithms, Programming, Pascal (1988) and An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming in Java (2012, 2014). For 30 years, Barbara was the driving force for Mills College’s annual Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics Conference for 6th-12th grade girls and young women. Barbara taught mathematics and computer science to undergraduates for 40 years, the last 38 at Mills College in Oakland, CA where students voted to award her “Outstanding Teacher of the Year for 2019”.